On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

The article opens with a standard trope of "the generations after me are bad" and builds their arguments from there. Not sure much value should be placed on this article

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#5

Post by delichon » Sun, Aug 18, 2024, 1:47 PM UTC

To me being a senior software engineer means that when your production system goes unstable from gremlins or cosmic rays or other mysterious sources of chaos and the business that pays for your food is in jeopardy, there's nobody to pass the buck to. You just have to buckle down and figure it out or update the resume and start working on your excuses or apologies to newly unemployed coworkers and their families.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#6

Post by neilv » Sun, Aug 18, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

> The tl;dr on trade-offs is that everyone cuts corners, in every project. Immature engineers discover them in hindsight, disgusted. Mature engineers spell them out at the onset of a project, accept them and recognize them as part of good engineering.

And if you are that "mature" engineer, you need to remember and realize that many relatively junior engineers and non-engineer stakeholders won't always understand why you're saying X, Y, and Z.

So you'll have to figure out how to get sufficient shared understanding, or at least a lot of blind trust in your judgment.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#7

Post by jspaw » Sun, Aug 18, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #4

The article opens with a standard trope of "the generations after me are bad" and builds their arguments from there. Not sure much value should be placed on this article

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#8

Post by daliusd » Sun, Aug 18, 2024, 2:55 PM UTC

I like how this article is still relevant after 12 years. It gave me some ideas why I have some problems working with my colleague (as well senior level engineer).

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#9

Post by 000ooo000 » Sun, Aug 18, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

>Avoiding responsibility for estimates is another way of saying, “I’m not ready to be relied upon for building critical pieces of infrastructure.”

There's potential for significant nuance in such a scenario and to reduce it to this silly quote hurts the piece, IMO.

Re: On Being a Senior Engineer (2012)

#10

Post by 000ooo000 » Sun, Aug 18, 2024, 3:12 PM UTC

I hope one day we all can realise that all of the pontification about the defining qualities of a 'senior' engineer, or the height at which the bar should be set, whether the bar has slowly been lowered over time, etc is all pointless. Senior or not senior is a lens useful only to HR and insecure engineers.