I built my career as a software engineer exactly like this. Learned all the pain points in mid corps/ corps and went on taking work in the "gutter". On call, learning rare languages (like COBOL), or unusual file formats (like AFP) and db admin (oracle especially) are parts of my tool belt to open black boxes and rebuild or refactor. But as mentioned before, this kind of work pays if you're freelancing, not as an employee, since you rarely get any kind of advance if you are providing meaningful groundwork. But you also need a lot of soft skills to be able to get information to provide the work, unentangle a spaghetti mess or simply get access to a specific server or codebase.
As an engineering manager of a team spanning 5+ time zones, i don't do any remote huddles, too cringy in my opinion. I offer free Friday afternoons for personal fun, and i travel to meet face to face every 2-3 month, on a volountary basis.
Well ethnic studies are forbidden in France so it's hard to not relying on anecdotal data for this topic, so all I know is that I've got managers and colleagues of all colors.
Less crazy when you learn why:
"There are no public policies in France that target benefits or confer recognition on groups defined as races. For many Frenchmen, the very term race sends a shiver running down their spines, since it tends to recall the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the complicity of France’s Vichy regime in deporting Jews to concentration camps. Race is such a taboo term that a 1978 law specifically banned the collection and computerized storage of race-based data without the express consent of the interviewees or a waiver by a state committee. France therefore collects no census or other data on the race (or ethnicity) of its citizens."[0]
tl;dr: such data was used during the Nazi occupation and France helped deportation
I am not implying that France had some hidden motives in passing this legislature. But WW2 trauma is preventing them from making policy decisions that would benefit the society today. Here's just one very practical example of that: in the below WSJ article [0], it's claimed that the lack of ethnic statistics has contributed to housing and employment discrimination, among many other problems.
They need ethnic statistics to prove that residents of denser neighborhood working essential jobs (that can't be done remotely for the most part) are disproportionately affected by COVID?
I'm sure the far right in France would love to have ethnic statistics, especially for crime rates... it's the left that historically pushed back against it.
Agreed. I'm not defending the lack of ethnic statistics. Just offering the perspective from the other side.
I strongly believe you cannot improve things you do not measure.
> the lack of X statistics has contributed to problem Y
The term "contribution" implies active impact on a problem. It comes from the Latin "contribuere" which means to "bring together" or to "add". If X contributes to Y, you should be able to measure the contribution, but there's no way to measure the impact of something that never existed in the first place.
"And of course, it should be needless to say that no one is forced to come here and that on the contrary, they are urged to leave as soon as possible if they find out that they have a burning desire to murder journalists- cartoonists when those draw their prophet the wrong way. That is non-negotiable."
And this is where I disagree. One of the biggest issue of France is that in reality, there's always a difference between "visible minority" and the rest of the people (economic, social and politic), even when you cleary agree with the valors and culture.
Then, there's the issue of the killers themselves : they are byproducts of France, born and raised in Paris, not first time immigrants! Even if they were trained outside from France. While I am _not_ excusing what they did or saying they're victims, I honestly think they're something broken in french society.
I honestly think the Muhammad satire was just an excuse to spread terror.
