On Being a Senior Engineer (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#91

Post by thehappyfellow » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

bongodongobob wrote: post #82

thehappyfellow wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A frequent form of lack of tolerance for risk I’ve seen is not being able to make a speed vs quality trade-off. One example: We were rolling out a change that had a small risk that we’ll have to manually reboot a couple of machines. The total disruption to business would’ve been less than $10k for sure. I had to fight people who wanted to spend 3 months writing a one-ff tooling lowering the chance of it happening. Ma…

$10k in lost sales/product during the downtime or $10k + the cost of IT to stand things back up, verify, resync + cost of other departments manually fixing other adjacent things that broke? People who don't work daily in infra tend to not understand that downtime like that can have massive ripple effects. That one server, unknown to you, might have tentacles that reach all over the company. It might generate 100 tick…

Sure, the approach I advocated for can have much worse consequences in general. However, in this particular case it was ~impossible for the outage to get that costly - we operated the servers and knew the blast radius. My estimate was for the total cost.

Also, 2 engineers working for 3 months cost a ton of money, not even counting for the opportunity cost of other things they could’ve been doing. If the potential outage cost was closer to $100k I’d likely stick with my decision.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#92

Post by szundi » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:45 PM UTC

charlie0 wrote: post #90

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. This is right here is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. I know my technical skills are just as good as (if not better than) most of my peers with more YOE on p…

Fwiw I was the CEO of my startup (obviously?). I could not even get why people are fighting each other, I was so naive and bad at communication.

Now I’m called a supercommunicator at the same company just because I took it seriously and took attention and vigorously checked out results of my communication attempts.

Yeah it was like 10 years, but first 1-2 with this mindset started with almost panicking to despair to be interesting to have more and more success. Now I almost enjoy it when I don’t think about how this is about fighting enthropy and finding out who is silly in what way later to counteract that.

Might be even fun.

Edit: most fun part when you just became quite good and got it and the troublemakers are forgot you on the loser shelf, trying baby level politics stuff on you just because they are lazy. Yeah, then you can root them out and have a nice company.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#93

Post by OrigamiPastrami » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

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…

> Perhaps you bring in a CEO who has a 90% chance of tripling the company’s revenue/growth and a 10% chance of leading the company to failure.

I realize these are hypothetical numbers, but they're so clearly backwards. It's more like a 10% chance for tripling the growth with a 90% chance of failure, and even that is being optimistic.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#94

Post by rsanheim » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

charlie0 wrote: post #90

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. This is right here is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. I know my technical skills are just as good as (if not better than) most of my peers with more YOE on p…

I think it is a trap to assume that communication skills and technical skills are mutually exclusive. In fact, many of the best engineers I've ever know were _also_ some of the best at communicating their ideas.

Granted, dysfunctional orgs, particularly large ones, will always end up promoting the sort of person I think you have in mind -- those who talk a great game, play politics, but don't really ship. That is an organizational and culture problem, though, and doesn't mean you should ignore your "soft" skills.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#95

Post by game_the0ry » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

trelane wrote: post #81

game_the0ry wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> an employer would be more than happy to pay you a junior or mid compensation while extract senior level contributions from you. The problem with this argument is that the level also gets you a seat at tables you otherwise don't get invited to. The places where the decisions get made. So "senior contribution" is not always possible without having the senior level on paper.

Debatable.

I have seen "senior" people hired from outside that do not make the same level of contributions as some one who is less senior by title and has years of tenure at their current position.

This is super common bc many companies would rather hire from outside instead of promoting from within. Also why there is so much turn over (engineers last for like 2-4 years then move on).

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#96

Post by jvanderbot » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:53 PM UTC

OrigamiPastrami wrote: post #93

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…

> Perhaps you bring in a CEO who has a 90% chance of tripling the company’s revenue/growth and a 10% chance of leading the company to failure. I realize these are hypothetical numbers, but they're so clearly backwards. It's more like a 10% chance for tripling the growth with a 90% chance of failure, and even that is being optimistic.

Well now they're hypothetical _and_ polarizing!

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#97

Post by charlie0 » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:55 PM UTC

szundi wrote: post #92

charlie0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is right here is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. I know my technical skills are just as good as (if not better than) most of my peers with more YOE on p…

Fwiw I was the CEO of my startup (obviously?). I could not even get why people are fighting each other, I was so naive and bad at communication. Now I’m called a supercommunicator at the same company just because I took it seriously and took attention and vigorously checked out results of my communication attempts. Yeah it was like 10 years, but first 1-2 with this mindset started with almost panicking to despair to…

I get were you are coming from. Focusing on comm skills is a big branch of a decision tree in terms future paths because it opens up possibility of joining the managerial class (CEO/CTO being potential options).

What convinced me against going down this branch for the time being is a quote from Naval Ravikant.

> No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most.

If I really enjoy tech stuff and not comms, I should focus on the tech stuff. Of course, I still need to have a good baseline at comms, but it doesn't have to be great.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#98

Post by game_the0ry » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:55 PM UTC

fifilura wrote: post #77

game_the0ry wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Maybe that senior was great at training their replacement?

No, this was not the case. It turned out that those folks that left just did not contribute beyond superficial "management", delegating to subordinates, coordinating emails. Sort of like a "team secretary".

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#99

Post by jvanderbot » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 6:56 PM UTC

rsanheim wrote: post #94

charlie0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is right here is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. I know my technical skills are just as good as (if not better than) most of my peers with more YOE on p…

I think it is a trap to assume that communication skills and technical skills are mutually exclusive. In fact, many of the best engineers I've ever know were _also_ some of the best at communicating their ideas. Granted, dysfunctional orgs, particularly large ones, will always end up promoting the sort of person I think you have in mind -- those who talk a great game, play politics, but don't really ship. That is an…

It's tempting to tell yourself you would be doing a disservice by learning to be a better communicator. After all, why give up technical skills?

When framed that way, it just seems completely obviously false.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#100

Post by spacephysics » Wed, Aug 21, 2024, 7:08 PM UTC

szundi wrote: post #92

charlie0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is right here is one of my biggest concerns at the moment. I know my technical skills are just as good as (if not better than) most of my peers with more YOE on p…

Fwiw I was the CEO of my startup (obviously?). I could not even get why people are fighting each other, I was so naive and bad at communication. Now I’m called a supercommunicator at the same company just because I took it seriously and took attention and vigorously checked out results of my communication attempts. Yeah it was like 10 years, but first 1-2 with this mindset started with almost panicking to despair to…

What are some of the politics stuff you mention?

I’ve been a senior engineer (definition loose) at a company I work at, and owner of a side business start up.

Politics at the startup are a bit easier, less than 10 people and such. But at the large company I’m trying to make sure I’m not caught off guard and be taken advantage of/other toxic politic stuff.