The entire Distinguished Engineer program needs to be re-evaluated. Such an antiquated and irrelevant concept for today, not to mention rife with favouritism. It’s hardly an honour to receive anymore.
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I also knew Grady. Super nice, great guy. EVERY OTHER DE I’ve met has been useless. It’s like a tenure. They get to DE and then think they can’t get fired so they don’t do squat.
The DEs in C&CS are the worst I’ve ever seen. Total undeserving duchbags
I am more than (technical achievementswise) to be qualified to be a DE, and many people have asked me over the years why I am not, and the reason is simple. The application process is mostly politics, which I despise and refuse to play. The DE program is another example of the Peter Principle. Yes, there is usually technical merit to qualify, but mostly you have to kiss arses to be there, and once you are there, you are saddled with a ton of political BS and your technical life is mostly over from that point onward.
In other words, many of today's DEs used to deserve to be there, but the DE program itself strangled their brains.
When I joined IBM as an experienced hire - by my own choice, not as a result of an acquisition - one of the big reasons I applied to IBM was because of the interactions I'd had with DEs, primarily in the DB2 and Rational brands. They were smart, sharp, intellectually curious - and typically very humble. I also knew Grady Booch a little, and he was as good a person as you could want to have in that role. I still remember the occasion I made an aside about complex systems in a meeting that he thought was interesting enough that he phoned me afterwards to chat. I was a no-name Band 9 rando at the time.
The last couple of weeks, I have been dealing with a Fellow I haven't met before who is worse than an empty suit. He is putting the customer into a technology that will be bad for them and for IBM, and his solution to every objection is to threaten to escalate. (I told him good luck with that...)
yes, this program became irrelevant... even if you have the best technical references WW, outside, do state of the art innovative work, you need to be political... - and that is in 100% not going well together with technical eminence.
i know a few DE's that really should not be there they just played the game. one was no where to be seen or heard for 2 years before we then found out he'd just be working at getting DE - did nothing for ibm in that time
Once the DE program was opened up to India, it lost all credibility.
I would always dread a project with a DE. It was already bad enough you had layers of management who didn't contribute, multiple PMs who didn't contribute. Then you add another person who doesn't contribute anything except emails with a signature and an ego.
It's a tale of two programs. There are deserving people who manage to earn it, but there's also protected classes who are promoted based on that class and only mediocre work. Put it bluntly, white guys over 50 need not apply.
To be clear, It's always been political, and always will be. It's based far more on your political network and the particular flavor of social justice du jour than any technical merit.