Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Senior engineers are living in the future

zerobanana.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 241 posts

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#61

Post by claytongulick »

gabereiser wrote: post #13
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #6

a great article, we software engineers are impatient and we tend to job hop often. Being an effective engineer is about more than knowing how to build systems and code, it also requires deep domain knowledge into your company's business and existing systems and this knowledge takes years to cultivate at the same company. All the superstars at my current company have been here for a while.

We job hop for a number of reasons. The primary one being compensation when their current job isn’t keeping up with inflation. Another is lack of promotion when you went above and beyond (as you were coached to by your manager, for that promotion). Another reason (which is why I do) is that life for some of us isn’t as stable. I move. I’m forced to sometimes because of rent. Sometimes that means having to find a new,…

If we're doing honest self-reflection as an industry, another reason I see programmers job-hop is because they don't want to sleep in the bed they made.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#62

Post by electrondood »

sp332 wrote: post #20

One of my classmates in college couldn't handle this. I'd glance at some awful Visual Studio compiler error and then point out a missing semicolon. He ended up feeling stupid, but I was trying to be encouraging because his code was pretty good aside from some missing punctuation, which will come with practice. He ended up switching majors.

Part of being a software engineer is constantly feeling stupid. Until you realize this is normal, you're going to feel bad and have imposter syndrome.

If it were easy, everyone would do it and it wouldn't pay as much. It's supposed to be uncomfortable in the same way that exercising at the gym feels uncomfortable. Thinking is effort.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#63

Post by ASalazarMX »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #52
revskill wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 10 years Java/PHP developer doesn't know how to use Golang on the job in 3 days.

I'd give them 1 week. And measure again at starting of week 3, if they are still struggle, that's very likely they suck at learning.

- Are you still struggle?!

- Y-yes...

- You are fire!

Note: Sorry for the cheap joke, I also make frequent grammatical errors in English.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#64

Post by PLenz »

revskill wrote: post #8

Senior means two things: - Have experience - Self learning though above experience. I met many experienced developers, but most of them failed at step 2. To me, they're still junior.

The difference between 10 years of experience and 1 year of experience 10 times

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#65

Post by silvestrov »

gabereiser wrote: post #13
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #6

a great article, we software engineers are impatient and we tend to job hop often. Being an effective engineer is about more than knowing how to build systems and code, it also requires deep domain knowledge into your company's business and existing systems and this knowledge takes years to cultivate at the same company. All the superstars at my current company have been here for a while.

We job hop for a number of reasons. The primary one being compensation when their current job isn’t keeping up with inflation. Another is lack of promotion when you went above and beyond (as you were coached to by your manager, for that promotion). Another reason (which is why I do) is that life for some of us isn’t as stable. I move. I’m forced to sometimes because of rent. Sometimes that means having to find a new,…

Another common reason is when you get new manager(s) and they don't respect the insight which "All the superstars at my current company have been here for a while" have.

Often the superstars are just normal people who really knows the business well and therefore what makes sense to implement and what should be skipped.

When you earn enough money for a decent lifestyle, then I think this becomes the major reason for a lot of people to jump ship: you join a company but leave a manager. https://getlighthouse.com/blog/people-leave-managers-not-com...

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#66

Post by ASalazarMX »

Sholmesy wrote: post #30
abhishekjha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, golang is a tough language. I am stuggling with helm/kubernetes and the new company's ecosystem where everybody is new in the team. We are expected to deliver according to a plan while we keep hunting for relevant info. I would say the second point is a lot more nuanced than stated.

> Well, golang is a tough language. This _could_ be true for some, but it directly conflicts with the stated goals of the language. Most people (that I've spoken to) would consider Go to be a simpler language, with fewer features, than other comparable languages.

Python is also an easy to learn language, and you'll likely make correct programs quickly. Idiomatic Python, though, is a longer road. You won't feel confident to open source your code for months.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#67

Post by skohan »

kilbuz wrote: post #18
revskill wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 10 years Java/PHP developer doesn't know how to use Golang on the job in 3 days.

Why is 3 days, likely with competing priorities, a reasonable timeframe to learn a new language well enough to contribute production code in your estimation?

I've had to jump into projects with unfamiliar setups and even unfamiliar languages more than a few times, and after a certain point it's all just problem solving. Like I had to fix critical bugs in an orphan rails project with next to no experience with Ruby and it worked somehow.

Are you going to write elegant, idiomatic code in the first week? Of course not. But give the task "make the system do X", 90% of coding is knowing how computers work, and the other 10% is knowing how to search on stack overflow to be able to translate what you want to do into the desired syntax.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#69

Post by atomicnumber3 »

Invictus0 wrote: post #5
jasonlotito wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not at all what the article is suggesting. Quite the opposite.

> it is literally effortless to accidentally cultivate the impression of being some kind of wizard

My impression of that bit was that the author was saying it may look like a senior engineer is a wizard, but actually it's just experience and it's not magic.
Post reply on HN