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Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

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Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#11

Post by notduncansmith »

chubot wrote: post #8

There are definitely ways to get faster. As long as you are paying attention and care about your work, you'll naturally get faster as your career progresses. But making a concerted effort pays off as well. One thing that would eat up a lot of my time is trying to automate every last thing, and make it reproducible. I would do it with Python. I still believe in this goal, but I do things with shell and a smattering of…

Great advice here! One thing (slightly OT) - what do you use for unit testing in bash? That sounds like it could be really cool, though I currently write my tests in Coffee so I'm a bit skeptical as to the productivity gains.

Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#12

Post by rekwah »

Are you actually slower than coworkers in an apples to apples comparison? Normally when I see things like this, it's usually comparing developers having a different definition of "complete". One will write the code, the unit tests, the e2e tests, and the documentation before saying the task it complete. The other, trumpets completion once the code is done.

If you're actually slower, I'd start keeping track of where my time is going. Are you spending too long imagining all possible scenarios of a feature? Taking two hour lunches and coffee breaks every hour? Many hours spent in meetings? Wasting time building a "super generic" solution that isn't necessary? Spending three days writing tests for a feature that took 5 hours?

If you don't feel like you're actually slow, it's just a problem of perception. I'd take some higher visibility features and crank them out, working the extra hours if necessary. I'd rather kick the stigma than deal with that anchor around my neck. Tread carefully with this strategy as it can be a double-edged sword and increase expectations and workload.

Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#13

Post by a-saleh »

In bullet points because I have almost the same problem. Here is what helped me:

1. talking with my manager more

We have perf reviews every 3 months, and the review has 1-2 month delay. I recieved in spring a report that my perf in winter was mediocre. And then I recieved in summer that my perf in spring is worse. And I didn't think it detiorated, so I came to him and asked "Hey, how did it get worse past quarter, because I thought I am getting better at this." And he told me about concrete project that he thought shold have taken a week or two and took month. And that after I finally finished it, the rest of my work-pace this quarter looks better.

2. identify the problem with your manager

For me it was, that I am able to get stuck on a task for a several just reading all the error logs without asking others for help. I know that some other team-mates had similar problem, so we introduced daily standups and more over I do my best to track whether I am trying to get unstuck more than one hour and if so, ask around for help.

3. I kinda embraced it

Everybody on the team knows that I am the one with wife and a kind that gets stuck on his work often :-) So, on meetings I allways ask after I have new task "Who should I bug if I get stuck?" and they know, that I am at work at 8 am sharp, but hell or high water at 5 pm I am already playing at home with my 1y old :-)

So, just talk about this with your manager. And try to fix your biggest pain points (like I try to to with me getting stuck :)

Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#14

Post by ChuckMcM »

I would echo the perfection/artist thing, I've known a lot of engineers and ones who are perceived as slow, are often also setting a really high bar for their code. The learning for those engineers is to develop an understanding of how good is necessary, and how good is ideal.

If you find yourself rewriting your code a lot, consider using a technique that Pixar uses for making digital films which is they work on them on sections until they are "good enough" and they put that part aside with the label "Good enough, could use improvement", until they get everything in the can, now the film is completely "done" but all of the sections can use improvement. They order those sections from most impact to least and start working through them. At any point they could just print the film and ship it, but the longer they work the better it will get. Often there are other parts of the pipeline that have to be aligned and so they will get a chance to knock off a bunch of improvements before it actually ships.

Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#15

Post by zachgersh »

notduncansmith wrote: post #11
chubot wrote: post #8

There are definitely ways to get faster. As long as you are paying attention and care about your work, you'll naturally get faster as your career progresses. But making a concerted effort pays off as well. One thing that would eat up a lot of my time is trying to automate every last thing, and make it reproducible. I would do it with Python. I still believe in this goal, but I do things with shell and a smattering of…

Great advice here! One thing (slightly OT) - what do you use for unit testing in bash? That sounds like it could be really cool, though I currently write my tests in Coffee so I'm a bit skeptical as to the productivity gains.

Technically couldn't you just write a separate bash script that tests the exit status or return of anything you are scripting in bash? Feels like bringing in any other "framework" would possibly just get in the way?

Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#16

Post by gscott »

If you are working 12 hour days you might want to get out of there, unless if you are making 150k then stay. If you are making around $80k ish then run.

Another option is if you are making enough, you might want to outsource some of your work. Get multiple people working on any tricky problems so you can tie up the loose ends.

Re: Ask HN: Slow engineers, did you get faster? How?

#19

Post by abc_lisper »

chubot wrote: post #8

There are definitely ways to get faster. As long as you are paying attention and care about your work, you'll naturally get faster as your career progresses. But making a concerted effort pays off as well. One thing that would eat up a lot of my time is trying to automate every last thing, and make it reproducible. I would do it with Python. I still believe in this goal, but I do things with shell and a smattering of…

These are almost the same things I did. Chubot, can you show us some good examples of tests written in shell scripts?
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