Working with people who were much more experienced and/or familiar with what I needed to know than I was, and who had a welcoming approach to sharing their insights.
Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#32Follow the volume. Work on things that have lots of users, lots of revenue, lots of transactions etc ... nothing exposes bad engineering more effectively than tens of thousands of requests a second or terabyte size transactional databases.
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#33* Focus on the value you produce, not on the stack or language.
* Don't over-architect for a future that might never come.
* Be a fly on the wall when users use your product. It will be terrifying but it will give valuable insights.
* Do good and talk about it.
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#34* Be cautious of conveniences. That which you depend upon binds you and limits you. Your code cannot execute faster than the layers underneath it.
* Step away from what you know. I spent time running security audits and on a different occasion became the company A/B test engineer.
* I was promoted to senior for doing less work. I would finish the days work in the first two hours of the day and spend the rest of the time writing side projects.
* Learn something foundational. I learned XML Schema and wrote an original markup language before I learned to program. Jumping into JavaScript I already knew all about the DOM better than most JavaScript developers.
* Don’t start your career with an investment of time in frameworks. This makes you a less desirable hire to many shops of variable maturity. If you want to level up you have to be willing to put the pacifier and baby bottle down even if it makes you less attractive at first glance.
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#3520+ Years of dev, some of these I did right, some I wish I did ;) 1-Learn one language/stack inside out. That knowledge translates very well o other stacks: They need to solve the same problems, they just have different approaches/solutions. 2-Don't be a fanboy of one stack: Work with others, if you are a backend developer, do some frontend, if you work with strongly typed languages, try python for some time, if you…
To add, 1+2 is often referred to as being a "T-shaped developer"
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#36I never made any "career moves" per se, but the best things I did in retrospect involved choosing to work around extremely smart and knowledgeable people early on, over opportunities that probably would have paid more.
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#37FWIW, you might want to read this article by 'patio11: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#38Don't mix 2 different things — become better engineer and career level up.
Sometimes they go together, but they are not really correlated.
My best career moves were:
1. get into small startup with really strong team and complicated technology in the beginning of the career — I rarely found such concentration of smart people and technology afterwards (even in big names i worked so far).
This was my best education in software engineering.
2. start my own bootcamp school and start teaching people — another great boost in hard and soft skills I couldn't imagine i'd get.
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#39You are a mercenary. * Loyalty does not exist (company, coworkers, etc) * You dictate pay for the work you do (or leave the job) * You dictate your own hours (overtime is your own choice not company's) * Strive to always provide maximum value (efficiency not time spent) * Focus on keeping a core set of skills sharp * Quit if conditions are untenable When a person does the above, they start focusing on how to provide…
> Loyalty does not exist (company, coworkers, etc)
I can't quite call myself a veteran engineer yet, but loyalty and positive relationships with coworkers is a huge boon. I agree that companies will often screw you. Manager and policies can change in an instant and they only look out for their self interests.
But coworkers? Find great coworkers that you work well with and you will always have job opportunities. If a coworker jumps ship to another company, it's likely because the pay and benefits are better. Now I have an "in" for a referral plus insight into how the company operates and how I'll get along with the team.
I do agree with all the other points though.
Re: Veteran engineers (10 yrs exp+) advice needed
#40I think one of the best things I've done is try a lot of different jobs. Wide experience on how different companies approach problems can really make you a super-generalist. It also keeps your tech fresh as you will learn lots of different skills / stacks at each job.