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Celebrating the Slow Software Engineer
Ladies and Gentlemen, we gather today not to mourn, but to celebrate and venerate an unsung hero in the sphere of software engineering: the slow software engineer. This tribute seeks not only to appreciate their worth, but to question our collective obsession with speed and instantaneity.
The modern world has branded speed as a virtue, an emblem of efficiency and productivity. In this relentless race against the clock, however, we’ve perhaps lost sight of the value that lies in thoughtful deliberation and meticulous examination. Today, we find ourselves questioning the fairness of the system that adjudges capability and potential based on the velocity of problem-solving, a system that overlooks the slow software engineer.
Indeed, the interview process, for instance, is often an artificially accelerated echo of the work environment. We subject our candidates to the fire and fury of rapid-fire technical challenges, gauging their prowess with the stopwatch rather than their ingenuity. Leetcode, HackerRank and other similar platforms have made speed synonymous with aptitude, casting aside the slow, thoughtful engineers, who may not shine under the time constraint of such tests but shine like diamonds when engaged in real, applied problem-solving.
Their deliberative nature is often mistaken for ineptitude or sluggishness, while it…
