THE MAGIC OF SOFTWARE; OR, WHAT MAKES A GOOD ENGINEER ALSO MAKES A GOOD ENGINEERING ORGANIZATION

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Many of today's best practices were drawn from long-established internet companies like Google. However, the problem with copying its current practices on the basis of its success is that most of those companies found near-invincible business models, and so almost any practice developed or selected at random likely would continue to be successful to some degree. The practices and cultures that have developed at these companies more often reflect optimizations for the benefit of various decision makers rather than optimizations for actually creating something great. The qualities that make a good engineer are often the same ones that create good engineering organizations - both start with deep understanding as the basis for innovation and recognize that vision and engineering are often deeply intertwined and mutually informative rather than linear.