Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
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Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
1–10 of 534 posts
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#2What a great article.
Definitely goes under the heading of "Truths So True They Seem Obvious."
As for "Disorganized or messy code isn’t the same as technical debt," I can't look at messy code without automatically cleaning it up. It's automatic as I read and understand. In the last 5 years I've probably checked in hundreds of PR's of cleanup. If this takes anymore time and/or effort on my part I don't notice it. The only thing is someone has to merge it.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#3> I also learned that job titles don’t “make” you anything. It’s kind of like, being a CTO with a 5-person team is different than with a 50-person team or a 500-person team. The job and skills required are totally different, even if the title is identical. So just because I had a “senior” job title did not make me a senior engineer at all. Furthermore, hierarchical titles are inherently flawed, and difficult to compare cross-company. I learned it’s important not to fixate on titles, or use them as a form of external validation.
Unfortunately, they do matter in the real world.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#4> I also learned that job titles don’t “make” you anything. It’s kind of like, being a CTO with a 5-person team is different than with a 50-person team or a 500-person team. The job and skills required are totally different, even if the title is identical. So just because I had a “senior” job title did not make me a senior engineer at all. Furthermore, hierarchical titles are inherently flawed, and difficult to compa…
Well, depends. I know people going from CTO of a small start-up to individual contributor in a bigger company, probably for money.
Titles count a lot inside an organisation, thought.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#5> I also learned that job titles don’t “make” you anything. It’s kind of like, being a CTO with a 5-person team is different than with a 50-person team or a 500-person team. The job and skills required are totally different, even if the title is identical. So just because I had a “senior” job title did not make me a senior engineer at all. Furthermore, hierarchical titles are inherently flawed, and difficult to compa…
Well, depends. I know people going from CTO of a small start-up to individual contributor in a bigger company, probably for money. Titles count a lot inside an organisation, thought.
I used to work with one of those, he traded his title and pay for a work permit in another country
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#6> I also learned that job titles don’t “make” you anything. It’s kind of like, being a CTO with a 5-person team is different than with a 50-person team or a 500-person team. The job and skills required are totally different, even if the title is identical. So just because I had a “senior” job title did not make me a senior engineer at all. Furthermore, hierarchical titles are inherently flawed, and difficult to compa…
They certainly "matter" but I think the point more is that skills, responsibilities, ability from one place to the next with the same title is not a good comparison.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#7The big one for me was the realisation that the code doesn't matter. I mean sure, it does, to us. It's what we do. But really, code doesn't matter.
To the end user, what matters is that we solve their problem. We let them do their job, and we make that job as easy as possible. And that's what they pay us for.
And to the company we work for, what matters is that we solve the end user's problem, and that we do so in an expedient and economical manner, so that it costs less for us to do so than the customer pays us.
Of course, for us to continue doing this, in the long term, we need to innovate and architect and uphold standards and stay on top of technical debt. And all of that put together is "make the code good". But that's an end to the means, and the customer doesn't care what horrors awake when they click that dialog box button as long as the result they needed pops out at the end.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#8What a great article. Definitely goes under the heading of "Truths So True They Seem Obvious." As for "Disorganized or messy code isn’t the same as technical debt," I can't look at messy code without automatically cleaning it up. It's automatic as I read and understand. In the last 5 years I've probably checked in hundreds of PR's of cleanup. If this takes anymore time and/or effort on my part I don't notice it. The…
I have a rule of thumb to assist with this. If i feel like I have to maintain some state in my mind to understand a particular piece of code then I opt to clean it up since it'll potentially save future developers that time.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#9Thoughtful and deserving of HN front page attention.
Re: Absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer
#10> I also learned that job titles don’t “make” you anything. It’s kind of like, being a CTO with a 5-person team is different than with a 50-person team or a 500-person team. The job and skills required are totally different, even if the title is identical. So just because I had a “senior” job title did not make me a senior engineer at all. Furthermore, hierarchical titles are inherently flawed, and difficult to compa…
True, but the realisation above is key to understanding how career progression works once you hit your cap. A developer can become a senior developer and then a technical lead and then... what? A manager? You can't really go past technical lead while still staying in the trenches.
So what you need to do is be the tech lead for a team working on a bigger problem. Your job title doesn't have to change as long as you're working on a bigger job.