Sorry, but this is gonna be a kind of rant, so it's very subjective and highly anecdotal. But the post is also very subjective and highly anecdotal so meh I guess.

So what I want to say is that I've worked with this kind of person. It was exactly this type of engineer.

As a team member he is the worst kind of team player. While everyone is focusing on the actual sprint and the important tasks to be done, he keeps going around to other teams and collecting requirements for things:
- which either has been already discussed and estimated before he joined the company but he is ignorant of that fact
- which is supposed to be built on just his assumptions and because he is in no position to make decisions by himself he cannot really test his assumptions, and because he needs constant assistance to test his hypothesis he actually takes everyone's time on the team to work on assumptions that has no merit

At the same time for example he cannot identify the time when bugs need instant attention and need to be solved immediately so he seemingly cannot be bothered by those lowly matters of bugs and high priority things.

And because of his why? why? why? attitude even when the time is short and something has been discussed and written down in details MANY TIMES before, he needs constant repeating of every discussion because he just can't trust anything which was discussed WITHOUT HIM, his ego is too big for that.

Not to mention that he asks about product/engineering tradeoffs all the time when no-one, including him has nooo idea what are those tradeoffs, so the only thing he does is casting doubt and postponing decision making.

Not to mention that when he walks around for example and tries learning how other teams work, he is basically generating a false hope in people that he will actually deliver something soon. And oh man, couldn't be that any wronger?! Especially when he is in no position to make priorities and hiring decisions, etc, he is just basically playing a game, and this game is called politics.

This kind of person many times is just a constant waste of time. And yes, business people love these kind of person because someone finally speaks their language. The problem is that this language and communication is completely broken and misguided. Just like office politics is most of the time.

> They'll often spend a good amount of time debating hypothesizes and learnings with the product manager and data scientists

That's basically correct, and that's also how I would summarize. Let's call it the `Debate-Minded Software Engineer` instead and then I'll have no complaints. But this is not productive!!! You want to have 10 of these people on your team? In a fast moving startup? Good luck for implementing anything EVER.

Also these are the people who can never understand that some people are busier than him. So then they think: OK, instead of waiting a day, they can just go ahead and build something based on their understanding. And then they are watching with horror when somebody tells them to stop it, because there are other higher priority things to do.

Also somehow this post equates the product manager to be some kind of superman. If you ever worked outside of silicon valley you will know that even these days there are many companies, I would even say that's the majority of companies, where projects are built and delivered with big upfront design, and there is no follow-up on the release or anything like that. There is a select number of people in the design process and if you are not invited to the discussion, then you will never have the chance to impact the product even the slightest.

And one more thing. Since this post is just speculation and it's extremely anecdotal, let me share my anecdotal evidence too.

Even when someone looks like the ace that the post describes, my experience is that these people are not that fast! They are either as fast as everyone else, or just mediocre in the technical side of things. So the only way that I saw these people to operate is that they put in extreme hours outside of working hours so that they can get the info, the context, etc which they need to look smart and having insight.

And here is the real problem? Why would you or anyone suggest this kind of modus operandi? Isn't most engineers' life overworked and miserable enough? You guys in Silicon Valley have to understand that people outside that bubble in other countries have shitty salaries and no work-life balance, so the incentive to put in extra hours and be the superhero of the company is almost zero, even though WE HAVE TO DO THE SAME JOB ON THE SAME QUALITY LEVEL as you guys in SV.

I wish we would stop idealizing these kind of imaginary roles and positions in the industry because this is extremely damaging to our profession. Especially to those people who are not that successful then the post's author.

What would be much more preferable to see a post from the same author that he describes in detail why engineers choose not to be like the person he described. That would actually show some humility and actual respect to everyone in the field.

We don't need a bullet point list to become something else that we are. What we need though is scaling back and tuning down the voice of people who think that there is one true shiny way of product development.