monners · March 25, 2014 22:31 · Mar 25, 2014 · Mar 24, 2014 · Mar 24, 2014 · Mar 24, 2014
diff --git a/article.md b/article.md
@@ -1,25 +1,30 @@
 *"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" -Anonymous*
 
-One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm an engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
+One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm an engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.  There's plenty of evidence that both sides are equally correct, just in different microcosms.
 
-Before going any further, let's define a few terms.  In the context of this article, I'll use 'knowledge' to mean 'Anything one can look up.'  For instance, knowing that `<button class="btn btn-success">` will give you a nice green button with Bootstrap is knowledge.  Not impressive, but it certainly saves one the mental cache miss of going to http://getboostrap.com once again.  On the other side of the equation, we have 'talent', here loosely defined as 'any technical knowledge that isn't a knowledge.  Running a profiler to find slow spots is simple knowledge, while knowing how to start squeezing performance out of those spots requires talent [0].
+Before going any further, let's define a few terms.
 
-Now, with those words in mind, does anything produced in the Bay Area require talent?
+ - Knowledge is anything you can look up.
+ - Talent is anything you can't look up.
+
+Gluing together a MVP calendar app with Bootstrap, Angular and a Mongo wrapper takes knowledge. Building something people can love and use for years takes talent.
+
+With that in mind, does anything produced in the Bay Area require talent?
 
 ##Absolutely not
 
-If there's one thing I've noticed while writing my wild array of scatterbrained projects, it's that the most tedious thing is getting it off of the ground.  Setting up a basic page, site structure and plan are all basic evils that must be addressed before any of the fun work can be done.  No wonder we have such a glut of frameworks and libraries offering to do the heavy lifting for us.  The Valley is *all about* starting new things, so of course we get really excited about the latest thingamajig for starting new projects.  Early on, nothing more than knowledge is needed to put things together.  Grab some templates and a generator or two and you're good to go.  Heck, you don't even need to be aware of server administration, as deployment is nothing more than `git push heroku master`.
+The startup culture of Silicon Valley is all about getting things off the ground.  If there's one thing I've noticed while writing my wild array of scatterbrained projects, it's that the most tedious thing is getting it off of the ground.  Setting up a basic page, site structure and plan are all basic evils that must be addressed before any of the fun work can be done which is why we have such a glut of frameworks and libraries offering to do the heavy lifting for us.  Early on, nothing more than knowledge is needed to put things together.  Grab some templates and a generator or two and you're good to go.  Heck, you don't even need to be aware of server administration, as deployment is nothing more than `git push heroku master`.
 
-Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be [acquihired](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqui-hiring) or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.  Often, the engineers won't realize that their career is on a treadmill moving fast but going nowhere.  Rarely will anyone in this cycle wonder why companies founded by those who've never grown beyond CRUD continue failing when talent beyond CRUD is required.
+Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be [acquihired](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqui-hiring) or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.  Continually running through the same starting procedures means that knowledge is built up, but talent is never accrued [0].  Often, the engineers won't realize that their career is on a treadmill - moving fast but going nowhere.  Rarely will anyone in this cycle wonder why companies founded by those who've never grown beyond CRUD continue failing when talent beyond CRUD is required, a mistake that can kill a career.
 
 If this is the endless cycle of no talent, where are all the 'talented' engineers?  Well, they're a little further south.
 
 ##Absolutely
 
-Sometimes, those startups don't fail and start growing.  Scaling any product is a difficult task that can't be found in a blog somewhere, as each instance is different.  This requires something more than yet another web tutorial.  Instead, it requires years of practice finding edge cases, studying the core of a language and much more.  These guys are the ones pulling down the seemingly-obscene salaries - and yet they're worth it.  Every single IPO or massive acquisition involved these guys creating a massive amount of value.
+Sometimes startups don't fail and start growing.  The task of scaling technology, revenue or people is complex and can't be found in a blog.  The guys who put this together don't read the docs - they probably wrote them.  They depend upon years of practice finding edge cases, studying the core of a language and hard, non-Googleable work, one detail at a time.  These guys are the ones pulling down the seemingly-obscene salaries - and yet they're worth it.  Every single IPO or massive acquisition involved these guys creating a massive amount of value.
 
