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Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

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Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#131

Post by kqr »

sally_glance wrote: post #79
kqr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is better to have a functional organisation where people float in and out of roles defined by the expectations of others and everyone is capable of judging basic business tradeoffs, yes. That, in my experience, makes people happier. They get to focus on important problems, help people they know, and develop their well-roundedness as human beings. I think you might be underestimating the amount of overhead that is…

This reminds me of a very interesting comment on the engineering and management practices at Intel [1]: "I often called Intel an 'ant hill', because the engineers would swarm a project just like ants do a meal." I've seen it happen at smaller scales, great engineers in flat hierarchies without direction might not be the best idea from a business perspective... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31571560

Who says they have to be "without direction?"

Only in a very hierarchical organisation are the lowest levels without direction -- because the higher levels maintain their position by keeping important information secret.

If the important information (market signals, experiment outcomes, financial data, etc.) is made available to everyone, and everyone receives a sliver of training in interpreting it, any group of engineers worth their salt can make responsible decisions in the right direction. (Often much better than a small set of executives would.)

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#132

Post by usrn »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45
silisili wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that this has become the norm. Sometimes, even most of the time, tight clean code and proper data structures and clean smart queries are vital for both cost and performance reasons. That smart(experienced) people think up how to approach a problem and throw it over the wall to the juniors makes me sad, even if it has become somewhat commonplace. I was actually offered a position doing exactly that for a rather…

Thank you. Agreed completely I see software as a form of literacy, and it both amuses and saddens me to hear things like "I used to write code, but since I moved to management I have stopped" We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped" It seems sad to note that this "move to management" is now also becoming the "move to senior engineering". This indica…

>We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped"

Lots of people say they stopped reading books after highschool. It's also sad.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#133

Post by robertlagrant »

I think the point about senior job titles is good. I haven't inspected other industries, but I doubt that many places think sub-five years (or even maybe sub-ten) is a senior level of experience.

Admittedly, as the article points out, ours is a particularly diverse field, but if you're going to have a label for "person who's done this for quite a while" you'd imagine the time period would be longer.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#134

Post by baobabKoodaa »

didibus wrote: post #12
jehlakj wrote: post #9

For me, it was that I thought that being a good programmer was that I write clean code with enough abstraction and indirection to make it future proof. Boy I was wrong. Unless you’re doing the same thing you’ve done for years, you can’t tell the future. And just when your unnecessary abstraction is wrong, this the reason why we’re talking about tech debt in the first place. Because nobody wants to touch it. Unfortuna…

There's a level beyond that where you actually figure out how to write good abstractions. It's likely you thought you were making good abstractions and useful indirections, but you weren't, hence the problem. Concrete code with little indirection will be better than badly thought out abstractions that are incorrectly designed with unnecessary layers and indirections. That said, good ones, that are well done and thoug…

> actually figure out how to write good abstractions.

There's an element of no-true-scottsman in this argument. Most codebases that I've seen have excessive amounts of unnecessary abstractions. It's rare to see a codebase that has too few abstractions. You can of course make the argument that "they just weren't creating the right abstractions", and it's not necessarily incorrect - it's just unhelpful as a piece of advice. You can take any methodology - no matter how bad it is - and claim that any seeming faults in the methodology are simply the result of people applying it incorrectly. "No true scottsman would have created this abstraction".

Since the needle is currently pointing in one direction more often than the other, I think it's generally helpful to shell out advice that moves the needle in the other direction: advice such as "less abstractions is generally better".

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#135

Post by grog454 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45
silisili wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that this has become the norm. Sometimes, even most of the time, tight clean code and proper data structures and clean smart queries are vital for both cost and performance reasons. That smart(experienced) people think up how to approach a problem and throw it over the wall to the juniors makes me sad, even if it has become somewhat commonplace. I was actually offered a position doing exactly that for a rather…

Thank you. Agreed completely I see software as a form of literacy, and it both amuses and saddens me to hear things like "I used to write code, but since I moved to management I have stopped" We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped" It seems sad to note that this "move to management" is now also becoming the "move to senior engineering". This indica…

> We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped"

Maybe we do. Wouldn't a better analogy be professional writers moving toward an editor/director role?

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#136

Post by kqr »

Jensson wrote: post #83
kqr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many big modern organisations are built by bureaucrats whose specialisation it is to create more bureaucracy. Thus they spend a lot of time thinking up ways to measure the work performed from various angles, create reports for their superiors, and find other ways to ride on the work of others to earn their salary instead of doing actual work. This propagates downward and soon everyone (but perhaps the most junior con…

Really need a "clean communication" movement just like we have a "clean code" movement.

I remember reading a thought experiment: after a fire drill when everyone is in the parking lot, the CEO can say,

"Everyone who was in an actual call with a customer when the drill started can get back in. The rest of you stay out until someone dealing with a customer asks for your help."

I imagine a lot of people in HR, marketing, and various other paper-shuffling positions have to stay in the parking lot for quite some time. Not to mention many executives!

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#137

Post by matwood »

kqr wrote: post #136
Jensson wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really need a "clean communication" movement just like we have a "clean code" movement.

I remember reading a thought experiment: after a fire drill when everyone is in the parking lot, the CEO can say, "Everyone who was in an actual call with a customer when the drill started can get back in. The rest of you stay out until someone dealing with a customer asks for your help." I imagine a lot of people in HR, marketing, and various other paper-shuffling positions have to stay in the parking lot for quite…

> I imagine a lot of people in HR, marketing, and various other paper-shuffling positions have to stay in the parking lot for quite some time. Not to mention many executives!

Most of the IT people also...

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#139

Post by dzikimarian »

jseban wrote: post #122
pojzon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its all fine and dandy, but expect ppl will be willing to do this kind of work if you pay them few salaries worth of money. If you want senior developer that will work as an architect, team lead, product manager etc. (S)He better make 400k per year or more.

Yeah I agree, and the most ridiculous part is that they still have architects, team leads, product managers etc who now really do nothing other than riding the gullible software developer

We don't have architects :-) Most of bigger topics is decided by communicating between seniors in various projects. (it's fully transparent, anyone can see and contribute).

We have some PMs/POs in order to cover communications with customer - there's legal part to manage, market research, and there are difficult customers, which unusual reporting needs that have nothing to do with technology, so everyone is happy to leave it to them.

Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer (2019)

#140

Post by ozim »

urthor wrote: post #125
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Agreed completely I see software as a form of literacy, and it both amuses and saddens me to hear things like "I used to write code, but since I moved to management I have stopped" We don't hear phrases like "I used to read and write English, but since I moved to management I have stopped" It seems sad to note that this "move to management" is now also becoming the "move to senior engineering". This indica…

Moving senior engineers into management is the smart thing sadly. My experience with F500 companies, doing anything causes an incredible amount of grief. The most productive thing for seniors IS stopping coding. Going to meetings is the only way to deploy ANY code to production. The problem isn't even software. The problem is "new software" represents change.

Sadly it is a smart thing.

But not only to get any code to prod.

From my perspective it is to stop loads of stupid code/stupid solutions even way before it is written down as a task on your favorite task tracking tool.

That is what meetings are for as well.

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