The weird language of SV

4 points by gpsgay 9 years ago | 1 comment

So.. I've been here a couple of months now, and here's a few things I learnt about the language in Silicon Valley:

- Full-stack engineer: fancy name for a true engineer that actually went to college and studied for at least 4-5 years to become one...

- Engineer: apparently anyone who can do a little programming on a computer?

- Fundraising: a process that everybody knows and says that takes at least a couple of months, but you are not supposed to say that you are fundraising when you actually start talking with people about fundraising, because if you’ve been “fundraising” for a couple of months, it will be frowned upon.

- Hacker: basically anybody that can do a little programming, or can do a little of anything I guess, like marketing if you are a “growth hacker” (WTF?!)

- UX expert: good graphic designer that actually studied for a few years (not someone who just knows how to use photoshop)

- Entrepreneur: someone who no matter what he/she is doing, is “changing the world” (as if the world wasn’t constantly changing?)

I definitely appreciate suggestions of how to make best use of the language here for non-natives ;)

greenyoda 9 years ago |

"Full-stack engineer: fancy name for a true engineer that actually went to college and studied for at least 4-5 years to become one."

No, "full-stack" means that someone knows both the back-end and front-end pieces of the technology stack.

You can certainly be a real engineer without being "full-stack". For example, I like back-end development and have little interest in becoming an expert on the ever-changing browser or mobile environments (although I have a generalist's understanding of the technology, since my code needs to interact with it). I'm happy to leave that to the equally talented engineers who like that stuff better than back-end stuff, and in a company that's bigger than a startup, there will be plenty of specialists on both sides.