Being senior means taking responsibility for ensuring the right things happen. If you can teach others to do the same, you may also be a project team leader, and/or have the sensibility to be a people manager.
Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
81–90 of 136 posts
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#82Earlier 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".
I'd say the onus is on the person trying to train "empathy" to perceive the conversation is awkward and get to relate to you in a different manner.
But if it's you trying to train it, the onus is on you to make it not awkward. Because everybody do default to this conversation.
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#83A couple things that I think are important to being more "senior"
- Owning the problem. Don't pass the buck when you see a problem and it's well within your realm to own and fix.
- Ownership and delivery. You have to deliver. You have to remove your own blockers. You have to be realistic about what you're biting off. When you say no, and you should, you need have a reason.
- Be a leader. Make those around you better by thinking of them when you build your system.
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#84Earlier 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".
I'd say the onus is on the person trying to train "empathy" to perceive the conversation is awkward and get to relate to you in a different manner. But if it's you trying to train it, the onus is on you to make it not awkward. Because everybody do default to this conversation.
Quite right. In a one-on-one conversation, I know how to conduct myself to make it less awkward for the other person, but I still feel like I'm lying by omission when I answer questions like that.
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Willingness to do grunt work is a fast track to becoming a manager who says "I haven't coded in years". No good deed goes unpunished. When you step up to be a team player and do that grunt work, you open yourself up to getting more and more of it. Next thing you know you have to stand up for yourself or become a door mat.
The trick is to not volunteer for recurring work. My stance is I will volunteer for 1 thing per week which is defined, ad-hoc, and <5 hours. The bonus to this is your far less likely to be forced into endless time sinks as you have team credibility to say no.
*ad hoc
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#86- Taste. Read The Elements of Style and Paul Graham's http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html
- Watch All the President's Men and emulate the reporters Woodward and Bernstein. They hustle. That's what I miss among people I work with. If something is not explicitly assigned, cut-and-dried, and easy to follow, they give up. You may not be fired, but good luck making a real dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs used to say (another person to emulate! well, in some ways).
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#87Earlier 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…
> What all those comments have in common is that they assume things work according to Tom DeMarco's book Peopleware.
This is a funny comment, since he keeps repeating through the entire book phrases that sound like "you probably won't be able to get this for your team", "you likely never seen it anywhere, but...", "when doing our research, we've seen this. You might doubt it, but trust me, this exist on some places."
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I empathize and find your weekend activities relatable. Answer a question about your weekends with that and you might just find someone else who spends their free time "being productive". :-)
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if I actually know you and the user mknocker. Seriously, it's scary to read this stuff for how real it is :)
Good to know I am not alone :) There are a few pinpoints also to detect if the company you are interviewing to is one of these. Usually, they are 'building' a new team for an existing product. As I grew up in my career I started to develop the reflex to ask why the previous folks left. You might not get an honest answer but at least it gives you more information either you should continue the hiring process or not.
I just had a phone interview that was incredibly telling about the company. The interviewer ... didn't speak english. And, I've been doing this long enough that I embrace that broken english is the international language of science. This guy didn't speak english. We had to communicate by typing into the pair coding app (remember this was a phone interview).
Anyway, a company who puts that person on the phone as one of the first points of contact has serious communication issues. It was an easy pass for me (I already work in a company with broken communication).
Re: Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?
#90There's a lot of great specific examples in this thread but I think it all boils down to this one quality; being able to put your own ego aside. I think what lets a developer graduate from one level to the next is realizing that your own knowledge, vision, etc. is limited and not always the right way to go. Being able to put your own desires aside and execute someone else's vision while still providing the benefit of…
I agree with this to an extent, but a controlled burst of ego can sometimes signal to the rest of the business that they're deeply off-track: "I/my team are better than spending time realising this ridiculous requirement/deadline/anti-feature, and we're just not going to do it. You need to re-think this". I don't recommend doing it too often (no-one wants a reputation for being precious or difficult), but used correc…
I don't think this works in Silicon Valley. I'm a recent transplant but I've found that people here are very passive aggressive and it's always a mistake to be direct with people. Now, in NYC I never had a problem after talking to someone about a disagreement (obviously in private). But, it's just not affective in SF.