Imagine a timeline from left to right. On the left is where there's the least knowledge about the project, and on the right the most (when the project is done). Estimates are made at the far left, when the developers know the least.
So as you move along the timeline and more knowledge is discovered, you need to reset expectations frequently.
Ship of Theseus. I new a janitor who used the same broom for his entire 20 year career. All he had to do was replace the head when it wore out, and the handle when it broke.
How did Perl "lose"? It's such a great tool, super powerful and concise. One of the best languages out there, but doesn't seem to have much adoption these days.
this is pretty typical stuff these days for a typical well to do SaaS org.
I've seen it work well. It can help facilitate the conversation between a manager and direct report when trying to understand what the gaps are between their current role, and where they want to go next. It also helps keep those discussions aligned across different managers/directs across the organisation.
It also has it's down sides. There's no perfect solution to soft skills.
Depends on what you mean by success. Those who rise through the ranks tend to have a combination of ambition and ability. I've worked with plenty of great devs who didn't have ambition to become a lead/manager never mind a VPoE. And, I've worked with plenty who had the desire to but they didn't have the ability.
everything goes in cycles. one day it will be hip again to have physical buttons for everything, and a bunch of cars will be release with innovative buttons with direct access to the function, no need to use the screen!
It's not a taking anything away from us, to say we're not engineers.
It would be helpful if engineering had a widely accepted succinct definition like the scientific method, but it doesn't.
Building software is its own thing. It requires some engineering discipline. It requires some scientific method. It requires some artistic creativity. It requires operating efficiently within some community.
It also (usually) does not require the rigor of engineering because it's ephemeral, and it doesn't require the proof of science because it's every changing, there is no truth.
It's software, and that's not better or worse than engineering it's just different.
is that true though? CP on Etherium blockchain is a well known problem, and no prosecution jurisdiction is doing anything about it. Who would even have jurisdiction on something so decentralised? Sure you could shut down some nodes, but not all of them. And even then new nodes would pop up vastly more quickly than you can kill them. So prosecutors really are powerless. I think. Am I wrong?