The trajectory of a software engineer… and where it all goes wrong.

Trying to make ... geographic/domain scope a thing here is a huge problem. At some point, you either spend your precious seconds on your brand ( which makes your scope larger ) or you spend it on solving problems. Serious problems are proprietary, secret or ( even worse ) security-clearance secret.

It smacks of "social media thinking". I do not think the mores and practices of social media apply to much beyond social media. Social media looks like narcissism to me.

I am pretty much a full-fledged multiplier but I rather doubt that makes me the top 2%. It just means that I stayed focused on technology ( over a span of 30 years ) while my contemporaries didn't. They chose the "up and out" path. At least one is trying to get back in.

I can turn "lower performers" into higher performers by talking to them. I've done it. That's just me being a human who likes people and needs their stuff to work too. And I've certainly had other engineers help me out in that way. You get stuck; talking helps your brain to find solutions.

Why do we need this method anyway? Peoples is what they is. Why do we stack people into boxes like this?

>Why are so many programming jobs (and libraries) in brain-dead languages (such as Java) rather than functional-programming languages (e.g. Scala, Ocaml, Clojure, Haskell)? Because while the Java+IDE environment makes it extremely difficult for an individual engineer to have a 1.5+ impact –there are two cases in recorded history of programmers breaking 2.0 in Java; one is Martin Odersky, who wrote Scala, and the other is Rich Hickey, who wrote Clojure– the state of the tooling makes it possible for the 0.7′s and 0.9′s to get a 0.1- to 0.3-point bump, so long as they stay within their IDEs and don’t have to work with a computer (gasp!) at the (God, no!) command line.

I don't see how anyone with practical experience developing commercial software could write something like this. The tool set simply isn't that important. Plus, the idea Java programmers are afraid of the command line is... well, interesting at best.

The scale seems ok... and the team mate classification. but otherwise the author is full of it.