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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?

#141

Post by underdeserver »

gambiting wrote: post #138
mjirv wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indust…

This is true, he should be comparing with software engineers in his COL area, but not with other people with random jobs in his office.

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

#142

Post by yodsanklai »

> However, I have some strong FOMO about not being able to learn much technical stuff from my peers or seniors

I work in a team with some very senior colleagues (and even famous in computer circles for a couple of them) in a reputable company. I actually don't learn much from them. They review my code, we discuss some design docs, it's certainly interesting to see how they manage their time and how they deal with various problems, but I don't learn much from them in the technical sense. Also to my surprise, we also don't produce software to the highest standards...

If you want to improve technically, you can read books on things you'd like to improve, or find technical projects outside of work.

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

#143

Post by underdeserver »

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!

Yours is an interesting situation. I would suggest the following:

1) Read code and spend an hour a week keeping up with developments in your immediate field. Understand the most used frameworks, learn how they work, what each one's pros and cons are, the lingo, the discussions.

2) Understand what your manager cares about and what he wants from you. Ask him what would be a success and what would be a failure.

3) Make sure you understand and implement best practices. Do you have a golden set? Tests? Monitoring - Do you know how much data runs through your pipeline, what your error rate is? What wakes you up when the pipeline fails in the middle of the night? Who needs to be notified, what are the downstream effects?

4) After you have a couple of projects under your belt - that may already be the case if you've been there for a while - consider hiring an experienced contractor for a week to review your code and architecture. You said you're responsible for hiring, I'm guessing you have a budget for subcontracting. Like with all contracts, make sure you have well-defined scope for what you're asking for.

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

#144

Post by shafyy »

underdeserver wrote: post #139
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.

There is a big difference between articulating "code" clearly and articulating clearly when you speak / write to other humans.

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

#145

Post by plaugg »

There are (at least) three aspects to consider:

- How will the company / your boss decide that you are doing a good job? - Focus on that first. Include the parts they don't directly value but where you think you need them in order to reach that goals.

- How do YOU know you are doing a good job? - to develop that taste you need peers to look up to. Find them in meetups, in un-conferences, conferences or on the internet.

- Build your skills in three main areas:

   - "Behavioural" skills (a.k.a "soft" skills) - written communication, verbal communication, be good at giving and
receiving feedback, building professional relationships, organize your work, learn to "manage up"

   - domain skills (learn about the company & the field)

   - tech skills - focus more on concepts & principles and less on the "framework of the day".

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

#146

Post by abbadadda »

fsloth wrote: post #103
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…

"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." This assessment totally devalues the experience of having an more senior, more capable colleague to learn from. They are not there to watch anyones back, stop mistsakes, or clean up anyones mess. Rather the point is that the junior member is able to watch the…

Agree 100%. Mentorship from more experienced colleagues can save an enormous amount of time in pain by pointing out someone is going in the wrong direction very early on. Mentors can also expose a mentees to “unknown unknowns,” which a mentee might not otherwise know that they need to investigate. I agree that “learning how to learn” is more valuable, but that’s not to say that mentors or more experienced engineers have nothing to provide of value.

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

#147

Post by Kinrany »

shafyy wrote: post #144
underdeserver wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is a big difference between articulating "code" clearly and articulating clearly when you speak / write to other humans.

Code is written for other humans

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

#148

Post by gambiting »

underdeserver wrote: post #141
gambiting wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indust…

This is true, he should be comparing with software engineers in his COL area, but not with other people with random jobs in his office.

Agreed.

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

#149

Post by throwaway2037 »

tsegratis wrote: post #81
christoff12 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rabb…

its the simple things fuzzing unittest scm code coverage if youre programming without those, youre doing it wrong, and chatGPT isnt going to help any more im missing?

What percent of developers do you think are actively using fuzzing? I would be shocked if more than 1%. Please do not read this as I do not think fuzzing is important! It is very important for system-level software.

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

#150

Post by iepathos »

I was in a similar position for the first half of my career.

1) Start contributing heavily to a popular open source project you're familiar with and use. Try to make your PRs as high quality as possible. You'll get free code reviews from some of the best engineers in the world doing this. That'll be a million times better than ChatGPT code reviews and you'll be able to learn a ton from it while also getting your code into production at thousands to millions of companies in the world that depend on the open source project/s you choose to contribute to.

2) Fill holes in your knowledge base. If you feel weak in a particular area like networking or DSA then study and practice with it until you no longer feel weak in that area. If you were on my team I would try to assign tasks to you to help you naturally build out knowledge and confidence in your weak areas but without someone to do that for you, you'll need to try to figure out your own weaknesses.

3) Always try to do your best when working professionally. This is all any of us can ever do and if you actively practice it then it'll become a habit that will guide you toward success in any environment.

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