Open source is your friend. I wonder why more people do not take advantage of it. It's one of the greatest hacks available in our industry. Imagine in other industries like if you wanted to be a doctor, he could be a part of someone's greatest surgeries in the world like that is the power of open Source. Choose a project that you like lurk for some time, learn the styles and idioms of the project and then start contributing and take the feedback that you get seriously and improve upon it.
Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
21–30 of 305 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#22Couple of important lessons that will keep you in good stead for a long time:
1. Learn how to learn well, continuously, and sustainably. Tech changes rapidly. And you will want to hop from one domain to another, just for keeping things interesting and to move with markets. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because you can start late and still be in the top percentile if you have the brains and work hard for it. It is a curse because you will be doing this no matter how many years of experience you have.
2. Hone your non-technical skills– caution: these are compounding over time (both good and bad habits) – being disciplined, thinking clearly, articulating clearly, being professional, being trustworthy, managing your physical and mental health, being dependable/reliable, having a growth mindset, thriving in ambiguity and uncertainty etc. then, honing your communication skills – effectively collaborating with people, give/receive effective feedback, do/get mentoring/coaching, working with cross-functional people, working with very seniors, very juniors, peers etc. read a lot, develop mental models, deeply craft your personal approach to first principles problem solving, to making tradeoffs/bets etc.
You can do the above all by yourself, through reading, and observing people from afar, and engaging with people (even strangers on forum like this one) in dialog.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#23It sounds like you are in an awesome position where your management respect you and your work output. This most likely won't be the case in all positions you take throughout your career. Leading projects are a great way to learn after making mistakes, you also get to set the direction and get the rewards when things go right.
Practical tips on learn good techniques, do research, find the best tech companies that do similar development to yours. Check out their technical blogs, their githubs, find opensource projects which have been developed to the highest standard. Dig into them and potentially even rewrite your own simple versions to learn, maybe twin it so you could make the new implementation a part of an internal research project... so main possibilities there.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#24copy the works of masters. that means look at it, think about it, put it away. And then, on your own, try to recreate it
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#25Even as a very experienced engineer, I find that I learn a ton from chatting with Claude about technical decisions.
It is so valuable to take the ideas and questions in your head and get them out. You can then have Claude interrogate and problem solve with you.
By default, I think Claude is very conservative and sometimes comes up with ideas that aren't quite right. But you can actually just tell it to be less concerned about X or Y, to start over from scratch, etc.
Another trick I use is to ask it to ask me one question at a time to help clarify my thinking. I find that the one by one questioning really helps me find the boundaries of my knowledge and crystallize my opinions.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#26I was in a similar situation right out of college, and it worked out for me in the end. After I moved on from the tiny company I was terrified that I wouldn't have the skills needed to succeed in a "real" company, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually had learned a ton and rapidly became one of the most senior engineers on my new team as well. So: it can work.
What I did:
* Read. All the things. Read HN comments, read tech blogs, read books. Don't put too much weight on any single book/comment/blog post—they'll almost all disagree with each other, and you'll learn the most by comparing and contrasting all of the strong opinions rather than uncritically absorbing any given opinion.
* Be okay with using work time for professional development. Your employer hired someone they knew wasn't experienced into a role that is typically filled by someone more senior. They need to be okay with you learning on the job, and if they're not you need to go somewhere else.
What I wish I'd done but failed to do:
* Don't get overly invested and burn out. This is your first job, but it's not your life, and your career doesn't depend on you completely blowing it out of the water as a brand new developer thrown into the deep end. Don't overinvest.
* Keep your eye out for red flags. Tiny companies that can't hire seniors might be small and niche but sustainable, but they might also stay small because the business side of things just doesn't work for various reasons. In my own case, it turned out the founders of the tiny company were both narcissists (which seems to be a common problem with tiny companies), which led to a ridiculous political implosion that I was lucky to escape.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#27Why not look for a job with a established development team? I cannot imagine how anything could replace the experience you get from working directly with other developers. You will learn more than just technical skills. You'll learn more about how to predict time estimates, how to interact with other groups in the company, how to set up good infrastructure for development, deployment and support. If you learn all the…
There's great value in quality technical mentorship, but they're trading it off for an opportunity to learn leadership, autonomy, and cross-functional skills at a very fast pace... That's not a route for everyone but it could be a massive opportunity for the right person.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#28Find mentors. This is true of any tech field.
Join Discords related to the stuff you’re working on, you’ll find people much smarter than you and any of your colleagues hanging out, talking about good approaches to designs, structures, infrastructure, etc.
You’ll also find idiots not worth listening to.
Remember you’re 6 months in / just doing the job is enough of a challenge. You’re calling yourself a lead for having full responsibility of the projects you’re working on. This is typically common everywhere except large tech companies.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#29Craving for a team of more senior people to learn from, "yodas" who guide you - is a fallacy. I hear younger people mentioning it in interviews constantly as to what they dream team would look like.
You can learn from everyone around you, regardless of their status. There is no "universal developer experience curve", everyone has more or less knowledge on a field or with a specific tool/framework.
You can learn almost everything alone - I mean learning from the web. There are great forums, groups, discord chats, ask LLMs carefully and check on the answers. It may sound reassuring that someone watches your back and won't allow mistakes or would help clean up a mess, but you should not keep relying on this anyway. Learning by doing and taking responsibility will make you much more self assured, which is actually most of what makes someone senior.
Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?
#30It sounds like you are doing better than many in corporate jobs; you are being proactive. ChatGPT is quite valuable here, as is studying. Where in the world are you? That determines your options.
True, I think Claude would be a better choice.