-These fantastic coders are where we get the culture of engineering superiority and the idea that some engineers can produce work that's an order of magnitude better than others.  Unfortunately, anyone with half an engineering degree tends to believe that they are these fabled '10xers', and are nothing short of Torvalds himself.  The phrase 'Growth Hacker' was briefly used to describe this second group, but was immediately co-opted by everyone who had 'growth hacked' their Twitter account to 150 followers.  That's no surprise, given that everyone wants to be top-notch but few want to actually put in the 10,000 hours it usually takes.
+These fantastic coders are where we get the culture of engineering superiority and the idea that some engineers can produce work that's an order of magnitude better than others.  It's easy to idolize them, pretending that their talent was forged in some mysterious Stanford backroom.  For the most part, the high cabal of Silicon Valley engineers started out like everyone else, building simple projects through tutorials.  Unfortunately, anyone with half an engineering degree tends to believe that they are these fabled '10xers', and are nothing short of Torvalds himself.  The phrase 'Growth Hacker' was briefly used to describe this second group, but was immediately co-opted by everyone who had 'growth hacked' their Twitter account to 150 followers.  Instead, they continue to run the mobius loop of knowledge and failure, never understanding why they aren't getting anywhere.
 
-In conclusion, playing Mary Had a Little Lamb a thousand times won't make you an excellent pianist.  It's easy to dismiss the Valley as a bunch of projects masquerading as startups but there is real value and talent going on.
+Is there any hope for someone currently bound by their lack of talent?  Absolutely.  Find one of many open source projects and start sweating the details.  Find code you don't understand and go through it line-by-line until you've grasped all you can.  Most of all, understand that playing *Mary Had a Little Lamb* a million times won't make it easier for you to write a symphony.
 
-[0] Aside from the four million 'how to optimize X' blogs that really only discuss stuff you should have done in the first place.
+It's very easy to be dismissive of the many 'me too' startups hanging around San Francisco coffee shops.  There's real value and talent going on - go out and find it. 
diff --git a/article.md b/article.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 *"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" -Anonymous*
 
-One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent'.  Seeing that I'm an engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
+One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm an engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
 
 Before going any further, let's define a few terms.  In the context of this article, I'll use 'knowledge' to mean 'Anything one can look up.'  For instance, knowing that `<button class="btn btn-success">` will give you a nice green button with Bootstrap is knowledge.  Not impressive, but it certainly saves one the mental cache miss of going to http://getboostrap.com once again.  On the other side of the equation, we have 'talent', here loosely defined as 'any technical knowledge that isn't a knowledge.  Running a profiler to find slow spots is simple knowledge, while knowing how to start squeezing performance out of those spots requires talent [0].
 
@@ -10,16 +10,16 @@ Now, with those words in mind, does anything produced in the Bay Area require ta
 
 If there's one thing I've noticed while writing my wild array of scatterbrained projects, it's that the most tedious thing is getting it off of the ground.  Setting up a basic page, site structure and plan are all basic evils that must be addressed before any of the fun work can be done.  No wonder we have such a glut of frameworks and libraries offering to do the heavy lifting for us.  The Valley is *all about* starting new things, so of course we get really excited about the latest thingamajig for starting new projects.  Early on, nothing more than knowledge is needed to put things together.  Grab some templates and a generator or two and you're good to go.  Heck, you don't even need to be aware of server administration, as deployment is nothing more than `git push heroku master`.
 
-Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be acquihired or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.  Often, the engineers won't realize that their career is on a treadmill moving fast but going nowhere.  Rarely will anyone in this cycle wonder why companies founded by those who've never grown beyond CRUD continue failing when talent beyond CRUD is required.
+Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be [acquihired](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqui-hiring) or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.  Often, the engineers won't realize that their career is on a treadmill moving fast but going nowhere.  Rarely will anyone in this cycle wonder why companies founded by those who've never grown beyond CRUD continue failing when talent beyond CRUD is required.
 
 If this is the endless cycle of no talent, where are all the 'talented' engineers?  Well, they're a little further south.
 
 ##Absolutely
 
 Sometimes, those startups don't fail and start growing.  Scaling any product is a difficult task that can't be found in a blog somewhere, as each instance is different.  This requires something more than yet another web tutorial.  Instead, it requires years of practice finding edge cases, studying the core of a language and much more.  These guys are the ones pulling down the seemingly-obscene salaries - and yet they're worth it.  Every single IPO or massive acquisition involved these guys creating a massive amount of value.
 
