Reposting a question for Ed Zitron, I'll forward responses. He asked on Bluesky and will get sub-Mastodon-tier answers:
"This is a serious question and I would be delighted if I only hear great things but, software engineers: both before and after LLMs, how often in your professional lives have you run into software engineers that seem completely useless or lacking in basic knowledge? I hope the answer is rarely"
@ludicity "Software engineeering" knowledge or "software development" (aka "coding") knowledge? Lately (past 20 years), I've rarely run into any software engineering knowledge, but looking for books and courses, most seem focused on coding anymore.
Agile has killed most process movements, and the XP/test-driven crowd has been the loudest voice killing off analysis and design efforts. I can't blame them for running from the elaborative methods camp (Booch, Rumbaugh, etal)
@ludicity Of course, I also don't see specialization within companies anymore; Tom DeMarco pointed out in one of his books that a bad programmer might be a good test engineer and vice versa. You have to be able to recognize and assign people to the right roles.
Lack of viable metrics also means lack of objective judgement. There are so many different role aspects in software that our opinions will be highly subjective based upon experience.