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Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

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Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#31

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

3pt14159 wrote: post #19
OliverJones wrote: post #10

Empathy is the key skill. Yes, it's learned. The ability to walk in somebody else's shoes for a while makes you a better developer. Why? * You acquire the habit of imagining what it's like to use the stuff you develop. * You have a feel for the daily experience of your colleagues, suppliers, executives and other stakeholders. These things give you the sort of spidey-sense that lets you function independently. They al…

I've found "what'd you get up to this weekend" to be a great conversation starter because most people have done at least one fun thing over the weekend.

People ask me that all the time and it's awkward. I very rarely do anything anyone else would consider "fun", even on weekends.

Most of what I do can be classified as "work".

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#32

Post by creullin »

mooreds wrote: post #3

Depends on what kind of dev you are talking about. In a consulting shop (enterprise or web dev or advertising)? Big company (software, hardware or where software dev is an expense)? Game company? Silicon Valley startup? Senior devs in each of these types of companies have some skills in common and some that are particular. The common ones, in my opinion: * Ability to communicate with non technical folks * Ability to…

These are all very good points, coming from someone in a agency/consulting shop. Big things I find are being able to communicate effectively with non-technical folks, budget accurately, and knowing when to ask for help vs. hammering something out.

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#33

Post by kabdib »

Illniyar wrote: post #15

Frankly, none. Everywhere I know of the position of senior dev is defined solely by your technical expierence, and the screening in job interviews for non-technical skills are the same for junior or senior dev positions. Perhaps a better question is what non-technical skills do I need to work well in a team (as a senior or junior dev), every developer needs to know how to listen to people with different expierence an…

That's too bad. The senior devs I know are generally good with people: Making them better, working out differences, getting people on-board with solutions, helping one-on-one with things like code reviews and debugging sessions, writing design documents, finding and fixing bugs that aren't theirs. The list is endless. Oh, and they write code, too, generally lots of it.

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#34

Post by ramtatatam »

mk89 wrote: post #12
ramtatatam wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha :-) Indeed, experienced people who had that perception. No grey hair? you can't be senior. Edit: I do not have grey hair.

My comment was a sort of provocation, but I see that some people seem to agree with it. It makes me a bit sad, but unfortunately sometimes it's pretty hard to change things - if at all! The other comments are all relevant and very good, but they seem to overlook one important aspect: the company's attitude. What all those comments have in common is that they assume things work according to Tom DeMarco's book Peoplewa…

I used to work for MegaCorp and I was only a number there. In that company you could become "senior" only if you was grey (literally) or know somebody higher in the structure. That was one of reasons I left to join startup.

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#35

Post by sxg »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #31
3pt14159 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found "what'd you get up to this weekend" to be a great conversation starter because most people have done at least one fun thing over the weekend.

People ask me that all the time and it's awkward. I very rarely do anything anyone else would consider "fun", even on weekends. Most of what I do can be classified as "work".

You don't have to talk about things that other people think are fun. The point is to bring up something that can get you excited and animated. If what you call "work" does that for you, then I'd love to hear about it.

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#37

Post by caseysoftware »

Someone who can teach/mentor those behind them.

That includes identifying useful ideas from elsewhere - conferences, magazines, books, hn, etc - then adapting them to make sense on current project, convincing the rest of the team of their fitness, and then leading the rest of the team to understand and learn them. Not a manager, a leader.

For the record, "make sense" is not the same as "cram every shiny v0.1 toy into the next project."

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#38

Post by humanrebar »

mknocker wrote: post #36

Being the last man standing. Seems sad but when people leave bad company, usually the people who stay get promoted and some of them become senior developer. I have seen this strange pattern a few times.

Absolutely. A good way to make this happen is to crank out piles of write-only code. You'll look more productive than your peers and you'll be the expert on a relatively large part of the system.

When things inevitability go wrong, you'll also be the hero that powers through the weekend hacking a solution together. Be sure not to document or comment this code. It makes your memories critical to the operation of the business.

Eventually everyone else but people like you will move on. You'll be given a bigger say in the org by default AND you'll think exactly like all the other senior engineers. This will make you appear to be good at communication and working in teams since you can all say and do what you were already thinking.

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#39

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

sxg wrote: post #35
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People ask me that all the time and it's awkward. I very rarely do anything anyone else would consider "fun", even on weekends. Most of what I do can be classified as "work".

You don't have to talk about things that other people think are fun. The point is to bring up something that can get you excited and animated. If what you call "work" does that for you, then I'd love to hear about it.

> The point is to bring up something that can get you excited and animated.

Well, the only time you'll get that out of me is when I'm angry.

Most of my weekends involve:

* Reading research papers

* Reviewing other peoples' source code

* Reporting security vulnerabilities to open source projects (usually with a patch)

* Improving these projects: https://github.com/paragonie

I never have any time to watch movies, play video games, or engage in creative hobbies.

Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?

#40

Post by gt2 »

* Computer science fundamentals

To know the landscape and limitations thereof surrounding a product being developed. These skills can be learned formally through school or informally by continual pursuit, as many hackers find themselves doing who come from backgrounds other than hardcore computer science.

* Communication

With stakeholders, the business folk that green-light and also those who manage projects. This one is two part since it takes a good measure of both knowing how to cut through the red tape and get the jobs done, and also how to effectively communicate with them in the language they understand.

* Programming and devops

You need to know common idioms, a common framework or three, and the way web applications are deployed and hosted. If you have programmed a ton of projects over the years you will have seen firsthand enough of the wrong ways of doing things to spot it a mile away and be able to know when something should be refactored, rewritten, or not, and be able to review others code for the same.

I'm deliberately leaving off "people management skills" because I think #3 covers that -- managing the technical output of people is the most important part for managing technical subordinates, which you will likely be at least partially responsible for as a senior dev, even if it is for developers in a mostly flat org.

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