-These fantastic engineers are were we get the culture of engineering superiority and the idea of 10x'ers.  Unfortunately, anyone with half an engineering degree tends to believe that they too, are nothing short of Torvald's himself.  The phrase 'Growth Hacker' was briefly used to describe this second group, but was immediately co-opted by everyone who had 'growth hacked' their Twitter account to 150 followers.  That's no surprise, given that everyone wants to be top-notch but few want to actually put in the 10,000 hours it usually takes.
+These fantastic coders are where we get the culture of engineering superiority and the idea that some engineers can produce work that's an order of magnitude better than others.  Unfortunately, anyone with half an engineering degree tends to believe that they are these fabled '10xers', and are nothing short of Torvalds himself.  The phrase 'Growth Hacker' was briefly used to describe this second group, but was immediately co-opted by everyone who had 'growth hacked' their Twitter account to 150 followers.  That's no surprise, given that everyone wants to be top-notch but few want to actually put in the 10,000 hours it usually takes.
 
 In conclusion, playing Mary Had a Little Lamb a thousand times won't make you an excellent pianist.  It's easy to dismiss the Valley as a bunch of projects masquerading as startups but there is real value and talent going on.
 
-[0] Aside from the four million 'how to optimize X' blogs that really only discuss stuff you should have done in the first place.
+[0] Aside from the four million 'how to optimize X' blogs that really only discuss stuff you should have done in the first place.
diff --git a/article.md b/article.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 *"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" -Anonymous*
 
-One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm a engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
+One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent'.  Seeing that I'm an engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
 
 Before going any further, let's define a few terms.  In the context of this article, I'll use 'knowledge' to mean 'Anything one can look up.'  For instance, knowing that `<button class="btn btn-success">` will give you a nice green button with Bootstrap is knowledge.  Not impressive, but it certainly saves one the mental cache miss of going to http://getboostrap.com once again.  On the other side of the equation, we have 'talent', here loosely defined as 'any technical knowledge that isn't a knowledge.  Running a profiler to find slow spots is simple knowledge, while knowing how to start squeezing performance out of those spots requires talent [0].
 

diff --git a/article.md b/article.md
@@ -1,19 +1,25 @@
-One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm a engieneer (albiet junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest overhyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
+*"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad" -Anonymous*
 
-Before going any further, let's define a few terms.  In the context of this article, I'll use 'skill' to mean 'Anything one can look up.'  For instance, the knowledge that `<button class="btn btn-success">` will give you a nice green button with Bootstrap is a skill.  Not impressive, but it certainly saves one the mental cache miss of going to http://getboostrap.com once again.  On the other side of the equation, we have 'talent', here losely defined as 'any technical knowledge that isn't a skill.  Running a profiler to find slow spots is a skill, while knowing how to start squeezing performance out of those spots requires talent [0].
+One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm a engineer (albeit junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest over-hyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
+
+Before going any further, let's define a few terms.  In the context of this article, I'll use 'knowledge' to mean 'Anything one can look up.'  For instance, knowing that `<button class="btn btn-success">` will give you a nice green button with Bootstrap is knowledge.  Not impressive, but it certainly saves one the mental cache miss of going to http://getboostrap.com once again.  On the other side of the equation, we have 'talent', here loosely defined as 'any technical knowledge that isn't a knowledge.  Running a profiler to find slow spots is simple knowledge, while knowing how to start squeezing performance out of those spots requires talent [0].
 
 Now, with those words in mind, does anything produced in the Bay Area require talent?
 
 ##Absolutely not
 
-If there's one thing I've noticed while writing my wild array of scatterbrained projects, it's that the most tedious thing is getting it off of the ground.  Setting up a basic page, site structure and plan are all basic evils that must be addressed before any of the fun work can be done.  No wonder we have such a glut of frameworks and libraries offering to do the heavy lifting for us.  The Valley is *all about* starting new things, so of course we get really excited about the latest thingamajig for starting new projects.  Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be acqui-hired or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.
+If there's one thing I've noticed while writing my wild array of scatterbrained projects, it's that the most tedious thing is getting it off of the ground.  Setting up a basic page, site structure and plan are all basic evils that must be addressed before any of the fun work can be done.  No wonder we have such a glut of frameworks and libraries offering to do the heavy lifting for us.  The Valley is *all about* starting new things, so of course we get really excited about the latest thingamajig for starting new projects.  Early on, nothing more than knowledge is needed to put things together.  Grab some templates and a generator or two and you're good to go.  Heck, you don't even need to be aware of server administration, as deployment is nothing more than `git push heroku master`.
+
+Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be acquihired or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.  Often, the engineers won't realize that their career is on a treadmill moving fast but going nowhere.  Rarely will anyone in this cycle wonder why companies founded by those who've never grown beyond CRUD continue failing when talent beyond CRUD is required.
 
