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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?

#131

Post by zer0x4d »

nsoonhui wrote: post #127
prathameshgh wrote: post #119

Hi all, just to clear some misconceptions: - I'm quite well paid here (4x more than my peers) - I have been hired full-time, and get all the company benefits as well. - The work life is great, and I don't work more than 8-9 hours a day. - The manager/director is great and super supportive. - I'm not being exploited by any means :) Kindly upvote so the disclaimer stays on top of the post!

Sorry to be cynical, but the you mentioned that you are very well paid, many times above your peers. But one does wonder how can there is a company who can afford to pay out so much to a junior, and yet completely unable to attract seniors with experience.

He says he is paid more than his peers (who are probably not in the tech field). It's entirely possible his 4x pay above his peers is still less than a senior or staff engineer's pay.

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

#132

Post by planb »

rawgabbit wrote: post #61

Even when I was in large companies with over 10K employees, there were times due to internal politics I could not interact with more experienced folks. Truth be told, the difference between fresh graduates and seasoned people... is the more experienced people learned from the school of hard knocks. Most of which can be distilled into: Don't follow fads, the latest shiny tech; they will only break your heart and maybe…

Some good advice here, but sometimes writing a connector that pumps data from one REST interface to another one is way simpler than using software B (which has the connector, but is buggy and requires paid upgrades for every integration) instead of software C which has a well documented interface.

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

#133

Post by zer0x4d »

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?

You learn to learn with time and imo it's different slightly from field to field. In tech field you just learn by doing, asking questions, making mistakes and gaining experience. Take a sample code in a new language, make it do something slightly different. Then add one more thing on top. Then something slightly more complex, then finally try to make it do what you want. Once ready, deploy, test, and iterate.

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

#134

Post by serial_dev »

Your position, as you describe it, honestly sounds quite interesting. If you have the ambition, you can grow a ton in this environment as well. I know it’s cool to chase the higher and higher levels at a FAANG company, taking on unnecessarily complex projects just to pad your resume, but what could also be interesting is do a better and better job everyday, and get higher and higher within your industry, meaning oil and drilling.

Sticking with tech sounds like a safe option, but if this opportunity was given to you, maybe you could think about rising in the rankings within the oil industry.

I’m not saying this is the only choice, but this is a choice that you should consider as well.

Also, learning from more senior colleagues is really a hit or miss. I’ve been in environments where I couldn’t learn anything from senior colleagues and where I learned a ton working with relatively junior people.

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

#135

Post by klabetron »

Seems to be lots of advice about finding a new job.

If you’re the smartest person in the room, yea, that might be a red flag.

But, here’s some different advice though: get the company to hire someone more experienced. Be willing to give up some oversight responsibilities to that person. (Or hire someone who is experienced and explicitly doesn’t want to play the politics game.)

I felt like I was in a similar situation fresh out of school. It wasn’t until my company hired an incredibly talented person that I felt I was finally learning from someone (beyond reading books… back in that day, they were still pretty relevant and up to date).

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

#136

Post by Hashex129542 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #79

If you are the smartest guy in the room, you are in the wrong room. Interview and get a job elsewhere. While you may not easily find an ideal direct mentor even in a company with great senior+ engineers, you will get experience through osmosis. Staying where you are would be a mistake. I almost did that, and in retrospect it definitely would have been.

+1 this is it.

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

#137

Post by LouisSayers »

If you're already reaching out like this then you're doing a lot right already.

That being said, the one thing that you can't really replicate is getting honest feedback about what you're doing at work.

For example, you can learn all the design patterns, write the best code etc, but are you even working on the right problem? What are the assumptions that you've made that are incorrect? Is there a much simpler approach that'll get you there in one tenth of the time?

These are thing things that experience may provide which no course or single book is going to give you.

You basically need senior people to talk to.

The most straightforward way to do this is to get a job which has this structure set up for you already. Otherwise make friends, go to meetups, do some networking and find some experienced people you can get some feedback from.

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

#138

Post by gambiting »

mjirv wrote: post #125
prathameshgh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man thanks a lot for your advice! Just to clear up some misunderstandings (caused by my own lack of information supply TBH): - I'm hired full-time with benefits now after working freelance for 6 months - I get paid 4.5x more than my peers in this company - I got these many responsibilities after proving my competence and delivering on reliable solutions in my freelance tenure. - Yep. Once again, I'm a little over…

unless you know what you’d be getting paid at silicon valley tech companies, don’t say you’re “overpaid” your comps are with “working in San Francisco”, not with your peers

That has the same energy as saying "don't say your house was expensive until you compared prices with bay area houses" - not everyone in the world can work for silicon valley companies even if they wanted to. They are a nice aspirational things up in the sky to sometimes think about, but realistically, 99% of programmers are never going to work there and should be comparing their pay against peers within their industry.

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

#139

Post by underdeserver »

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…

I would argue that articulating clearly is not a non-technical skill, it's the essence of what software engineers do.

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

#140

Post by cottsak »

It's hard.

Not impossible but much harder than working closely with humble and experienced engineers. That's why I recommend that a junior engineer finds a great consulting company as soon as they can and spend a few years there. This was a kinda breakthrough period in my career for both technical and soft skills. The nature of consulting also means that you might see a greater variety of environments, technologies, and problem/solution combinations than the equivalent xp in a non-consulting role. But make no mistake, finding a "good" consulting company is key. You need to have humble and experienced engineers who want to help you and grow you. If it's a "bums in seats" kinda "body shop" or some kind of celebrity house for "hero" or "10x devs" then maybe this won't be as useful.

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