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Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#11

Post by ErrantX »

joelbirchler wrote: post #8
Jedi72 wrote: post #4

I am 1 month into my new position, same position you're in - new stack & straight into senior role. My tips so far: 1) Take over all the admin stuff you can to free up your devs from distraction and pointless tasks. Productivity and morale will immediately go up. My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a <10 person startup!), I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they…

>> I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they didnt have to do it individually any more, >> it was appreciated and mgmt still get the info they need. I'm skeptical that management would need a daily status.

1.5) convince mgmt they don't need a daily update any more

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#12

Post by abhikandoi2000 »

I did this:

- got a broad overview of the code from my team

- agreed to be the on-call just after two weeks of time; learned a lot because I had to move fast to fix issues (also call people)

- asked the starting point and the core part of the entire codebase (helped me understand code at least 3x faster)

- deployed a feature within 2 weeks of joining

Note: I am not a senior developer, but a software engineer.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#13

Post by Avalyst »

joelbirchler wrote: post #8
Jedi72 wrote: post #4

I am 1 month into my new position, same position you're in - new stack & straight into senior role. My tips so far: 1) Take over all the admin stuff you can to free up your devs from distraction and pointless tasks. Productivity and morale will immediately go up. My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a <10 person startup!), I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they…

>> I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they didnt have to do it individually any more, >> it was appreciated and mgmt still get the info they need. I'm skeptical that management would need a daily status.

Especially in a <10 person team

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#15

Post by tehlike »

noway421 wrote: post #14

I think it is a little bit of exaggeration to claim Senior Developer title on a project with unfamiliar tech stack.

much of the knowledge in one stack translates to another. you can know RDBMS, and pick up, say, spanner. you can know IIS, and pick up node.

I never cared about what stack someone uses.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#16

Post by narag »

I'm a little confused by both the question and the current answers. Maybe because, when I've had that position, there was a project manager that or similar that dictated what should I do and what was expected from me.

Also being new with a tech stack is enough of a handicap to keep me busy getting to speed, so adding quality and better engineering practices had to wait.

Actually, the first time that I found myself in such a situation, I later regretted I had not invested much more time in learning the framework so I could had detected bad design that later slowed us.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#17

Post by Illniyar »

I'd just pick a bug/feature that seems short and relatively contained and isn't urgent, probably from the backlog.

Inform management, and make sure it'll be deployed when you fix it - you want to learn the entire process of development and not just the code.

Start learning the architecture, stack and development process with the goal of fixing that single bug. You don't have to learn the entire stack/architecture to fix that single bug. Try not to refactor the entire system while your fixing a bug - the point is to learn how the system works, not to redesign it.

Make notes of the pain points you have - from setting up a dev environment, to lack of documentation or even communication problems.

When you finish, do another bug, perhaps something more challenging.

If you feel that you need to read a book, or do a tutorial on part of the stack you don't know to fix the bug, then do so.

When your done with a few bugs, you are in a position to know and prioritize what quality and changes could be helpful, try and implement them.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#18

Post by MaulingMonkey »

joelbirchler wrote: post #8
Jedi72 wrote: post #4

I am 1 month into my new position, same position you're in - new stack & straight into senior role. My tips so far: 1) Take over all the admin stuff you can to free up your devs from distraction and pointless tasks. Productivity and morale will immediately go up. My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a <10 person startup!), I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they…

>> I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they didnt have to do it individually any more, >> it was appreciated and mgmt still get the info they need. I'm skeptical that management would need a daily status.

You don't need nightly builds either - but they can be useful. Shorter feedback cycles / faster iteration has a lot of benefits. Also depends on how far up the management chain you're going.

If you've got critical bugs live in production, "management" may be the ones ensuring all the hot potatos are in fact being handled by someone - that nothing is falling through the cracks, that everything is being addressed, that QA is on top of testing hot new changes that need to be rolled out ASAP. Daily isn't frequent enough in this context.

Burning through the QA backlog leading up to a big release in ye olde milestone driven waterfall style schedule? Daily might be frequent enough.

Long term feature work? Might be able to go weeks between updates - but a daily ping of "still working on X, still on schedule" takes what - 5 seconds to email, 5 seconds to read? Helps keep the mental burden of juggling everything in your manager's head down, maybe helps reassure them you're not going to pull a "so yeah, we've still got a month of work left at least" on delivery day when they're reporting up to their management. They might not be able to help you get your task done faster, but they might be able to rearrange other parts of the schedule to keep their stakeholders happy (e.g. X is running into delays, but we can give you Y ahead of schedule). Even if they can't do anything to help the schedule, they can start managing expectations ahead of time, prevent unseemly "surprises."

And hey, daily status reports are better than daily status queries.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#19

Post by superplussed »

Jedi72 wrote: post #4

I am 1 month into my new position, same position you're in - new stack & straight into senior role. My tips so far: 1) Take over all the admin stuff you can to free up your devs from distraction and pointless tasks. Productivity and morale will immediately go up. My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a <10 person startup!), I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they…

I love all of your advice, but I would start straight-away with writing tests. Not only is it low risk, it is the best way to start understanding the code base, and gives you an avenue through which you can start introducing small refactorings. The other important thing is that developers LOVE to have outside help with testing and a pair of fresh eyes to look at the test-suite through.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become productive in a new project as a senior developer?

#20

Post by sidcool »

Jedi72 wrote: post #4

I am 1 month into my new position, same position you're in - new stack & straight into senior role. My tips so far: 1) Take over all the admin stuff you can to free up your devs from distraction and pointless tasks. Productivity and morale will immediately go up. My guys were time reporting into 3 different tools (and this is a <10 person startup!), I just started writing a summary of our standups and told them they…

Super useful. Thanks. The project is also in burning condition, viz. Tight deadlines, pressure etc.
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