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Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

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Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#501

Post by lostcolony »

giantg2 wrote: post #490
lostcolony wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software dev, then manager. Every place I've worked I've seen the same thing. Work/life balance is stressed as being important, BUT you will totally end up working extra hours if you cave to implicit pressures others set on you (oftentimes the business, product, etc). Someone will try and schedule you for a meeting at 5 PM, or say "we need this by next week", or whatever. And every place, I've said "No". Sometimes it…

That sounds nice. I've found that if I only work 8 hours they will say that I'm not getting things done fast enough. It makes sense if they are comparing you to people who work more. I know one department where the tech leads all work 10 hours consistently. I was once in a discussion about how to get to a senior dev position (after filling the role of senior dev for a year and tech lead for another year). I was told…

So a couple of things to note there.

First, a great deal of research shows that working past 8 hours of day for long stretches actually -reduces- overall output compared with working 8. Now, to be fair, the bulk of this research was done on physical labor, not mental, but interestingly, what research -has- been done on mental found the same thing, except the actual hours was more like...6.

Second, you're working at a place that actively -encourages- you to work unpaid overtime. That sees it happening and rather than saying "what can we do to prevent this and not risk burnout" instead says "good. Keep at it". If you're salaried, you're effectively getting paid a lower hourly rate for the work you're doing. So...not to beat this horse again...but...look for another job. It doesn't sound like the pay is great, it doesn't sound like the environment is great. The only thing keeping you there is a belief you can't get anything better; maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it certainly will be true if you don't at least look.

Get yourself on Linkedin. Find a tech focused resume writing service to help you with verbiage, both for your LinkedIn profile and your resume. Let recruiters know you're looking on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/67405/let-recr...). Start looking for roles in your area, and remote (and in any area you'd be willing to relocate to). That sounds like a better use of an hour a day than giving it, for the same price (free), to your current company, in the hopes of a 7% raise and higher expectations in the future.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#502

Post by lostcolony »

vbezhenar wrote: post #438
lostcolony wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. I've seen the opposite, where no one takes responsibility for anything, and it's also bad. In fact, the situation you describe could also be a lack of anyone else taking responsibility for disaster planning and etc. I think what is needed is a culture of -ownership-. That's basically people saying "I'm responsible". Not one where everyone tries to avoid responsibility, and not one where peopel point fingers.

What does it mean to be responsible? Just to say it? Responsibility should be accompanied with fines corresponding to the damage or something like it. Otherwise those are just words. I'm responsible, but I'm not getting any fines if something goes wrong, so whatever, but I'm responsible. Fire me if you want, I'll find new work in a few days, but I was responsible. It's business owner who's responsible, because ultima…

So I've actually written about this in the past, but, responsibility is -actually effecting the entity-.

That is, "you're responsible for this" - if they do it, and it succeeds, what happens? If they don't do it, and it fails, what happens? If the answer is "nothing" in either of those cases, they're not actually responsible. If the result is too detached, they're also not actually responsible (i.e., if I decide not to do one of the ten tasks assigned to me, and I don't hear about it until review time, if at all, then I was never responsible).

Responsibility is innately tied with knowledge and empowerment, but without going on at length, and to just give an example - if I'm the one woken up by the pagerduty alarm when something breaks, I am responsible for that something, because its success or failure directly affects me. If, however, there is a separate ops team that has to deal with it, and I can slumber peacefully, responsibility has been diluted; you won't get as good a result.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#503

Post by bombcar »

MillenialMan wrote: post #494
bombcar wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what Dan is saying - but once in awhile you find a pearl in an area you know enough about to confirm. Otherwise it’s best to assume everything you read here is full of it.

I was responding to the idea that it's better than everywhere else on the internet. That hasn't really been my experience. Discord is better, StackOverflow is better, even Reddit is often better if you're looking at specialist communities. But to be honest I rarely find pearls here. Even many of the "pearls" in the article are just well-written articulations of stuff that is... kind of obvious. Some are inversions of…

The most valuable to me are when someone with major historical domain knowledge stops by to detail some historical event in the IT world.

Unfiltered stories from those who were there are often useful, even if their memory of how it transpired may not be entirely accurate.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#504

Post by MillenialMan »

bombcar wrote: post #503
MillenialMan wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to the idea that it's better than everywhere else on the internet. That hasn't really been my experience. Discord is better, StackOverflow is better, even Reddit is often better if you're looking at specialist communities. But to be honest I rarely find pearls here. Even many of the "pearls" in the article are just well-written articulations of stuff that is... kind of obvious. Some are inversions of…

The most valuable to me are when someone with major historical domain knowledge stops by to detail some historical event in the IT world. Unfiltered stories from those who were there are often useful, even if their memory of how it transpired may not be entirely accurate.

