Isaac Adams’ Post

This is exactly right! Focusing on addressing the most impactful issues are the highest priority. It's easy to get caught up in fine-tuning processes that already work well, but tackling big problems can lead to transformative changes and higher overall efficiency. 

Most software engineers have the wrong focus. They focus on efficiency rather than effectiveness. What's more important? Solving a $ problem with 99.999% efficiency or solving a $$$$ problem with 90% efficiency. My question likely made someone recoil. I get it. Big O-notation is taught in college. You hear the horror stories about systems crashing due to 10x nested loops and similar. So yes. Efficiency does matter. It just matters less since there are infinite wants and scarce people+time to solve all them. You can differentiate yourself as an engineer who knows when to stop vs keep going with your efficiency. You truly set yourself apart though when help your organization identify opportunities to deploy time+people more effectively.

Software engineering is not a zero-sum game. One hour of work is not equal to one hour of productivity. On some days, one hour of work is equivalent to the job of an entire day. On other days, a whole day of work doesn't even worth one hour.

Absolutely! It's one of those fields where the output isn't always proportional to the input. Unfortunately, not everyone outside of software engineering gets how nuanced it can be. #SoftwareEngineering #ProgrammingLife #TechIndustry #CodingCommunity #DeveloperLife #SoftwareDevelopment #TechAwareness

Software engineering is not a zero-sum game. One hour of work is not equal to one hour of productivity. On some days, one hour of work is equivalent to the job of an entire day. On other days, a whole day of work isn't even worth one hour.

There are always conflicting advices in software engineering You’ll often hear - Have a bias for action But you’ll also hear - Plan carefully, don’t start writing code unless you know what to do Both are contradictory. There is no single rule to succeed. There is always a trade-off and balance to be maintained. #softwareengineering

Software engineering is both expensive and full of uncertainty. And therein lies one of our significant challenges. #philosophyofsoftwareengineering

In software engineering, the most effective solutions come from observation, listening, and asking the right questions, not just pushing your ideas forward. Persuasion is about understanding, not arguing. True influence in software engineering isn’t about who can talk the loudest; it’s about who listens the best. The right question can lead to the most powerful solutions. In the world of software, persuasion isn’t about debate, it’s about understanding the problem deeply by observing and asking the right questions. The secret to great software engineering? Listening before leading. The best decisions come from asking thoughtful questions and truly understanding the challenge.

One of the biggest mistakes I see with engineers is not embracing the power of iteration. This leads to a lot of over-engineering and complex systems that are hard to maintain, introduces a lot of bugs, and harder to detect. First rule should be create a working system. This will not be perfect, then you can iterate in terms of scaling, performance, etc. Once you have built something that works, while you're making the improvements, it's one less thing you have to be concerned with, which ultimately makes it even better. So not only do you eventually accomplish the goal of having the powerful system worthy of you're software engineering expertise(for the folks that tend to over-engineer), but you do it more effectively with less headaches. Thoughts?

One of the biggest traps I see software engineers falling into is solving a problem which should not exist. It's an especially pernicious trap because when you're busy working on the problem you feel like you are making progress, like you are doing useful things, and like your time is being well spent, and worst of all, you feel a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction once you've solved the problem. But actually, all you've done is waste time and given yourself a false sense of achievement. The best way to avoid this kind of trap is to take a first-principles approach to your requirement and assume by default that your requirement is wrong, and needs to be simplified. And then aggressively question and simplify your requirement over and over again until you determine the underlying root reason and purpose of your requirement. This will be the true and now validated requirement. Then solve the validated requirement in the most simple, quick and efficient way possible. Then profit.