[HN Gopher] Street Fighting Engineers vs Martial Arts Engineers
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Street Fighting Engineers vs Martial Arts Engineers
Author : lazy_afternoons
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-04-09 19:10 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ravitejakanta.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ravitejakanta.substack.com)
| mostertoaster wrote:
| When I first read the headline I read it as the engineers behind
| the game street fighter.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Same, and was rather disappointed.
| GenericDev wrote:
| I would like to propose another candidate: Street-Fighter with
| Martial Arts training.
| analog31 wrote:
| You just described a jazz musician. ;-)
| GenericDev wrote:
| That's show-biz baby!
| xupybd wrote:
| I struggle to understand what insight is gained from this
| article. Can anyone explain how this could be useful?
| dgunay wrote:
| To make talent sourcing and hiring decisions.
| mattdeboard wrote:
| it's useful for people who want to understand the minds of
| others.
| lazy_afternoons wrote:
| Honestly, it was just an observation.
|
| IMO, the street fighting skill is a bit less known. I worked
| for a unicorn which had ZERO managers and ZERO Product
| managers. The engineers had to speak to the users, write the
| roadmaps, build stuff and report to the founder. I realised
| this skill was rare among engineers and less talked about.
| Initially, I titled this "Street fighting engineers", it
| eventually evolved into this.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| My guess as to why the archetype isn't as well known is
| because you can absorb most of the chaos with a very small
| number of people.
|
| Unless these people make their role known, most other people
| don't see all the firefighting that they do.
| dgunay wrote:
| I feel like these aren't always personality traits, but rather
| often indicate the kinds of work environments one has been
| exposed to.
|
| I would characterize myself as more of a "Martial Artist" at
| heart. I find creating quality code gratifying for its own sake.
| I have an academic CS education. The majority of my early career
| was spent at a mature organization with lots of process in place
| and a reputation for engineering excellence. I love tools
| engineering and other internal work that makes others more
| productive, rather than the trench warfare of supporting consumer
| apps with thousands and thousands of users.
|
| Yet, over the past two years at startups I feel I have taken on a
| lot more "Street Fighter" characteristics in order to cope. I let
| objectively bad code slide in reviews if it puts out a fire or we
| won't scale to meet its limitations soon. I fix serious issues
| and operational headaches under the table, because they would
| fester for months unprioritized otherwise. I start talking
| directly to management at the year mark instead of waiting for
| raises, because most startups just don't bother setting any
| expectations at all on that front.
|
| It's important to realize that not all Martial Artists will be
| that way forever. And your organization might be what makes them
| hang up their black belt and pick up some brass knuckles. Or vice
| versa - a Street Fighter might tire of building and rebuilding
| half-baked spaghetti wire solutions and decide to go somewhere
| they can just focus on one thing and collect a paycheck.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Nailed it.
|
| There are actually more pitfalls than just the nature vs.
| nurture argument (for example, combat based metaphors in
| cultures where women do not typically serve in the military are
| likely to affect the perception of who measures up...).
|
| In that vein, I am more jazz guitarist than classical pianist.
| zanethomas wrote:
| Most martial arts are worthless in a real street fight.
| AdieuToLogic wrote:
| In "a real street fight", the person who can extend combat such
| that they minimize immediate threats as well as deliver maximum
| damage to their opponents when possible typically will come out
| the other side better.
|
| These are techniques martial arts teach. A "street fighter"
| might have some tricks up their sleeve, but a martial artist is
| better equipped to handle arbitrary conflicts they may find
| themselves in.
|
| Neither guarantees success in a fight.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I have seen the opposite. I'm a martial arts style programmer,
| who is put into environments where street fighting is
| considered more ethical than what I had to put up with.
|
| Being able to craft quick and dirty solutions which are diluted
| versions of my normal code solved tons of problems. Since I see
| programming as a craft, I had an intuition about where I can
| cut corners without affecting the quality most of the time, and
| I can add the corner back if the opportunity arises.
|
| A martial arts practitioner with a flexible mind is a
| formidable force.
| ukuuru wrote:
| Martial arts for the projects, street figthters for the products.
| Good engineers are always valuable but everyone shines
| differently in different situations.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I really like this dichotomy.
|
| Over time I'm becoming more and more aware of non-skill factors
| that affect my impact.
|
| I'm definitely more a street fighter, and I feel limited when I'm
| given martial artist work and there is very little opportunity
| for street fighter work.
|
| I think it can be very difficult to be a 10x engineer because you
| have to be in an org that has the right type of work, be on a
| team that's involved in that work, and be in a role in which
| you're given that work.
