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On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

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Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#11

Post by dbc_dvon »

000ooo000 wrote: post #9

>Avoiding responsibility for estimates is another way of saying, “I’m not ready to be relied upon for building critical pieces of infrastructure.” There's potential for significant nuance in such a scenario and to reduce it to this silly quote hurts the piece, IMO.

The quote sucks and I completely disagree with the author.

It puts the whole responsibility on the engineer to predict how long a thing will take. There are much better approaches though. We can focus on allowing the team to create lots of small tickets (can be done in a few hours or 1-2 days), massively improving our prediction estimates. The author seems to suggest we should be able to predict the future no matter the task or team communication/organization.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#12

Post by daliusd »

dbc_dvon wrote: post #11
000ooo000 wrote: post #9

>Avoiding responsibility for estimates is another way of saying, “I’m not ready to be relied upon for building critical pieces of infrastructure.” There's potential for significant nuance in such a scenario and to reduce it to this silly quote hurts the piece, IMO.

The quote sucks and I completely disagree with the author. It puts the whole responsibility on the engineer to predict how long a thing will take. There are much better approaches though. We can focus on allowing the team to create lots of small tickets (can be done in a few hours or 1-2 days), massively improving our prediction estimates. The author seems to suggest we should be able to predict the future no matter…

I think you have misread quote here. Emphasis is on taking responsibility here IMHO. Your proposal to “divide and conquer” is still estimation process.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#14

Post by pistoleer »

akomtu wrote: post #13

Senior engineer is like a fuel efficient car - it's a meaningless marketing term used to distract attention from what matters - the pricetag and fuel consumption in hard numbers.

Are there ways to quantify the qualities of engineers, or any "human resource" in hard numbers? What are interesting qualities in particular?

Maybe salary, which is influenced by location as well as negotiation prowess and just plain chance.

Or maybe "experience", which is actually "years gainfully employed" and is at best a proxy for experience.

IQ could be a something to profile on. Which is a proxy for intelligence by measuring ability to recognize patterns.

Number of Github stars then? Which is really influenced more by marketing of the project than how good the code is.

Perhaps they have good stories or anecdotes. But that's not really a hard number.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#15

Post by yobbo »

000ooo000 wrote: post #9

>Avoiding responsibility for estimates is another way of saying, “I’m not ready to be relied upon for building critical pieces of infrastructure.” There's potential for significant nuance in such a scenario and to reduce it to this silly quote hurts the piece, IMO.

But also, people are responsible for estimates from the first day of their career. It's the scope that changes.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#16

Post by Vinnl »

delichon wrote: post #5

To me being a senior software engineer means that when your production system goes unstable from gremlins or cosmic rays or other mysterious sources of chaos and the business that pays for your food is in jeopardy, there's nobody to pass the buck to. You just have to buckle down and figure it out or update the resume and start working on your excuses or apologies to newly unemployed coworkers and their families.

Well, except for perhaps to a staff engineer. Or a senior staff engineer. Or a principal engineer. Or maybe a senior staff principal engineer? The VP of Engineering? The CTO?

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#17

Post by bravetraveler »

000ooo000 wrote: post #10

I hope one day we all can realise that all of the pontification about the defining qualities of a 'senior' engineer, or the height at which the bar should be set, whether the bar has slowly been lowered over time, etc is all pointless. Senior or not senior is a lens useful only to HR and insecure engineers.

Agree. I've only recently received a title with proper seniority. People have been looking to me for leadership/guidance for longer.

A 'sufficiently capable' junior can run the show for a bit. I've been them, for better or worse. I'm great at the technical side but admittedly terrible at the 'softer' people aspect.

Multitudes, yo. Thanks to a lot of incident management experience, I'm the Dictator you want when the sky is falling. However, I'm absolutely best ignored when it comes to politics or making plans months out. My bias here is more apparent than normal, stability.

Titles are made up, just like the rest. Trying to apply these too much is suspect

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#18

Post by bux93 »

Vinnl wrote: post #16
delichon wrote: post #5

To me being a senior software engineer means that when your production system goes unstable from gremlins or cosmic rays or other mysterious sources of chaos and the business that pays for your food is in jeopardy, there's nobody to pass the buck to. You just have to buckle down and figure it out or update the resume and start working on your excuses or apologies to newly unemployed coworkers and their families.

Well, except for perhaps to a staff engineer. Or a senior staff engineer. Or a principal engineer. Or maybe a senior staff principal engineer? The VP of Engineering? The CTO?

a vendor

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#19

Post by cess11 »

000ooo000 wrote: post #10

I hope one day we all can realise that all of the pontification about the defining qualities of a 'senior' engineer, or the height at which the bar should be set, whether the bar has slowly been lowered over time, etc is all pointless. Senior or not senior is a lens useful only to HR and insecure engineers.

Right, we should use the old apprentice, journeyman, master from the crafts.

When a master says you're ready to independently take on customers and have what it takes to satisfy their needs you become a journeyman, and when you've practiced long enough to have pushed the boundaries of the craft and reliably do things that masters can learn from, then they might count you among themselves.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#20

Post by yobbo »

pistoleer wrote: post #14
akomtu wrote: post #13

Senior engineer is like a fuel efficient car - it's a meaningless marketing term used to distract attention from what matters - the pricetag and fuel consumption in hard numbers.

Are there ways to quantify the qualities of engineers, or any "human resource" in hard numbers? What are interesting qualities in particular? Maybe salary, which is influenced by location as well as negotiation prowess and just plain chance. Or maybe "experience", which is actually "years gainfully employed" and is at best a proxy for experience. IQ could be a something to profile on. Which is a proxy for intelligenc…

Since one person can never be held liable to agree with another's definition of "seniority", it is just a subjective term.
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