Please share any examples and stories you have of Distinguished Engineers (or the highest IC SDE role at your company). What were they like? What did they do to earn their role? Did they blow your mind?
Nafea Bshara in your company
What a man ! You might not like his style but holy God that guy is smart. Had the pleasure of interacting with him a few times.
He is the only person I know who taped out an asic in A0 and straight to production with no respin. Mad respect for him.
They did nothing special. they were like wormtongue to the directors and vp's, sometimes shouting directly into their ears during meetings. They would sit right next to the highest ranked executive and get right up in their face. Thats what it took. Their qualifications were they were at the company for 20 years. Their job is telling execs who they want pipped. They did not blow my mind. They just knew how to manipulate executives.
You hear people say this about anyone a couple levels above them
Everyone says this about folks multiple levels above them. It's rather ignorant to be honest
James Gosling is a DE, he wrote Java, so thats one way to make it 🤣
javascript is more successful, but they all but censored the author's name because he doesn't support the gays.
Would writing hello world in java enough
I have been the senior most IC including being a DE in multiple companies in my career. One thing I have consistently done is I took on strategically important hard problems and solved them in ways that mattered to the business. This required me to do the following - identifying and framing the problem statement right and getting the right buy-in, enabling the right org / people to come together to solve the problem and seeing the execution of solution to its successful landing or recognising failures and doing fast pivots. With me, it hasn’t been one huge thing (like invented X - I’m also anti software patents) but a lot of different things. I’m dependable when you are in a tough spot with existential hard technical threat to the business. Unfortunately I cannot share specifics without outing myself here.
What outing yourself ? Is it a big deal if anyone comes to know that ur in blind ? Even X's new CEO showed she is in blind. As for anonymity u can change ur username and move on. It's free. Some DE...
What's your method to the madness? How do you become a consistent player?
What I heard is that, DE is someone who have his influence not just in the company but in the industry… we have to be that impactful
This is true in most cases, yes. Generally speaking most people at that level will have publications or at least be a recognizable name to anyone else in that same discipline.
Most companies could not hire a DE at that level of influence. What you say is true at FAANGs and similar, but it’s not the norm.
“Did they blow your mind?” No but they all blew something else
lmao
At least you didn't say 'someone else'
Worked with a DE of another team. He made us look foolish. In a healthy way. 10 people debugging a problem for last 3 days with multiple experiments running. Comes in a slack channel, reads only 2 lines and writes top 2 reasons. Turns out he was right. No data, no context. Just pure experience of building L1 services for a very long time.
And no we aren’t fools. The problem was actually very complicated. Most likely he had seen it before.
Sure. I’ve been senior and staff and this literally happens with me and juniors all the time. It’s pure in-house tenure.
As a dist engineer myself, I can tell you at Verizon all it takes is some fucking tenure and being able to say check it once. Tq.
VZ roles and levels are a joke. They give you Sr Mgr just for having 4 people under you. Source: me, former Sr Mgr.
No shit
I’ve worked with an DE. God’s gift to mankind honestly. The most helpful person in the org, fixes everything and feels like he’s on top of everything too. We should pay him more tbh
Which org is this ?
Ours (we may have more than one now) is an absolute fucking genius. I was probably the smartest person in a high school of 2,000. He’s probably the smartest person statistically in a population the square of that (4,000,000) and extremely hard working. He’s also a prick to everyone including the second smartest person in the company who left for that reason.
DE at most companies is l7/l8 at Amazon fwiw Check out tim bray though if you want to see an example of a DE being a baller
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-Amazon
Ugh that sob post. I remember that. Lost all credibility with the DEI whining and starting out bragging about the millions he's gonna lose. "oh they were just all POC coincidence right?".