|
| Working at a big company as a SWE (As opposed to e.g. SRE) I've
| found that the street fighter work is very limited and generally
| only specific teams and people get to work on it.
| neon_electro wrote:
| Thank you for illustrating just how much the myth of the "10x
| engineer" has as much to do with the individual as it does the
| system that individual works in.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Couple of great blog posts on this topic:
|
| - https://erikbern.com/2016/01/08/i-believe-in-
| the-10x-enginee...
|
| - https://erikbern.com/2019/02/21/headcount-targets-feature-
| fa...
| lazy_afternoons wrote:
| > I think it can be very difficult to be a 10x engineer because
| you have to be in an org that has the right type of work, be on
| a team that's involved in that work, and be in a role in which
| you're given that work.
|
| Agreed. I noticed that 10x engineers are a product of 10x
| workplaces. Orgs have insane ability to take the most skilled
| engineers and make them unproductive.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| And there are also the ones that kiss up the referee and win
| through politics. But without the referee get knocked out with
| one punch.
|
| They have no use in a real fight, but companies are full of them.
| Osiris wrote:
| From the headline I thought this was going to be about software
| engineers who do Martial Arts as an hobby. I do Brazilian Jiu
| Jitsu and there are a lot of software engineers in that sport.
| [deleted]
| cudgy wrote:
| "The street fighters mostly have scars and reputation in closed
| groups. To find them you have to talk to folks in that closed
| group."
|
| What closed group would that be, since by definition they are not
| part of a particular group? A martial artist sounds like the guy
| that got a product of the ground and would likely be part of the
| founder group; not likely looking to do it again.
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm kind of reminded of my counter to Didier Verna's "Lisp, Jazz,
| Aikido" meme: Visual Basic, Punk Rock, MMA.
| darod wrote:
| first "code ninjas" now "street fighting" engineers and "martial
| art" engineers? really? I feel like these monikers are getting a
| little silly especially since you'd never see the reverse.
| neilv wrote:
| > _you 'd never see the reverse._
|
| Excellent point!
|
| Competitive TKD practitioner: "Approaching this match, aware my
| opponent was a highly-ranked veteran competitor, I asked
| myself: what would a techbro do?"
| dgunay wrote:
| reminds me a bit of this Elon Musk tweet:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1527774704018280448?s=20
| neilv wrote:
| He has an interesting mix of good ideas and bad ideas.
|
| Which is good and bad, in a society in which he can do almost
| anything he wants, and almost no one will tell him no.
| intelVISA wrote:
| LFM 10x rockstar/street-fighter (no LLMs!) SWEs PST
| hallqv wrote:
| Nice distinction, I'm definitely a street fighter engineer
| myself, and I often struggle to understand martial arts
| engineers. This article helps with that in a weird kind of
| visceral way.
| karmakaze wrote:
| A rather contrived or ridiculous post.
|
| > I have worked with 2 types of 10x engineers so far: Martial
| Artists, Street fighters
|
| It then goes on to say which you should have. Duh if they're each
| 10x, both.
|
| The article set up a false dichotomy in its premise.
| davedx wrote:
| I do well in almost any technical environment but am able to
| drill down and specialise down the deeper rabbit holes when
| needed. Sometimes my theoretical knowledge is spotty and lets me
| down though so I guess I'm more Ryu than Bruce Lee. I'm
| definitely more around the 7.5x - 8x than 10x though.
| tpoacher wrote:
| [flagged]
| angarg12 wrote:
| Fun analogy, but let's look at the Martial Artist environment
|
| > There are basic ground rules (clear requirements) which the
| opponents (problems) are NOT allowed to break. eg: below the belt
| punches, (changing priorities every week) etc.
|
| Who does get to work in such an environment? I can only think of:
|
| * Academia
|
| * Artificial environments (e.g. leetcode, coding competitions)
|
| * MAYBE very mature products in established companies
|
| For the vast majority of us changing requirements, unknown
| unknowns and technology shifts are our daily bread. Big,
| unchanging upfront design doesn't work, and we've known this for
| several decades now.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This is a very common environment in large companies.
|
| If you're working on an existing service and not building new
| features/functionality (E.g. you're improving scaling or
| optimizing performance like he mentions) the problem space is
| _usually_ pretty well defined and you can mostly just put your
| head down and work.
| BrissyCoder wrote:
| [flagged]
| altdataseller wrote:
| Its street fighting engineers vs marvel superhero engineers.
