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What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

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Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#181

Post by AnimalMuppet »

twic wrote: post #161
jrockway wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a split in the industry; outside of FAANG senior means "certain amount of time spent in front of the computer getting paid", inside FAANG, it's a set of behaviors encapsulated in a particular mid-career job title.

Outside of FAANG, senior means "we can't pay as much as FAANG but we will call you senior when you have two years of experience and no idea what you're doing".

Two years of experience may not get you really knowing what you're doing, but you should know significantly more than someone with zero years...

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#182

Post by AnimalMuppet »

smm11 wrote: post #143

Been in the field more-or-less since the late 80s. There are days, weeks really, when I can't tell you what I've done. The business just chugs along. If I'm gone a day, though, my phone will ring by 10 a.m.

Bjarne Stroustrup said "It is essentially impossible to judge a programmer on the basis of only one year's work."

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#183

Post by PeterisP »

DanHulton wrote: post #70
samsquire wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Java and Python for each loops I often use "current" or a singular name for the thing being iterated. If it's a nested loop then I use "other". For C and JavaScript I use single letter indexes ijkl or "current". I think it's a personal preference. I don't think there is a wrong way or a right way. Your team needs to agree though. I would be annoyed if I implemented a deep feature and the PR was blocked due to som…

I don't mind "i", but if there's an inner loop with "j" as well, you are BEGGING for confusion.

Often "i" and "j" would appear when the code is the implementation of some math formula which would idiomatically use "i" and "j" when written 'properly' on paper or LaTeX.

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#185

Post by jrockway »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #181
twic wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of FAANG, senior means "we can't pay as much as FAANG but we will call you senior when you have two years of experience and no idea what you're doing".

Two years of experience may not get you really knowing what you're doing, but you should know significantly more than someone with zero years...

I've been in the field for about 18 years. I feel like I "got it" about 11 years in, and that's being generous.

I did mentor a couple of interns that were juniors in college, though, and they were awesome. It might just be me that takes 10 years to get it.

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#186

Post by _gabe_ »

P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #179
_gabe_ wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this[0] John carmack released 22 games before Doom all in the span of 5 years. Years of experience means nothing, working on real products that get shipped means a lot. I know plenty of programmers with 10+ years of experience that may never reach the level of expertise that Carmack reached in 5 years "professionally". [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carmack

comparing to the top percentile is almost never a valid way to look at things. 14 year olds have competed in the olympics, I would never claim that should be the bar for considering health for 14 year olds.

This is true. I'm just responding to OP though, they said:

> Yeah its pretty scary, 6 years mean you've either only understood on one or two big systems, or you've job hopped more projects and never understood them in depth.

Which is blatantly false. I only need to provide one counterexample, and John carmack blows this assumption out of the water. I wouldn't expect the average developer to be anywhere near that level.

But if the top percentile is shipping over 20 commercial products and literally changing the industry with a technical innovation in only 5 years, then I would wager it's very attainable for an average dev to reach a "senior" level of experience in 5 years.

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#187

Post by plaguepilled »

confidantlake wrote: post #116

The passionate arguments about what a senior is or isn't seems strange to me. Who cares if someone is junior, senior, jedi, ninja whatever. Using senior to distinguish between someone who just started and someone who has been there for a while seems perfectly fine.

Agreed. Title worship isn't helpful.

Perhaps a qualifier would have avoided this whole issue, eg "my more senior teammate" or "my mentor".

Then again, this seems like a reader issue, not an author issue. The salient point was never that Chet had status X and therefore could teach skills Y, it just was that Chet taught skills Y.

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#188

Post by joshuamorton »

kasey_junk wrote: post #41
dom96 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are senior engineers out there that have <4 years professional experience. I myself went from IC3 (junior) to IC5 (senior) at FB in around 3 years and this is pretty common at FB from what I've seen.

I think the concern is that the industry, including Facebook, has decided that the designation “senior” is a thing you can get in But what if you were outside the industry and heard that term? A senior judge typically has decades under their belt. A senior chief petty officer is the second highest non-commissioned rank in the navy implying a whole career behind them. They might infer it only takes three years of expe…

> A senior judge typically has decades under their belt.

A senior judge is also quite literally a semi-retirement role. You take on reduced workload.

> But what if you were outside the industry and heard that term?

"Senior Associates" in the legal profession are junior/mid roles, similarly, senior account managers etc. aren't particularly senior in most places. In white collar roles, a "senior" is really just a distinction of independence and reliability.

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#189

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

_gabe_ wrote: post #186
P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

comparing to the top percentile is almost never a valid way to look at things. 14 year olds have competed in the olympics, I would never claim that should be the bar for considering health for 14 year olds.

This is true. I'm just responding to OP though, they said: > Yeah its pretty scary, 6 years mean you've either only understood on one or two big systems, or you've job hopped more projects and never understood them in depth. Which is blatantly false. I only need to provide one counterexample, and John carmack blows this assumption out of the water. I wouldn't expect the average developer to be anywhere near that leve…

language is more fuzzy than binary logic systems, John Carmack is an exception rather than a counterexample.

And that's the point, comparing exceptional people to the general population isn't valid or relevant here.

Also, these people are typically on teams as juniors who are learning.

Consider that you immediately reached for someone who is over 50 as an example of a developer having a large impact in the first 5 years of their career. That really does say everything.

Re: What I learned working with a senior engineer as a new grad

#190

Post by pojzon »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #180
pojzon wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather go to a mechanic that fixed only breaks in one car model for 10 years. Or to a mechanic that fixed many things in many different cars over 10 years ? Thats the difference between hoppers and “veteran corpo ppl”.

1. That depends on how difficult the problem is. For some problems, you're better off with a specialist. 2. Do you want a whole car designed by someone who designed the hubcaps of a Ford Model, and the driver's side door handle for an Audi, and a dash switch for Toyota, and on through 10 other random parts? Or do you want someone who has been part of a team that designed a whole car before, from start to finish?

I would want someone who was part of few teams who designed a car.

Average project in IT is built in 2 years. In 8 years you could have built 4-6 different projects.

The dude that stayed in first project to maintain it, probably did not learn anything more.

Thats at least my experience. Old Java devs that stopped learning after java 8.

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