Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 59 posts

Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#1

Post by irishloop »

I recently had a more junior coworker take an AWS Solutions Architect course, and I realized I am missing out on my company's personal development resources, but I am not all that interested in an AWS Solutions Architecture course, in part because a) I don't want to, and b) I know a bunch of AWS stuff by now anyway

So I am curious what are some interesting educational resources for people in more advanced engineering roles? Courses or resources that might help one move to an Architect or Principal/Staff role?

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#3

Post by warrenm »

I answered a similar question[0] back in April. Quoting[1] from it:

>"Fairly senior experienced" people learn in a variety of ways ... but mostly we learn via diffs

In other words, we have a baseline of knowledge, and we're looking for what has changed / is new / is different

>This can come from videos, books, papers, blog posts, one-on-one examples, seminars, conferences, etc

>The best folks then take what they think they have learned, synthesize it into a teachable format, and teach others the "new" thing (crystallizing it in our own minds)

As for specific resources, what are you "interested" in? Re:AWS in particular ... if you "know a bunch of AWS stuff by now anyway", why not go take the exams and get the certs (especially if $WORK will pay for them)?

What kind of "Architect or Principal/Staff role" are you looking for?

--------

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35724696

[1]

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#4

Post by ilc »

The biggest resources you have access to:

1. Your manager. Simply expressing that you want to advance is important.

2. The example of people in those positions. Especially the people in those positions you RESPECT.

3. Start working on your interpersonal skills. Books like: "Getting to YES" and "Difficult Conversations" are important to learning critical skills you will need at the next level. Understanding how to work ethically in a win/win way will move you forward in ways you can't imagine.

4. Realize leadership is a learned skill. People talk about natural born leaders. Bullshit. Leadership is taught. I was taught how to lead. It took some time for me to find my personal leadership style based on my personal strengths. But now that I know it... it ain't hard for me.

In the end: Engineering stops being about silicon and software, and starts being about the "ugly bags of mostly water". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAlqp0_a0tE ;)

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#6

Post by wizzerking »

I concur with warrenm I got into deep learning because of the opensourcing of Tensorflow, PyTorch and FOSS and BECAUSE I had worked with Neural Networks before they became convolutional. I did not want to do the same old thing Principal Component Analysis. For more senior engineers I always advocate for learn train and see what in your past should be updated. If your goal is Architect then learn algorithms and interconnections. If the goal is Principal Engineer then processes. Are you able to combine these roles into a new role a Principle Architect ?

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#7

Post by carom »

This is something that the computer security does amazingly well. At most conferences, the core money maker is trainings. You have advanced topics, taught by experts, usually 2 to 5 days of training. Topics like program analysis, reverse engineering, obfuscation, exploitation, fuzzing, etc.

I have my foot in both industries so I am happy to have these, but I have always wished for an equivalent for software engineers. Stuff like show up for 5 days and learn the concepts to write your own SMT solver, or implement a neural net framework from scratch in the language of your choice. This could be applied to any flavor of development - graphics, games, mobile, web, GPU, etc. Basically crash courses for competent people to get up to speed in an advanced area.

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#8

Post by brailsafe »

I don't know if anyone would consider me senior in terms of rank on any team, but I've been a professional developer in some capacity for ~10 years, depending on how you count time between jobs.

What I've learnt as someone who's mostly self-taught, is that while I can probably pick up the important bits of any tech I need for getting a job done, much of my knowledge is incomplete, and it can be interesting to fill out the nooks and crannies in any given domain by applying some rigor and going through a course or reading a book end-to-end.

Take Postgres for example. Yes I understand what I need to work with it, do basic data modelling, maintenance, backups etc.. but until I picked up a book I didn't know about inheritance or third-party data wrappers (don't recall their actual name)

In terms of what would be useful for your job, I think it would be great to simply find where you can improve you/your team's developer experience, perhaps by evaluating tools that fill invisible gaps, or writing them yourself with skills you pick up in those courses.

Maybe you suck at interaction design and you can get your company to fund a degree in it

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#9

Post by godelski »

I don't know about AWS Solutions Architecture specifically, but I've found that advanced learning typically doesn't come from "courses" in the traditional sense. More typically blogs, research papers, self-contained lectures, and textbooks. One unfortunate aspect of these is that they often tend to be filled with extreme levels of technical language and so there's often a difficulty finding that middle area, especially when you know enough to skim or skip intro works to a subject.

These seem particularly difficult to find though. Maybe someone knows of a listing that these can be found in aggregate and built by the communities? If not, might be worth building.

Re: Ask HN: What are some educational resources for more senior engineers?

#10

Post by bradly »

brailsafe wrote: post #8

I don't know if anyone would consider me senior in terms of rank on any team, but I've been a professional developer in some capacity for ~10 years, depending on how you count time between jobs. What I've learnt as someone who's mostly self-taught, is that while I can probably pick up the important bits of any tech I need for getting a job done, much of my knowledge is incomplete, and it can be interesting to fill ou…

>third-party data wrappers (don't recall their actual name)

Foreign Data Wrappers. We used them quite a bit on my team at Apple.

Post reply on HN