One company's lousy engineer is another company's good architect.
I was doing some consulting back in 2008, and when the economy went belly up, my contract ended. It was the first time in my life when I had to go through interviews to find a job (I got jobs primarily based on references before that). I was pretty stressed, got a couple of offers, and landed as a senior software engineer in a small company. And in a year, I switched to another (bigger) company as an architect.
To be fair, in contrast with the story title, I wasn't considered a bad engineer in the first company. However, the difference in title/responsibilities and compensation was quite stark.
There were multiple times throughout my career when I saw people whose abilities severely mismatched their titles (both up and down). Some junior heavy hitters could code circles around more senior people. And some senior people were quite inept.
BTW. These potential mismatches go way beyond engineering. It happens in a bunch of departments (where the results can't be easily measured). However, to be fair, some of these cases are obvious even without having a perfect measurement methodology (so it's not just a failure on inability to measure personnel performance).
Mismatched titles/responsibilities are painful (BTW. This reminds me of another article I wrote on unfair practices). However, the more interesting part of this is about finding such engineers with a lot of potential.
As an example, looking back on my personal experience. I was sharp and experienced when the company hired me as an architect. However, I had almost zero architecture experience and was still reasonably junior. They took some risks hiring me in this role. (BTW. I share a couple of stories about me here. It feels a bit self-congratulatory, but it's less about that and more about me being more comfortable sharing my personal stories vs. somebody else's)
I stumbled on sharp people several times and let them run with things that were definitely beyond their title (unfortunately, in several of these cases, I had limited leverage to update their title to make it entirely fair).
It's tough to put the finger on how to identify such people. It's heavily based on gut feeling. However, one of the things common for all of them is that they do something extraordinary. It's less about hours invested and less about just executing well, but instead figuring out something non-trivial.
Getting back to a time when I was a junior. It was probably back in 2000-2001. Internet (in Ukraine) was still in its infancy. We had it, but it was still a new thing. And I was working with a way more experienced engineer, and he was brainstorming something around product registration. And he was having a hard time finding a good solution. And I suggested off-hand that the product can register with the server, and the server will do the necessary checks (which made the problem trivial). And he was visibly amazed by me coming up with such a solution.
It's interesting that when you meet such people, sometimes you can see how much value they can bring to the table. But, interestingly, it's not always evident to these people (unfortunately, a lot of good people have at least a minor version of Imposter Syndrom, and as a result, they may underestimate how good they are).
Another interesting aspect of the mismatch which I mentioned is how different environments sink or raise different people. For example, a person could be a superstar in one company and barely function in another.
BTW. After realizing this, I try to slap myself on the hand to not completely dismiss people who don't perform. It could be that this person is a problem, or it could be that they were placed in a position where it's hard for them to function properly.
BTW. This was one of the reasons why I originally wrote My core engineering principles article. I was describing an environment where I flourish. And I can easily imagine an environment where opposite principles are valued, which would be absolutely alien to me.
There will be no summary today—just a pure brain dump.
P.S. If you enjoyed this article, please follow me on Medium or subscribe via email.
