Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

kitchensoap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 120 posts

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#71

Post by saghm »

Xcelerate wrote: post #35

A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level. I also have a definition of what I think level should ideally represent: the marginal contribution of a person’s influence on the outcome of a company, relative to the…

> In other words, you can consider two hypothetical futures for a company: one with a specific person and one without that person. You then have a probability distribution defined over the difference in outcomes. For someone at a very high level, the absolute area under this curve is large—they have a big impact on the company (whether positive or negative). For someone at a lower level, their impact is small.

Sounds a bit like the concept of "wins above replacement" as a baseball stat (https://www.mlb.com/glossary/advanced-stats/wins-above-repla...), which attempts to calculate how many fewer (or more, in the case of negative value players) a team would have if instead of a given player, they had someone producing the exact average of the league.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#72

Post by saghm »

game_the0ry wrote: post #66
Xcelerate wrote: post #35

A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level. I also have a definition of what I think level should ideally represent: the marginal contribution of a person’s influence on the outcome of a company, relative to the…

> A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level. I agree on paper that this is a great heuristic, but an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contribut…

> I agree on paper that this is a great heuristic, but an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contributions from you. I see your point, though, and I agree for the most part.

In some ways, this actually makes sense to me. In my opinion, senior versus junior engineer seems like it should be about the skills and abilities of an individual, whereas one's compensation and actual title depend on a lot of environmental circumstances (company politics, for lack of a better term). While "soft skills" are an important part of a senior engineer, I'd argue that the set of soft skills useful to an individual contributor engineer doesn't necessarily overlap a ton with the soft skills needed to be able to effectively secure a promotion and/or higher compensation; navigating the corporate bureaucracy to the benefit of the team is primarily the responsibility of the manager. Finding a way to express the "level" of an engineer separately from their situation at their current company doesn't seem that crazy to me.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#73

Post by jajko »

valenterry wrote: post #52
aswerty wrote: post #47

> In general, mature engineers are comfortable with working within some nonzero amount of uncertainty and risk Just to take that sentence as a snapshot. I find the opposite is more relevant in the software field. Essentially, being solicited for an estimate on something where the certainty and predictability on what is being built is approaching zero. There is no doubt the "softness" of software engineering as oppose…

The difference between software developement and "other forms of engineering" is that you can copy software rather easily, but you cannot copy a bridge. If you could engineering would have the same issues in estimation. In fact, take any engineering project that cannot be copied (like a new, big, custom airport) and you'll quickly see how much worth those "classical engineering estimations" really are. A mature devel…

A lot of delays in engineering projects are caused by various political pressures, changes coming in the middle for whatever reason, natural or other physical disasters/events impacting physical construction way more than software development. Or new regulations complicating things more than previously thought.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#74

Post by austin-cheney »

pproe wrote: post #69
austin-cheney wrote: post #60

In my experience, especially in web development, senior developer just means excellent with boilerplate and an awareness of many tools. Thats it. The problem is nobody bothers to define competency and very few people can actually program for the web. I mean almost nobody. Countless times here on HN I have had hiring managers tell these people don’t exist. The way I would define competence in web development is super…

Why stop there? If you can't write your own browser engine or router firmware, are you really competent enough?

If you can’t program why pretend to be a programmer? What could possibly go wrong?

JavaScript is not assembly and life isn’t so hard to warrant the level of sympathy asinine comments like this expect. I am merely suggesting people should know how to do what they claim, and clearly they cannot. I have no sympathy for that.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#75

Post by oneepic »

Many "senior engineers" are BS and are just posturing. To be honest, this idea alone has been really, really hard for me to understand personally. I learn a lot by watching other people work, and I spent way too much time seeing people posturing when I really should've been watching kind, responsible, vulnerable, open-minded people with values.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#76

Post by ilc »

Level ends up depending on two things:

Skill - Do you have the raw skills to do the task at hand.

Scope - What scope are you doing that task at.

Example:

- Setting up a single file server for your team, pretty easy, low effort.

- Setting up a file server / SAN to hold corporate data.

- Designing file servers for the core of your business operations.

- Doing that for a vendor, where your software and architecture choices will impact possibly impact N companies.

(Ironically the last two are closer than you think.)

But it isn't about setting up the file server software, it is about the scope, the size of the team you are likely leading, the impact of the decisions etc. Automation, repeatability, etc... Actually architect the thing instead of winging it...

The bigger the numbers get... the bigger the title, and the better, you better be, both as an engineer and as a human, willing to accept that you are wrong, and find that better answer... People are relying on you to deliver.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#77

Post by fifilura »

game_the0ry wrote: post #66
Xcelerate wrote: post #35

A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level. I also have a definition of what I think level should ideally represent: the marginal contribution of a person’s influence on the outcome of a company, relative to the…

> A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level. I agree on paper that this is a great heuristic, but an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contribut…

> For example, I have seen very senior people leave suddenly (like no notice period) and the business does not even skip a beat.

Maybe that senior was great at training their replacement?

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#79

Post by snapcaster »

austin-cheney wrote: post #60

In my experience, especially in web development, senior developer just means excellent with boilerplate and an awareness of many tools. Thats it. The problem is nobody bothers to define competency and very few people can actually program for the web. I mean almost nobody. Countless times here on HN I have had hiring managers tell these people don’t exist. The way I would define competence in web development is super…

A lot of this list seems like gatekeeping as opposed to things actually relevant for most software engineering jobs

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#80

Post by Wheaties466 »

Xcelerate wrote: post #35

A bit of a cynical take (on Hacker News no less) but after being in the industry for a while, my view is that the best definition of “level” is self-referential: it corresponds to the ability of a person to convince others that they are at that level. I also have a definition of what I think level should ideally represent: the marginal contribution of a person’s influence on the outcome of a company, relative to the…

>I also have a definition of what I think level should ideally represent: the marginal contribution of a person’s influence on the outcome of a company, relative to the counterfactual situation where that person never worked there

What you are describing here is actual a stat they try to quantify in sports. W.A.R. Wins above replacement.

It is often used in MVP race talks.

Post reply on HN