ryanlpeterman

Went viral on Twitter since people liked this list, sharing since I hope it can be helpful to others too. There are no affiliate links in here, just a fun exercise I did last week

Same. Coding helps us communicate with machines, writing helps us communicate with each other

Thank you :)

Absolutely, collaboration is much smoother if we write well

I agree, it’s much easier to hand wave in conversation

+1, knowing your audience is critical

I'm currently taking the approach of writing regularly. My thinking is that quantity will lead to quality

Also I'm eager to receive feedback on it. That's why I'm so grateful for the Hacker News community's comments!

Perhaps that will make the engineers that have the skill stand out more. Only time will tell

Reading is somewhat painful for people if it isn't entertaining. When I write things that are information dense at work, I try my best to condense it to be mindful of people's time. It has worked well for me

Just picked it up, thanks for the rec!

Here's the Amazon link if anyone else is thinking about reading it - https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft...

Agreed. The more I write for a public audience, the more I realize that keeping people's attention is hard

Humor sounds like a great tool to keep people reading

Often both. After I write something, it feels like it's a free benefit to also share it with others. I'm grateful the Hacker News community is so giving with feedback (eventhough I've gotten torn to shreds a few times haha)

Thank you for your kind words :)

That's a good point, I think Paul Graham has a similar line of thinking in the relationship between reading and writing. I linked this tweet in my article (https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1618747829975130115) but I've seen other places he's mentioned something similar as well.

This was a great read, thank you for sharing :)

I do a similar thing. Especially helpful for long-running investigations that are difficult to root cause. Documenting the current state of the investigation allows people to jump in easily and helps everyone tell what the current conclusions are.

This is an interesting take. Thanks for providing a perspective that isn't a technical class. I agree clear thinking is critical.

Networking is worth an honorable mention I agree.

If you don't learn about grammars, lexers, parsers, ASTs,... you're at a huge disadvantage in many situations.

Can you get an example? I don't recall a time where I used this knowledge in the last 5 years as a systems generalist in big tech.

Yeah that's a fair point. There may be a lot of implicit understanding I have that I can't trace to a specific class that has helped me.

Still, I think I could cut out at least half of the classes which I'm confident didn't matter and still have similar thinking.

Agreed, 100%. Eventhough most of the classes didn't matter for my career, getting the credential was worth it to help me get my foot in the door for interviews.

I loved CS181 ("Intro to Finite Theory Automata"). I don't remember using much from what I learned there in the last 5 years as a SWE but wow that was a fun class!

Agreed, there's some classes that will matter if you're in a particular field. I haven't used statistics or linear algebra in the last 5 years as a systems generalist though

An assignment isn't late if N=0

Agreed there is a balance. I wrote a little about when and how to ask questions as a junior engineer - https://twitter.com/ryanlpeterman/status/1628803643171557376

My promotion from junior to mid-level definitely came from sheer volume of work. I think I could have dialed that back a bit and been more tactical with better results.

As a mentor, you need to understand that you cannot get everyone to have steller results. Your goal is to provide a lift with your advice so that they are in a better place than they would have been without you.

This became clear to me when I provided the same coaching to two engineers. One grew at a breakneck pace while the other grew more slowly.

Focusing on code is probably a good thing when you are a junior. Leave the higher level problems for a little later down the line.

Agreed that junior engineers should focus on code with most time (but not all). If you focus on the low hanging fruit outside of code you can have more impact overall without too much time investment there.

I agree it's easy to see it that way as an IC (I thought the same!). I think the more senior you become the more you will view impact from the lens of your team/org, even as an IC

Hahah also good clickbait. Maybe one day if I'm lucky

I learned a lot from your post, thanks for writing!