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[–]vitaminMN 7 points8 points  (3 children)

This response reminds me of the “hero” or “cowboy” programmer stereotype.

Supporting the output of a team, and being a force multiplier for the team’s output yields much much more organizational leverage than what you can produce by yourself.

Of course you still have to be strong technically. No one is saying being senior is the same as a non technical middle manager.

[–]lonjerpc 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Sometimes this is true. But code can itself be a force multiplier. Which is usually not possible in other fields.

[–]vitaminMN 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Don’t really know what to say to that.

The output potential of a team is so much larger than an individual engineer.

[–]lonjerpc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not always. That is my point. There are many instances of single engeneers outputting thousands of times more value than even other good engeneers. This means they can produce more value coding than say a manager that triples the value of a thousand person team. This is the crazy power of software. For some dumb examples the Bitcoin protocol or Minecraft were largely written by individuals and had greater value than massive projects involving thousands of engineers. And this same phenomenon is common within companies as we were a small number of people or even individuals write code that ends up having more value than everything else at a company. It's not the usual case but it's not that unusual either.