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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?

#201

Post by mathgeek »

Insanity wrote: post #89
wruza wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell myself to not adhd it and instead take time and read through a whole manual, experiment in a local sandbox, grasp the limits of knowledge and features and also where it gets deep. Then in a regular work I explicitly detect where it pays off and feel “see I told you”. This creates a motivational loop to continue not-adhd-ing through tech. Sometimes I still fly over the knowledge, but then may note that what I’v…

My issue with this method of learning is… deadlines. During work time, I often feel that I need to solve something “quick”, which then leads me to usually learn and really deep dive outside of regular work hours instead. Now, I mostly actually enjoy doing this and thus it has not really limited me. But I wish I could just spend some actual work time on more ‘non adhd-ing’ what I learn.

Have you chatted with your manager about expectations and your personal growth goals?

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

#202

Post by samiv »

busterarm wrote: post #196
samiv wrote: post #188

Ok, wow really? Fresh grad, 6 months into their first job and working as a "tech lead". Are you leading anyone else but yourself? I know I'll get down voted but if you were really looking to grow you'd a) quit and get that junior job more suited to your skill level b) hire someone to replace yourself and demote yourself to junior role in your own team. (This would not even necessarily affect your comp.) But seriously…

This is terrible advice. OP is profoundly lucky. He's working in a hard-to-break-into niche in our industry with super close access to someone that will dramatically level up his niche-industry knowledge. This positions OP for long-term success. I'm late in my career and can tell you that engineering skill only really matters in a few places and that what and who you know, as well as how you treat people/circumstance…

"This positions OP for long-term success. I'm late in my career and can tell you that engineering skill only really matters in a few places and that what and who you know, as well as how you treat people/circumstances, is 99% of the job."

Correct, if they're just looking to catapult themselves to the upper echelons of "leadership" and "executive" careers. But that has nothing to do with engineering which is what they asked for.

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

#203

Post by mrozbarry »

It sounds like as a tech lead, if you're in charge of some degree of scheduling, and you have other tech people that you barely interact with, maybe you could start some sort of weekly or bi-weekly "meeting of the minds," and have a place to bounce ideas around. Even if your work isn't closely related, I bet they also feel a bit of isolation, too. It's likely in your work's best interest to have some common/shared knowledge for a small tech team in case of some sort of tech emergency.

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

#204

Post by dahdum »

> But even then, I'm afraid I am not producing the software to the highest standards of the industry

Realistically, you’re not, but does that matter at all to the company? I’ve had your role in a small company, the job wasn’t really about the tech. Unless there is a dedicated product manager, that is your role now too, and it’s one to take seriously.

You have enviable freedom, do not waste it. Be straight with your boss and explain the tradeoffs regarding availability / tech debt / accuracy you may be making and why.

Above all, understand the business, how your boss sees it, and anticipate their needs.

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

#206

Post by bluGill »

MichaelRazum wrote: post #166
iepathos wrote: post #150

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…

1) Is this really the case? I mean some of the popular open source project are kind of mature. So you would get some feedback, regarding some specifics of the frameworks. For sure you would learn a bit. On the other hand they are kind of "done" software, so you would not really learn how to build something new from scratch. Not sure about the other points.

Mature projects are probably the best to work on - they have built a good foundation to study.

As the other poster pointed out, heavily contribute implies the project still could use some major new features and there is plenty to do. Even porting something KDE to QT6 would be a major effort and teach a lot even if you don't write any new code. There are projects that are complete as well and so there isn't much to do.

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

#208

Post by sbarre »

greentxt wrote: post #200
iepathos wrote: post #150

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…

Not so sure about 3. Wouldn't it be more sensible to be flexible in terms if what you optimize? Some projects need best work, some need a friendly face, some should just die quickly.

This is hindsight in my case, but I will say that a lot of the resilience and experience I've developed in my career has come from putting best effort into less-than-ideal or even failing projects (in my defense, in most cases I didn't know they were failing or in a bad state).

It wasn't fun, but I'm better for it.

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

#209

Post by pavel_lishin »

MichaelRazum wrote: post #166
iepathos wrote: post #150

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…

1) Is this really the case? I mean some of the popular open source project are kind of mature. So you would get some feedback, regarding some specifics of the frameworks. For sure you would learn a bit. On the other hand they are kind of "done" software, so you would not really learn how to build something new from scratch. Not sure about the other points.

Most PRs I've opened seem to languish forever, until I get tired of seeing them in /pulls and close them myself. It really depends on the project.

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

#210

Post by sbarre »

austin-cheney wrote: post #207

> How can I… whatever Build things. Solve problems on your own, or if you are already in management instruct others to do so. You learn by failing until you don’t.

i.e. senior devs know all the wrong ways to do things..
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