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Senior engineers are living in the future

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Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#151

Post by ThePadawan »

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.

I find it really weird that this isn't a universal experience.

I've been coding for 15 years and could not imagine myself in your classmate's place - but I feel exactly the same while learning to draw.

I try to draw a somewhat straight line or something at least resembling a circle, fail, and feel like it's completely impossible to me, be close to tears, and everyone who can do it might as well be a wizard.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#152

Post by impjohn »

co_dh wrote: post #136
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.

I put semicolons at the beginning of line.

Found the chaotic neutral DnD player

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#153

Post by thegrimmest »

wccrawford wrote: post #27
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.

I find that egos can be really fragile when people are just starting to learn things. Pointing out the mistakes so quickly can seem like a great help (and it is!) but some people react like they're staring at the sun. Instead, I find it better (except for how long it takes) to walk them through finding the problem as if it's really hard and just nudging them to the steps they'd need to take to find it themselves. The…

Kill the ego. The less allowance we make for hurt feelings the more we can live in a world devoid of toxic ego-driven politics. We should all carry the expectation that professional criticism be received professionally.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#154

Post by dilyevsky »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #150
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #123

Oh God. No. "Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" Please please do not assume your manager is any good at their job. Talk to your users. Find a way to identify them and get feedback from them. Keep your manager in the loop sure. But don't wait for requirements to come down from on high. "Every step up in job title is equivalent to living perhaps 1–2 days further into the future." No. If an…

> The US military tries hard to put decision making at the front line where it is most up to date. Business leaders love to imitate the military, but isnt it ironic they are emulating the institution that has the most government involvement and central planning?

On the surface level it should make sense bc in war stakes are high so you’d think “survival of the fittest” would apply. In reality I’d say it’s far from being the case but it makes suits feel more important so here we go again

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#155

Post by jersak »

marcosdumay wrote: post #111
didgetmaster wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even very senior engineers can make simple mistakes that can bruise their egos. Several years ago I was called into the office of the chief architect. I was also a senior engineer with a lot of experience, but he was quite famous (at the time) in the industry for his technical skill. He was convinced he had found a compiler bug. He had some c code that he had traced through the debugger at the assembly level. It was…

> I'm sure he felt stupid when I pointed it out. He certainly did. There is no amount of experience that makes people not feel stupid about those. What changes is that you learn to not be affected by it, because you know that it's not a personal flaw (at least not one specific to you), and while you can improve on it, you can't completely fix it. But the alternating between feeling like the dumbest person on Earth an…

In those situations i do feel stupid but also feel relieved. Fixing a semi-colon is easier than fixing some major logic flaw that could have way deeper and worse ramifications.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#156

Post by devonkim »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #150
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #123

Oh God. No. "Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" Please please do not assume your manager is any good at their job. Talk to your users. Find a way to identify them and get feedback from them. Keep your manager in the loop sure. But don't wait for requirements to come down from on high. "Every step up in job title is equivalent to living perhaps 1–2 days further into the future." No. If an…

> The US military tries hard to put decision making at the front line where it is most up to date. Business leaders love to imitate the military, but isnt it ironic they are emulating the institution that has the most government involvement and central planning?

In terms of how it’s supposed to be structured the military is heavily centralized but that model has broken down considerably as the US has had to face far more dynamic adversaries than before. It’s a popular perception but most groups in the military branches operate a lot closer to Silicon Valley in many respects than people give them credit for.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#158

Post by lowercased »

groby_b wrote: post #146
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #123

Oh God. No. "Ensure that you are fulfilling the expectations of your manager" Please please do not assume your manager is any good at their job. Talk to your users. Find a way to identify them and get feedback from them. Keep your manager in the loop sure. But don't wait for requirements to come down from on high. "Every step up in job title is equivalent to living perhaps 1–2 days further into the future." No. If an…

Uh... Fulfilling expectations has nothing to do with making decisions on your own. I can guarantee you that no matter how good or bad their manager, if you don't meet their expectations, you are in trouble. By all means, own your local decisions, be proactive, keep your manager in the loop - AND MAKE SURE THEIR EXPECTATIONS AND YOUR WORK MATCH. That doesn't mean waiting for requirements, but that means your manager k…

> Surprising your manager unpleasantly never leads to good outcomes for you...

Not quite 'my' manager directly, but a client's PM. They had a ... PM/PO type person who was quite insistent that we had to have feature X by date Y. Slightly aggressive, but... sure. Between that insistence (over weeks) and the date Y... that person left and a new person started.

4 days before a walk through (where new items were demonstrated to stakeholders, and company owners), I sent the completed functionality over to the new PM (he'd been there a few weeks, but obviously still... new). "looks good" he replied. I checked that he'd at least watched the video I'd sent over.

Demo happens and I show the functionality, with the "this is vital to have" from the previous PM. Silence. Then "we didn't know that was being worked on". Behind the scenes I was somewhat thrown under the bus, even though I had jira tickets, paper trail, video evidence and assorted other info. "Lowercased is ... subverting the process" and I made a whole team look bad. Even though... they all had signed off on what I was delivering. But behind the scenes, new PM had told people "feature X won't happen" (i have no idea why that was said) but apparently I made a lot of people look bad, because I'd delivered something they said wasn't going to happen.

So so so weird...

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#159

Post by groby_b »

lowercased wrote: post #158
groby_b wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh... Fulfilling expectations has nothing to do with making decisions on your own. I can guarantee you that no matter how good or bad their manager, if you don't meet their expectations, you are in trouble. By all means, own your local decisions, be proactive, keep your manager in the loop - AND MAKE SURE THEIR EXPECTATIONS AND YOUR WORK MATCH. That doesn't mean waiting for requirements, but that means your manager k…

> Surprising your manager unpleasantly never leads to good outcomes for you... Not quite 'my' manager directly, but a client's PM. They had a ... PM/PO type person who was quite insistent that we had to have feature X by date Y. Slightly aggressive, but... sure. Between that insistence (over weeks) and the date Y... that person left and a new person started. 4 days before a walk through (where new items were demonstr…

Well, yes. Shitty management still exists. And the power imbalance is always there. I'm not saying not surprising your manager guarantees good outcomes, I'm just saying surprising them guarantees bad outcomes.

The lesson I've drawn for myself from similar incidents is "know all the stakeholders, and talk to them". Consulting/client work makes it extra hard, because stakeholders just keep coming out of the woodwork :(

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#160

Post by didgetmaster »

jersak wrote: post #155
marcosdumay wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure he felt stupid when I pointed it out. He certainly did. There is no amount of experience that makes people not feel stupid about those. What changes is that you learn to not be affected by it, because you know that it's not a personal flaw (at least not one specific to you), and while you can improve on it, you can't completely fix it. But the alternating between feeling like the dumbest person on Earth an…

In those situations i do feel stupid but also feel relieved. Fixing a semi-colon is easier than fixing some major logic flaw that could have way deeper and worse ramifications.

I think it happened enough that some newer compilers actually post a warning message when it is encountered. Just like switch statements when you don't have a break; statement for every case: clause. In some cases you want the logic to fall through, but it can cause havoc when you didn't want that and you just forgot the break.
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