 If this is the endless cycle of no talent, where are all the 'talented' engineers?  Well, they're a little further south.
 
 ##Absolutely
 
 Sometimes, those startups don't fail and start growing.  Scaling any product is a difficult task that can't be found in a blog somewhere, as each instance is different.  This requires something more than yet another web tutorial.  Instead, it requires years of practice finding edge cases, studying the core of a language and much more.  These guys are the ones pulling down the seemingly-obscene salaries - and yet they're worth it.  Every single IPO or massive acquisition involved these guys creating a massive amount of value.
 
-In conclusion, playing Mary Had a Little Lamb a thousand times won't make you an excellent pianist.  It's easy to dismiss the Valley as a bunch of projects masqurading as startups but there is real value and talent going on.  You'll just have to look for it.
+These fantastic engineers are were we get the culture of engineering superiority and the idea of 10x'ers.  Unfortunately, anyone with half an engineering degree tends to believe that they too, are nothing short of Torvald's himself.  The phrase 'Growth Hacker' was briefly used to describe this second group, but was immediately co-opted by everyone who had 'growth hacked' their Twitter account to 150 followers.  That's no surprise, given that everyone wants to be top-notch but few want to actually put in the 10,000 hours it usually takes.
+
+In conclusion, playing Mary Had a Little Lamb a thousand times won't make you an excellent pianist.  It's easy to dismiss the Valley as a bunch of projects masquerading as startups but there is real value and talent going on.
 
 [0] Aside from the four million 'how to optimize X' blogs that really only discuss stuff you should have done in the first place.
diff --git a/article → article.md b/article → article.md
diff --git a/article b/article
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+One common refrain from experienced engineers outside of Silicon Valley is that 'nothing SV cranks out requires any talent (arubin)'.  Seeing that I'm a engieneer (albiet junior) turning that very same SV crank, I immediately took offense.  What?!?  How could anyone say that these amazing new apps put together with generators, Bootstrap and the latest overhyped database....Alright, I'll concede that point.  As I've thought about this more, I've found some truth in the statement - but not as much as those who spout it might want.
+
+Before going any further, let's define a few terms.  In the context of this article, I'll use 'skill' to mean 'Anything one can look up.'  For instance, the knowledge that `<button class="btn btn-success">` will give you a nice green button with Bootstrap is a skill.  Not impressive, but it certainly saves one the mental cache miss of going to http://getboostrap.com once again.  On the other side of the equation, we have 'talent', here losely defined as 'any technical knowledge that isn't a skill.  Running a profiler to find slow spots is a skill, while knowing how to start squeezing performance out of those spots requires talent [0].
+
+Now, with those words in mind, does anything produced in the Bay Area require talent?
+
+##Absolutely not
+
+If there's one thing I've noticed while writing my wild array of scatterbrained projects, it's that the most tedious thing is getting it off of the ground.  Setting up a basic page, site structure and plan are all basic evils that must be addressed before any of the fun work can be done.  No wonder we have such a glut of frameworks and libraries offering to do the heavy lifting for us.  The Valley is *all about* starting new things, so of course we get really excited about the latest thingamajig for starting new projects.  Naturally, many of these fail.  As is the nature of the Valley, most of the team will either be acqui-hired or move on to other new projects, repeating the same cycles, building the same-but-just-different-enough CRUD applications to disrupt something or other.
+
+If this is the endless cycle of no talent, where are all the 'talented' engineers?  Well, they're a little further south.
+
+##Absolutely
+
+Sometimes, those startups don't fail and start growing.  Scaling any product is a difficult task that can't be found in a blog somewhere, as each instance is different.  This requires something more than yet another web tutorial.  Instead, it requires years of practice finding edge cases, studying the core of a language and much more.  These guys are the ones pulling down the seemingly-obscene salaries - and yet they're worth it.  Every single IPO or massive acquisition involved these guys creating a massive amount of value.
+
+In conclusion, playing Mary Had a Little Lamb a thousand times won't make you an excellent pianist.  It's easy to dismiss the Valley as a bunch of projects masqurading as startups but there is real value and talent going on.  You'll just have to look for it.
+
+[0] Aside from the four million 'how to optimize X' blogs that really only discuss stuff you should have done in the first place.