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Senior engineers are living in the future

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Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#201

Post by greenhatman »

triyambakam wrote: post #81

Where I am often hung up in comparison is due to age. I dropped out of college and spent my early 20s learning agriculture and construction. Now I work in software engineering and my current manager is younger than me. Not only is he younger than me, but he's been able to climb up to an engineering manager in a shorter amount of time than I've been working as a SWE. So I feel really lame - wasted so much time early i…

Engineering managers aren't necessarily better than you. It's not necessarily the next step up. I personally prefer to stay closer to code.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#202

Post by fullsend »

bluGill wrote: post #181
hnfong wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite. If you know how it feels like to learn something you have a natural talent for, and you know what it feels like to be struggling, then you can choose to focus on the things that are most "efficient use of your time". Especially considering that life is short. Of course, you can always choose to learn something you aren't best at, but at least you know the trade offs (i.e. needing to spend relativ…

I'm not convinced there is such a thing as natural talent. (there is such a thing as lack of talent) All the greats are just average people who focused until they became great. You just have forgotten what it is like to be a child who knows nothing. I've been speaking English since I was a toddler, I'm learning Spanish now and I make tons of mistakes and often can't understand even a basic sentence - but in fact I'm…

In my layman’s view it’s obviously a balance, like all things. Look at the top athletes - Michael Phelps has more upper body than he does lower. The best UFC fighters often have insane wingspan for their height (and therefore reach for punches). Usain Bolt is not a short man. Certain people are tuned for certain things. Then whether they combine that baseline with total obsession and hard work is up to them.

The mental sphere is where it becomes super vague for me. Did John Von Neumann just study really hard? The anecdotes told about Feigenbaum of Chaos Theory make him sound like a savant among savants. They just kept that childlike curiosity? Doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems they are tuned differently.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#203

Post by triyambakam »

Ironlikebike wrote: post #130
triyambakam wrote: post #81

Where I am often hung up in comparison is due to age. I dropped out of college and spent my early 20s learning agriculture and construction. Now I work in software engineering and my current manager is younger than me. Not only is he younger than me, but he's been able to climb up to an engineering manager in a shorter amount of time than I've been working as a SWE. So I feel really lame - wasted so much time early i…

> he's been able to climb up to a engineering manager in a shorter amount of time than I've been working as a SWE If you want to be an IC, don't short change your accomplishments. Eng Mgr is not a promotion from IC, it's a career change. The SWE career progression is much more established, and is often much more formal and understood than an Eng Mgmt track. Your younger manager has recently gone through a significant…

Thank you for the perspective, that's very helpful.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#204

Post by pojzon »

Based on the job title only - Ive met seniors that would not be even called juniors in other companies.

So yea.. it all depends where you stand.

Ps. You dont have to compare yourself to others. Ppl will do it for you. During interviews or internal reviews. You wont run away from that.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#205

Post by didgetmaster »

soco wrote: post #98
zibby8 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is really stupid and juvenile, but the show Adventure Time had an episode where one of the characters said “sucking at something is the first step to being kind of god at something.” I think that’s an important lesson a lot of people should learn. Going out and sucking it up is awesome if it means you’re getting better at something.

On the other hand, toxic positivity sounds exactly the same. So which is one and which is the other? What to do when you suck at something? Persevere or pivot? Both are praised in TED talks, but you just can't pursue them at the same time.

There is a old prayer that goes something like:

May God grant me the courage to change things that I can, the patience to endure the things that I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#206

Post by danaris »

bluGill wrote: post #181
hnfong wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite. If you know how it feels like to learn something you have a natural talent for, and you know what it feels like to be struggling, then you can choose to focus on the things that are most "efficient use of your time". Especially considering that life is short. Of course, you can always choose to learn something you aren't best at, but at least you know the trade offs (i.e. needing to spend relativ…

I'm not convinced there is such a thing as natural talent. (there is such a thing as lack of talent) All the greats are just average people who focused until they became great. You just have forgotten what it is like to be a child who knows nothing. I've been speaking English since I was a toddler, I'm learning Spanish now and I make tons of mistakes and often can't understand even a basic sentence - but in fact I'm…

> I'm not convinced there is such a thing as natural talent. (there is such a thing as lack of talent)

....That doesn't track.

If there is such a thing as lack of talent, then "talent" is just "not lack of talent".

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#207

Post by roflyear »

trey-jones wrote: post #22
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 would never fault someone for not being able to pick up a language and use it competently in 3 days. I understand why you use this as an example, with having samey syntax, but there is still nuance. I think the bigger indicator is you've been in the industry for 10 years and call yourself a PHP/Java dev. At this point you should have dabbled in probably 10-100 ways of solving problems depending on what your 9-5 loo…

I dunno. I haven't had much need to do a major project in another language other than Python for the last 10 years. Is that an issue?

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#208

Post by idontpost »

Adiqq wrote: post #167
Jtsummers wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we have different bars for what it means to learn something, but if I worked with an experienced dev who took a year to learn C (and there was an actual need for them to learn it) I'd question their claimed experience. It shouldn't take more than a few weeks to be capable of using C if you have a decent background with other procedural languages and already know the difference between heap and stack storage (so…

There's a lot of baggage that comes with each language. I could probably learn any language at that point, but it also takes time to learn whole ecosystem, mostly used libraries and tools. You typically can't do this in week or two, because you need to actually write something and see how it feels, if there are any surprises. You would probably not want someone with little experience in given language, to touch produ…

> You would probably not want someone with little experience in given language, to touch production codebase without review

I wouldn't want anyone, in any language, with any level experience to touch production codebase without review.

Not even K&R themselves.

So that's a ridiculous straw man.

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#209

Post by duxup »

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.

When I did a coding camp a while back it was the folks who could handle errors… and kept typing/ trying who did well.

Local football coach often says “failing is progress”:

https://youtu.be/0q3jiUrg7vY

Re: Senior engineers are living in the future

#210

Post by [deleted] »

_ktx2 wrote: post #107

Being a senior engineer is weird when looking retrospectively. I remember being a junior and experiencing what the author is talking about with respect to puzzlingly staring at my seniors when they could answer obscure questions. Now I do it and do the same things they did with me: facilitate my thought and troubleshooting process rather than give me answers. I think the people that are successful in Senior+ engineer…

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