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Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

nair.sh

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Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#141

Post by jrumbut »

I think it's possible that this idea would work as a communication/branding strategy for senior developers, though I don't think it's strictly true.

I am really skeptical of arguments based around "I can do things the model can't" because that space of things is not very large and is getting smaller every day.

The opportunity to not merely cling on to what we have another year but to grow is to say "together, the model can manage so much more complexity than before that we can do things that were not previously possible."

We haven't identified too many of those things yet, but I am certain they are coming.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#143

Post by Yokohiii »

goosejuice wrote: post #18

> The avoider, the reducer, the recycler. As this kind of person, it can be alienating in some teams / companies. What I've found works best is to convey how the added complexity will affect non-engineers. You have to understand the incentives and trade offs though, and sometimes it's better to take the loss. If you have the fortune of sticking around with the same leaders for awhile, a few rounds of being vocal, but…

> you will earn some trust

Building trust is yet another quality of a good senior. By that I don't mean to be buddy with the CEO but earning trust from everyone by making good decisions, arguments and delivering as promised. Even giving a jr a warning and let him fall flat is a good trust building exercise.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#144

Post by nitwit005 »

This misses the basic problem of incentives. What "the company" wants doesn't matter, it's what the people making particular decisions want.

There exist people who's jobs depend entirely on rolling out new features, or apps of some sort, and having them show up in some form of company metric. If the senior developers says it's a bad idea, those people won't listen, or won't care. Their job is on the line.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#145

Post by mlhpdx »

hirako2000 wrote: post #8

Most proof of concepts I've seen get traction turned into production. A rewrite? I recall a few times everyone promised, if this gets promoted then we will rewrite it from zero. Never happened. The article touches on responsability, accountability. There is none for risk taker. By definition. You have a crazy idea, you rush it out, you hope clients bite. You profit. It's not even your problem how to make it work, sca…

Regarding the viability of rewrites of successful PoCs: Does the current environment change the math? How difficult would it be to overcome the inertia/hesitation/perception of slow, painful projects that may no longer be so?

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#146

Post by dragontamer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #116
gfody wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is why I only communicate in poetry complexity is not what you believe it is please try listening

Reminded me of a colleague who wrote his email replys as haiku. It got old pretty quickly.

Like an old colleague

Who wrote emails in haiku

It got old quickly

....

Sorry, I couldn't resist!!

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#147

Post by reverius42 »

forlorn_mammoth wrote: post #117
hamstergene wrote: post #69

Because the most important parts of the expertise are coming from their internal "world model" and are inseparable from it. An average unaware person believes that anything can be put in words and once the words are said, they mean to reader what the sayer meant, and the only difficulty could come from not knowing the words or mistaking ambiguities. The request to take a dev and "communicate" their expertise to anoth…

good things llms solve this problem by assuming everything can be put into words and then convincing the world this is true.

You might be encouraged by this then -- it seems some leading AI researchers agree with you: https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/22/1131661/yann-lec...

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#149

Post by block_dagger »

It seems to me that the author fails to extrapolate on the effects of recursive self improvement. The only things preventing 95% engineer obsolescence will be compute/energy constraints and the speed of adoption, which can take years for large infrastructure companies. But it's coming.

Re: Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise

#150

Post by junto »

hosh wrote: post #64
lwhi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of these factors are directly influenced by complexity.

They all influence each other to one extent or another. And, the Cynefine Framework defines “complexity” a bit differently than the intuitive way it’s often used. The simple domain is a single dimension. The complicated domain is a system of factors. I think when most people say “complex”, they are really talking about what Cynefine labels as “complicated”. The Cynefine complex domain is not so easily solved or reduc…

Totally agree on this.

The use of “complexity” in terms of systems theory in comparison to “complicated”, is often misunderstood.

I also agree that it’s a really good framework for evaluating problems and then making decisions on potential solutions because each has its own set of approaches.

Small nick pick. It’s “Cynefin” not “Cynefine”. The word is Welsh (Cymraeg). Roughly pronounced ke-ne-fin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

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