An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding

https://skamille.medium.com/an-incomplete-list-of-skills-senior-engineers-need-beyond-coding-8ed4a521b29f

by saikatsg • 4 years ago

69 3 4 years ago

skamille.medium.com

I'm senior, or something to that effect. That's what my title says anyway.

A lot of these resonate with me but I also bucket about half of them under the "someone else isn't doing their job but our collective failure will be my problem even if it's not my fault, so fine I will paper over both your and our org's dysfunction in order to still meet my expectations."

So, I dunno. All orgs are dysfunctional to some degree, and things fall through cracks and people don't do their job (usually through no real fault of their own, their incentives might just not be aligned the same way yours are, or they're juggling things, etc). So these skills will be useful no matter where you go.

But I was senior at my last place too and didn't need to use many of those "papering over dysfunction" skills and was generally happier with my work and results and life and such.

So, I think some of these skills are about being senior, and I think others are a lot more like "how to be senior [at a big dysfunctional sufficiently FAANG-shaped type company]". My last place was not very FAANG-y and my current place is quite FAANG-y.

So YMMV. Mine certainly did. But the faangier it is, the better it generally pays, so... cheers I suppose.

comfypotato• 4 years ago

I’ll extend your statement to say that “these skills will be useful no matter where you go or what you do”. This article is a load of common sense, and I’m mildly offended by the condescending tone of the writing. I stopped reading halfway through the list. The author got stuck in one or more extremely dysfunctional organizations and is harboring resentments. In a functioning organization, you’re never going to have to deal with a superior who is embarrassed to admit they don’t understand a technical topic (it would instead be a normal conversation in which a technical person explains things to a non-technical person). Similarly, you would never roll your eyes at a superior’s lack of knowledge about a technical subject in a functional organization.

victorclf• 4 years ago

As someone looking for a job, the list is clearly missing item 0.

0. How to market yourself and get a job as senior engineer

An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding

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