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Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#91

Craving for a team of more senior people to learn from, "yodas" who guide you - is a fallacy. I hear younger people mentioning it in interviews constantly as to what they dream team would look like. You can learn from everyone around you, regardless of their status. There is no "universal developer experience curve", everyone has more or less knowledge on a field or with a specific tool/framework. You can learn almos…

I can second this. I have learned infinitely more by doing and teaching than I ever have from being taught. It might be a personality thing though. I’m a stubborn idiot who questions everything he’s taught. I don’t take advice. I listen to people stories. The why has always more important than the how. I’ve been fortunate to have many teachers and mentors, but I didn’t seek any of them out and none of them guided me.…

I too learn better by myself.

But I think there's a difference between someone who 'teaches' you and someone who is at a high enough level to discuss ideas or issues with you.

For example, in my first job I 'learned' the most not from the senior engineers around me but from another new grad who was just as curious as me. We would discuss issues we're having, brainstorm solutions etc. It was not so much that I learned from him, but that I had another brain of similar competence that I could fling ideas at.

Not having such a person makes your job more difficult (as you might find yourself in a rabbit hole and desperately need someone else's perspective) and much less enjoyable.

Imagine not having a competent dev in your team to review your code.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#92

Craving for a team of more senior people to learn from, "yodas" who guide you - is a fallacy. I hear younger people mentioning it in interviews constantly as to what they dream team would look like. You can learn from everyone around you, regardless of their status. There is no "universal developer experience curve", everyone has more or less knowledge on a field or with a specific tool/framework. You can learn almos…

Everybody has different learning styles and it's almost condescending to say "well, this method that works well for you is a fallacy, try my method".

> "yodas" who guide you

is not a fallacy because it doesn't work, it's a fallacy because such teams rarely exist. I have worked on one or maybe two such teams in my career, but the truth is to get on a team like this you already have to be exceptional.

If you require a team of elite experts that are not only technically excellent but also love teaching untrained juniors in their ways, then you it may take you longer than the typical span of such a career to find these people. Then, even if you do find such a team, they're extremely unlikely to take you under there tutelage unless you yourself show an impressive potential to learn. And people that are truly exceptional don't wait for the right teacher to start learning.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#93

Craving for a team of more senior people to learn from, "yodas" who guide you - is a fallacy. I hear younger people mentioning it in interviews constantly as to what they dream team would look like. You can learn from everyone around you, regardless of their status. There is no "universal developer experience curve", everyone has more or less knowledge on a field or with a specific tool/framework. You can learn almos…

Everybody has different learning styles and it's almost condescending to say "well, this method that works well for you is a fallacy, try my method".

Learning styles is something that's actually not supported by science at all and a common myth that is damaging.

https://onlineteaching.umich.edu/articles/the-myth-of-learni...

There's a good back about how to learn effectively written by cognitive scientists:

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel, and Peter C. Brown

Definitely worth a read, even reading a summary on the book would be beneficial if you want to become a better learning. The techniques in the book work IME.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#94
I came from an academic background, and didn't have anyone else in the team with programming experience when I was researching. I found my time as a contributor for the scikit-learn project to be invaluable in learning about the requirements to build not just working code, but more robust reliable code that others can depend on. Having my work reviewed by those with more experience, making recommendations etc, was fantastic.

So in short, see if you can contribute to a well-run open source project with a good community.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#95
I was in this situation a few years ago and was really worried about not having seniors.

Something that turned out to be extremely valuable was having the chance to make lots of technical decisions (many big, many teeny tiny) and then stick around long enough to evaluate them afterwards.

A lot of things worked out great, and a lot of things didn’t! And now I have a decent amount of insight and opinions on those sorts of things. And those insights getting me a lot of respect at my new job! Which is only my second job, after being in the hot seat at my first, which was a startup.

So my advice is try to at least stay around to evaluate your own decision making. You will end up challenging a lot of your own beliefs. I think it changed me more than anything else at that job.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#97

Couple of important lessons that will keep you in good stead for a long time: 1. Learn how to learn well, continuously, and sustainably. Tech changes rapidly. And you will want to hop from one domain to another, just for keeping things interesting and to move with markets. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because you can start late and still be in the top percentile if you have the brains and wor…

How do you learn how to learn well?

At its simplest, rewrite and interface regularly with knowledge. There’s an entire hobby around personal knowledge management, and it‘s all up to you to find what works best, but taking meaningful notes and rewriting those notes, processing them further and further, will help form deeper mental connections regardless of method.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#98
Pick personal projects to work on (relevant to what specific skills you want to develop) and build them. The best way to learn anything is to get your hands dirty, struggle through problem solving, and develop a hands-on understanding for why/how to do things.
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