This is not a checklist. Items in a checklist are either checked or unchecked. This is more of a values matrix.
Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
21–30 of 155 posts
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#22> "Understand the business aspect of your work, and what makes money. Eventually, only that matters." How about ethics? company reputation? legal compliance? corporate responsibility?
Your post comes off as if the author is purposely avoiding these topics. No doubt they’re important, but while many software people will look at a company’s reputation or take ethics for granted (in the sense that of course it’s important), many software people, especially juniors, don’t stop to think about the business value of spending X on Y. Everything has a cost - for example, spending the extra time optimizing your code has a cost. Value is what you want to produce at the end of the day, not a grand architecture or extremely optimized code. Those may or may not be a means to an end. That’s not to say you should ignore ethical or legal consequences. I don’t think people generally want to break the law.
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#23This is not a checklist. Items in a checklist are either checked or unchecked. This is more of a values matrix.
You can click on items to check or uncheck them
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#24What is this a checklist of exactly? A list of things to do to become a senior engineer, or things to do once you are a senior engineer? There is little description or context to this, so I'm not sure what I'm looking at here. Apologies for being dense!
It's not your fault. The post has zero context.
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#25This is not a checklist. Items in a checklist are either checked or unchecked. This is more of a values matrix.
You can click on items to check or uncheck them
Thats not true. You can click an item to highlight it. I've never used a checklist that used highlighting to indicate it's state.
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#26Thanks for the list. There are a lot of great suggestions here, but I think the scope is much wider than just senior engineers for a majority of the items. Here are a few that I think are especially important for junior level engineers. • Question everything and ask “why” repetitively until you get to the root of problems and situations. • Do not be adamant about your views. Listen to others and accept that there is…
> Have strong mentors to help you navigate and grow in the company. Sometimes that mentor is you. It's good to know if that is explicitly expected of you in your role, because you will need to budget time to do it properly. It is an extremely important role for any team, so take it seriously too. For project managers/employers reading, it is paramount that you make mentorship be part of the senior developer's roles.…
> Some developers absolutely do not like the role because of the regular interruptions, I get it, but some people are more than happy to help be a go-to.
I would happy to do it if management acknowledges that managing people as a senior dev will take time away from doing actual coding work.
But somehow, they think you can manage to pull off doing deep coding work and managing people at the same time. This refusal to adjust expectations is just baffling to me.
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#27(y)
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#28Thanks for the list. There are a lot of great suggestions here, but I think the scope is much wider than just senior engineers for a majority of the items. Here are a few that I think are especially important for junior level engineers. • Question everything and ask “why” repetitively until you get to the root of problems and situations. • Do not be adamant about your views. Listen to others and accept that there is…
Second bullet point: recommend using “strong opinions weakly held” (https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-fram...).
Always be ready to review any opinion you have in the face of new evidence. In fact, seek out information that will challenge your opinions. But until the burden of evidence favours another opinion over yours, be prepared to hold and defend your opinions stridently.
Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#29What is this a checklist of exactly? A list of things to do to become a senior engineer, or things to do once you are a senior engineer? There is little description or context to this, so I'm not sure what I'm looking at here. Apologies for being dense!
It's not your fault. The post has zero context.
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Re: Show HN: A Senior Engineer's CheckList
#30Normally, this is where I'd chide the OP for using "Engineer" in the title when they really mean "Software Engineer", but (refreshingly) most of the items on this list seem broadly applicable to different types of engineers, so it's not really warranted.
Your comment seems pretty elitist. It's clearly implying that Software Engineers aren't real engineers. I'll admit, not every software developer designs and builds engines (see definition of engine) but many Software Engineers, in fact, do. The principles of engineering are simply applied sciences. Many software engineers have degrees in Computer Science and they are applying the science. I also know plenty of Softwa…
This isn't as inflammatory as you think it is, software engineering is just a subset of engineering... just like all other engineering fields.
OP is just happy that this can be applied more generally.
In my opinion, engineer is just a term for people who solve practical problems. Which is a huge community of people these days.