Oooooh, good point. Yes, posts like that are great.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#505

Post by arendtio »

vageli wrote: post #3

> The most underrated skill to learn as an engineer is how to document. Fuck, someone please teach me how to write good documentation. Seriously, if there's any recommendations, I'd seriously pay for a course (like probably a lot of money, maybe 1k for a course if it guaranteed that I could write good docs.) I agree but think it is more than just _documentation_: effectively communicating ideas through text was one o…

I like documentation that starts with a minimal but functional example, followed by the most common additions to improve the solution and finally a complete documentation of all functions.

Having links to actual code, like GoDocs have it, is something I appreciate too.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#506

Post by alexeldeib »

ksec wrote: post #433
alexeldeib wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a great point, but let's balance this out with a few of the author's other comments. - OP uses the phrasing senior engineer. - Never worked for FAANG. This is relevant because $120k + bonus/benefits is basically a FAANG new grad. Fairly normal for SV tech companies. - Those numbers likely provide a solid standard of living, but as a senior engineer you are likely underpaid. - Esoteric and proprietary knowled…

>This is relevant because $120k + bonus/benefits is basically a FAANG new grad. Fairly normal for SV tech companies. There were a few post on HN recently about fresh grad asking for / being paid $200K and anything lower they felt they were feeling lowballed. For those of us outside US we could never quite grasp whether something is true or not. Salary across the pond is just incomprehensible.

$200k for salary for a new grad strikes me as being on the (unrealistically?) high side. You'd need to be quite talented and have negotiating leverage for this. FAANG generally won't offer this out the gate. That kind of salary would buy senior devs no problem, even in big tech cities.

$200k total comp, absolutely. A standard new grad offer with no negotiation might be something like $120k salary, $25k cash, $120k options vesting over 4 years with 6 month periods. So in the first year, no negotiation, you're taking home $177k pre-tax. I know people who have gotten up to $60k cash bonuses (split over two years) out of college, simply by having another offer.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#507

Post by alexeldeib »

giantg2 wrote: post #452
ksec wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is relevant because $120k + bonus/benefits is basically a FAANG new grad. Fairly normal for SV tech companies. There were a few post on HN recently about fresh grad asking for / being paid $200K and anything lower they felt they were feeling lowballed. For those of us outside US we could never quite grasp whether something is true or not. Salary across the pond is just incomprehensible.

I think they are being serious. If you're in silicon valley, I could see $200k being a new grad salary. I wouldn't move there for less than that. The cost of living is extremely high in that area. The vast majority of areas would have much lower salaries. My starting salary was less than $60k. After 9 years and a masters it's still under $100k in a medium-high cost of living area. Median salary for a developer is abo…

Meant to reply to you but replied to parent by accident. $200k total comp seems plausible. $200k salary seems like a bit of a stretch to me. Companies would much rather give you a fat cash bonus or stock than raise the salary so high.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#508

Post by mechEpleb »

quantum_solanum wrote: post #365
mechEpleb wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think derisive attitudes in the workplace adequately explain it, because there are a lot fewer women in CS/engineering school too.

I certainly don't mean to imply that misogyny (which those kind of attitudes are a specific expression of) begins in the workplace. It's just where I currently am in life and where it has been most apparent to me in the past several years. I agree that it starts much earlier and there is significant work to be done at that level as well.

I'm not sure misogyny is the only possible explanation here, and I am almost certain it doesn't account for the entire gap.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#509

Post by ric2b »

brailsafe wrote: post #426
ipaddr wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting must be a strategy towards women selecting the top 10% only so men are not getting any matches. Getting matched before reading profiles saves tons time kind of makes sense. Then you can review and filter afterwards. Why is that sad? Have you ever heard of speed dating? Similiar concept.

Well I've witnessed people not even looking much at the photos. Men do get matches, and I don't really agree with how factual or defined your initial statement is. I guess it's sad because of how arbitrary the selection is.

The selection is arbitrary because they're not the ones doing the selection, women are.

There's a well known study from OkCupid about this, women are way more selective so men only have very few matches a week (and some of those don't even respond) unless they try a lot.

Re: Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer

#510

Post by knighthack »

sharken wrote: post #57
daenz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hurt me to read! Have you communicated this to your manager? Might be worthwhile to have a decision "from the top" that is essentially: all logging is good, so long as it doesn't hurt performance or contain PII/PHI.

Logging is like a lamp in the dark, you need it.

I love how poetic this sounds.
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