| virtualritz wrote:
| A friend of mine who's both a kick ass engineer and great product
| manager once told me this analogy, which is employing similar to
| the one in the article:
|
| "For any software project to succeed, you need three types of
| developers:
|
| The kamikaze. They kick off the project, they don't care about
| the mountain on the horizon or the abyss less than ten clicks
| ahead. They get everyone on board and they will also give the
| column directions and keep them on track.
|
| The soldier. They just march on and on. They may take longer to
| solve a problem, but they don't tire. They keep at it.
|
| The sniper. Any really difficult issue they will just take out.
| But they need calm and solitude to do their deed."
| neilv wrote:
| I kinda like this analogy, though the idea of street fighting is
| pretty unsavory in real life. Whereas Martial Artist in the
| article's analogy is like suburban children's Karate classes
| leading to later study for organized sports competitions and
| exhibitions. (BTW, IIUC, there are other kinds of study of
| martial arts, including people who focus on internal development
| separate from external accomplishments.)
|
| Even though it's unsavory, I did use a "scrappy street kid
| fighter" analogy on HN a couple months ago, criticizing some
| academic attempt to make declarations about software engineering.
| Then spun that into one of my favorite topics, which is startups
| and other smaller companies playing house self-destructively, by
| cargo-culting behaviors of insulated massive megacorps.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753570
|
| Instead, we need to lean more towards scrappy street-smarts than
| we have been during much of "tech". (We also need to always learn
| from our predecessors and conteporaries, but to be smart about
| it, not cargo-cult, so I'm focusing on the smart part first.)
| Swizec wrote:
| My favorite part of boxing is that it's a very honest martial
| art. If you punch the other person more than they punch you,
| you win. Even the most technical coach will tell you that all
| the technique and philosophy we train is just there to improve
| your chances.
|
| When you're in the ring, forget the theory, do what works
| (within the rules). If your instinct says to throw a weird
| punch at a weird time, do it. You probably saw an opening.
|
| I also like that boxing is full contact. No amount of katas or
| whatever will teach you as much about yourself as getting
| actually punched in the face will.
|
| Similar to how no amount of analysis can beat actually shipping
| software and seeing what customers say.
| neilv wrote:
| Hence the sayings "Everybody has a plan until they get hit in
| the face" and "The enemy gets a vote". There's a lot of truth
| to this.
|
| I suppose we have to be careful not to rationalize mindless
| flailing, when we should be keeping our heads and mixing
| levels of intuition and thinking appropriate to the occasion.
| (Rather than throw random things at a customer each sprint,
| and purely react, we can be smarter about what we throw.
| Also, a one-week sprint isn't about acting in the moment of a
| hundredth of a second.)
| Swizec wrote:
| > not to rationalize mindless flailing, when we should be
| keeping our heads and mixing levels of intuition and
| thinking appropriate to the occasion
|
| This is true. When two experienced boxers (even ones who
| never compete) face off, it's like a chess match. Both
| thinking five steps ahead and it's as beautiful to watch as
| it is fun to experience.
|
| But never underestimate the beginner. They _will_ hurt you
| in the first 30 seconds because they're scared and don't
| realize their own strength. Then after 30 seconds they're
| out of steam and you can do your thing ... if your head's
| still on.
| ajb wrote:
| I don't know, I feel like a lot of these laudatory adjectives
| like "scrappy" and "street smart" are often just ways to excuse
| product owners, designers and execs making crappy decisions and
| throwing them over the wall to engineers to sort out. YMMV, of
| course.
| neilv wrote:
| I suspect that a scrappy organization wouldn't have a wall to
| toss anything over.
|
| If a wall did accidentally appear in a scrappy org, maybe the
| wall gets knocked over, and the trash collegially tossed
| back, with an offer to work together on something that will
| work?
|
| Stereotypical lumbering bureaucracies can appropriate terms
| all day, and people mimicking them can also mimic their
| appropriations, and management books can be marketed, all
| while ignoring the actual useful meaning of the terms.
| ajb wrote:
| I think I'm taking about a different failure mode. To have
| a "wall" you don't need a large organisation, just
| leadership that has certain blindspots or beliefs that they
| don't allow to be challenged. (I know I'm being a bit
| vague, I can't go into the specifics unfortunately).
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this! It is helpful in explaining things
| easier
| hising wrote:
| First, 10x devs are so pathetic to read about, but:
|
| What I like with this article is the difference in how you
| approach a problem depending on how you are functioning as a
| human being. Of course it is nowhere near of the real world, but
| I think all of us can identify people we worked with who are
| really efficient on both of these "sides".
| airocker wrote:
| It seems similar to the analogy of a circus lion vs a wild lion.
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