alt Hacker NewsIn most companies, writing code is the last thing developers (should) do. You're there to achieve business objectives, and you were hired because someone thought your experience and skillset will be necessary to achieve those business objectives. Sometimes those objectives are met with an excel sheet, sometimes they're met by losely integrating various 3rd parties, sometimes they're met by integrating various libraries, and sometimes it requires treading new ground and writing some real code.
The best web dev isn't the one that knows .Net, React, Svelte, GraphQL, micro-frontends, etc. The best web dev is the one that can convince their manager that their business objectives can be achieved by using WordPress.
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Oh wow… the WordPress example…
Worked at a SaaS company that had a fantastic product and a great tech team that had built it.
We also did a lot of data-based research and published it as white papers for lead gen.
We wanted to start publishing more content on our site to expand reach, so the team decided a CMS would be a solution for the researchers and content marketers to publish without any tech involvement.
Well it turns out our CTO, for a few justifiable reasons if we’re painting with a broad brush, absolutely loathed WordPress. So despite our arguments an integration would be easier/cheaper/less time consuming for everyone, we built our own CMS instead.
And we, of course, ended up with a significantly worse version of WordPress that the content folks all hated.
So it goes.
I think your model has faulty assumptions. It makes the assumptions that the companies and managers actually know what the business objectives are. Or rather, what the business objectives that will make money are. I think we all have seen examples where maybe an afternoon's worth of work could fix some feature that is frustrating users, but since there's not a clear "value" ascribed to it, it gets pushed off. While simultaneously we've seen tons of money dumped into things neither users nor investors want and that end up failing.
If we're handed an engineer title, I think we should be engineers. Which requires you to be a bit "grumpy". That is because the job of an engineer is to find problems and then fix them. I say "grumpy" because it is your job to find friction in a system and remove it. What I've often seen though is that acknowledging friction is interpreted as rejection and not as part of the process to make things better. Unless we get to the magic land of perfection, the job of identifying issues and improving will always be extremely valuable and naturally lead to increased revenue[0]. There's a lot of things that go into making a product "good" and this can't be entirely done from technical skills, but it is a critical aspect. Look at Steve Job's Apple. The genius was the mixture of form and function. You make computers that are powerful, have good software, AND the UI/UX is far from a second thought. Good UI/UX and shitty code don't make a good product, similarly neither does shitty UI/UX and impressive code (backend devs don't rule the world)
> The best web dev is the one that can convince their manager that their business objectives can be achieved by using WordPress.
[0] Obviously you have to weigh the costs that it takes to fix things. But identification is often cheap and easy. At least the first step of identification anyways.
I disagree with you. According to your definition of best developer, is one with a skill for persuade manager enough for building complex we apps and services? A developer is hired to write code and they achieve business goals by writing code and building software. Writing code is the skill they have and that is why they are hired.
I think it depends on your company rather than saying "most". If you are in a software company (i.e. you sell the software you write), then your value is the unique IP you create from writing code. In that case, hopefully a larger portion of your day is coding.
edit: When I say coding, I don't mean plumbing code, I mean something that is actually a unique invention.
... or ones that can convince them not to use WP! (RE: matt mullenwag's breakdown/mental issues)
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>The best chemical engineer isn't the one that knows the pressure at which chlorine tanks fail, they are the one that knows chlorine gas can be stored in a garage in coke bottles.
I look forward to the day that software 'engineers' are held accountable to the same degree that all other engineers are.
I've written software for industrial machinery that can kill people if it went wrong. It's amazing how much your views on software change when you realize that your accountability starts at manslaughter and goes up from there.
A human life is valued at around $10m in the developed world, incidentally my first real job was fixing an excel spreadsheet that caused $10m in trade losses after the API it called for exchange rates went stale.
I'm not saying that we arrest everyone who writes a spreadsheet to help them with their job. But _someone_ should have their head on the line when it becomes a business process without oversight that can cause millions in losses, damages or bills.