Creators and Engineers

For good or bad, you don’t need to be a Good Engineer to create a useful product. Most users don’t know the first thing about privacy, security and optimisation.

There is thread trending on hacker news about someone whose extension is being removed from Google Web Store. This person has written some seriously bad code, and is so clueless about why Google is removing their extension. His/her extension has more than a million users.

Elon Musk shipped products faster by writing crappy code. He famously wanted to use Microsoft Servers instead on Linux, because doing so would have helped them ship things faster. Max Levchin threatened to leave if they did not use Linux Servers. Most companies that used Microsoft servers died, they survived, because PayPal luckily used Linux Servers.

If you don’t know binary trees well, you are not a good engineer. If you create Homebrew, that doesn’t change the fact that you are not a good engineer. You are a good creator. Engineers optimise, clean. They have keen eye for details.

Most startups ship things faster by writing crappy code. Fancy word for that is organically developed (read a giant hot mess). That code is a ticking time-bomb. If people start using the thing, they eventually hire engineers, who will unravel that mess. The company survives.

Big companies often use engineers to build new products, who will try hard to not ship bad code. They end up shipping fewer products and even fewer useful products. Often most of their successful products are accessories/integrated to their primary product (built by founders). Often a lot of their successful products are built by startups that they acquired.