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Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#51

Post by janoc »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #46
poisonborz wrote: post #29

Craving 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 almos…

I can second this. I have learned infinitely more by doing and teaching than I ever have from being taught. It might be a personality thing though. I’m a stubborn idiot who questions everything he’s taught. I don’t take advice. I listen to people stories. The why has always more important than the how. I’ve been fortunate to have many teachers and mentors, but I didn’t seek any of them out and none of them guided me.…

It is not about "being taught".

But if you are the only technical person around, who is going to show you what a good or bad practice *in your specific field* is? That you won't find on Stack Overflow or by asking ChatGPT.

Being able to talk to an experienced mentor who knows the field you are working in is invaluable. Unlike learning some framework or design patters or what not, this information you won't find anywhere else.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#52

Post by szundi »

What I do while being a CEO and not engineering anymore is to always entertain some interests in engineering. This is easy for you as you are actually working on something. In my case it was always the biggest challenge of the engineers of the company.

I've spent my commute time to learn about these topics from youtube. For example watching EEVBlog or Uncle Bob or whatever. Then stop sometimes and just think about it regarding my past experience. Replay the stuff that I lived through while thinking about what I heard. Then find my best colleagues and sincerely ask them what they think about what I was concluding just then.

Also I like Twitter/X after just muting/notinterested-buttoning the people who just post idiot stuff. Then it is quite a good source of ideas about the present mainstream - that's also very important.

But the most important: never forget while swimming in ideas and memes: take some minutes sometime to asses what actually worked - and what is that somehow never works for ... reasons.

Great question on HN!

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#53

Post by christoff12 »

newfocogi wrote: post #38
vinay_ys wrote: post #22

Couple 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 wor…

How do you learn how to learn well?

The key is to figure out what your learning process looks like.

For example, I discovered early on that I learn in three phases: 1. I get exposed to something (a concept, a process, etc); basically discover that something exists. 2. I then see how that thing is used whether through mentorship or tutorials or, increasingly, through trial and error. 3. I apply that thing to some novel problem.

Through this cycle of Discovery-Tutelage-Application, I can assess my level of comfort with new material and understand when my struggles are due to trying to short circuit the process.

It's likely that you have some form of learning process that is equally cyclical, yet undefined -- once you identify and codify those steps, you can evaluate your progress when it comes to acquiring new skills.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#54

Post by aleph_minus_one »

janoc wrote: post #49

If you want to grow you will need to change jobs. Small companies are not a good fit for a fresh grad with little to no experience. In a small company you are by necessity a jack of all trades because there are only so few of you. If you aren't experienced already it is a very hard position to be in, with a huge responsibility and potential to screw up due to inexperience - and be promptly thrown under the bus when t…

> If you want to grow you will need to change jobs. Small companies are not a good fit for a fresh grad with little to no experience. In a small company you are by necessity a jack of all trades because there are only so few of you. [...]

> The best way to grow as a fresh grad is to join a medium sized, established business. There you are going to be a part of a team where you will get to learn the ropes of your field (that's something you won't find in ChatGPT or university) and at the same time the pressure won't be so hard.

My experience differs: already at medium sized, established companies there is a lot of corporate bullshit. Also, at small companies, you know the colleagues better, so that the culture is often more "humane". Also, exactly because at a small company you are a "jack of all trades", you by necessity learn a lot more; but be aware that on the other hand you won't specialize so deeply into the topic. So, if you want to deeply specialize in a topic, you better look at a medium or large company (but be aware that there might exist few or no jobs there that allow you to specialize in the topic that you are into).

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#56

Post by codr7 »

I never had good seniors/mentors, but I do hope I manage to be one occasionally.

It wasn't until I started going to conferences, Lisp/Python/Perl etc, that I actually met people with the same level of brain damage or worse than me.

Both paths lead to the same place, having access to mentors gets you there faster I guess.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#58

Post by christoff12 »

janoc wrote: post #51
kayodelycaon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can second this. I have learned infinitely more by doing and teaching than I ever have from being taught. It might be a personality thing though. I’m a stubborn idiot who questions everything he’s taught. I don’t take advice. I listen to people stories. The why has always more important than the how. I’ve been fortunate to have many teachers and mentors, but I didn’t seek any of them out and none of them guided me.…

It is not about "being taught". But if you are the only technical person around, who is going to show you what a good or bad practice *in your specific field* is? That you won't find on Stack Overflow or by asking ChatGPT. Being able to talk to an experienced mentor who knows the field you are working in is invaluable. Unlike learning some framework or design patters or what not, this information you won't find anywh…

You'd be surprised at how useful Stack Overflow and ChatGPT can be at helping to illuminate knowledge gaps.

I've found that one of the harder aspects of being unguided is figuring out the unknown unknowns.

You might stumble into a solution of sorts that mirrors a best practice but not know there's a "name" for that solution -- until you see it spelled out after googling around. That discovery can lead you down a rabbit hole where you gain fuller context.

Sure, having more experienced people around can help expedite that process in some cases, but then again you're limited by what that person has experienced. There's always some level you reach where you need to be curious enough in your explorations to seek out the next layer of knowledge in a self-directed manner, and the tools today are immensely better at supporting that process than 10-15 years ago.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#59

Post by medler »

I was in the same spot for the first few years of my career and I regret staying there as long as I did. It really is easier to learn if you have senior engineers to give you feedback. My recommendation is to find a new job.

Failing that, I’m not sure what your relationship with your manager is like, but in most tech companies, part of your manager’s job is to help you grow. Maybe they could help you reach out to the few other tech people at the company to organize some kind of collaboration to help you all grow and improve.

Re: Ask HN: How can I grow as an engineer without good seniors to learn from?

#60

Post by n144q »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #13

I learned a ton from contributing to large open source projects. Find some software that helps your company, and don’t be afraid to dive into the codebase. There may be times you can even contribute as part of your job.

It is unfortunately not efficient compared to what you get when working with actual colleagues within a company.

Open source projects maintainers very likely have their own day jobs that are unrelated or only marginally related to the projects, have different priorities or just don't care enough. A previously important feature that has seen lots of activity may be on the shelf, but that's only known among maintainers with no public notes. You don't get to go into meetings or just send a Teams/slack message to get a quick response, let alone a casual chat at the coffee machine.

Unless you are working on prioritized features on a project like linux, VSCode or Chromium, chances are that your issues or pull requests go in the log until someone works on it months or even years later.

Speaking from real experience.

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