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Ask HN: What do top engineers you know do that others don't?

• fpalmans 7y ago
  Whenever someone talks about senior engineers, two close friends spring to mind immediately, one of which is my brother (software development). Even Though I am convinced that experience (and thus age) contributes to the segregation between engineers and senior engineers, I also think that it is a special frame of mind which enables some people to truly become the top of the crop. Despite my inflated self image and overly optimistic assessment of my own intelligence, and despite the fact that I am convinced I would have little trouble convincing an f500 company to give me the title of senior engineer, I know that I can never attain the 'seniority' my brother and friend already possess. Having scanned through the responses, I didn't immediately see the specific behaviors I have found in top engineers. First of all, I disagree with the humility trait. I would not call top engineers humble. I would not call them arrogant either. Top engineers have strong opinions, yet are flexible. They have their ideas about best practices, yet are 100% comfortable adopting something else. Using a stupid example in software development, tabs or spaces. Number of spaces. Top engineers will have their preference, whichever it is. And they have thought about it, deeply. Not just from their perspective, but from the perspective of all engineers, future, present, and past. You may probe as deeply as you want, they will have looked at it from every possible angle and will be able to explain to you in every detail why they prefer the one over the other. And! This is so, so important... And! They will put their preferences immediately to the side if that's just not how things are done on this particular project, in this particular team. I wish I had better words to convey this thought... Top engineers will work with what they have to get to where they want to go. And, that's not just the technology, it's also the team. Senior engineers in your team will automatically make everything better. Sometimes their value is educating the entire team on best practices, sometimes it is just driving towards success despite the all of the feces. Sometimes they might come over as arrogant, because they can speak with confidence on certain topics. That's another thing that sets top engineers apart from junior and regular engineers, whenever they speak with confidence, it is because they are in fact confident. And they are only confident when they have analyzed an issue sufficiently deeply and from everyone's perspective that they are comfortable being probed deeply. When they do not speak with overzealous confidence, it is because they are still learning about the subject. And they will learn and analyze it deeply if that is necessary. A single inconsistency, or a single counter example, or even a single ambiguity is sufficient for them to reconsider their position completely. Also, senior engineers will never assume they know anything. They tend to listen attentively whenever anyone is talking. When someone says something 'stupid' they won't assume that the person is stupid, or said something stupid, they will assume they did not understand something and ask for clarification. They tend to not jump to conclusions... If something is ambiguous, they will identify it and ask for clarification. As a result, they will often ask for follow-ups in the future... such as: "Thanks for the information, can I get back to you if I have more questions?" Now that I think of it, I don't think I have ever seen someone whom I consider to be a top engineer not keep that door open.... I hope this helps.
• Rocafella888 7y ago
  The best engineers I worked with were very respectful of my work (UI Design) and were always happy to share their knowledge. They also ask me questions and ask me about how we can do things better. They are constantly looking for ways to improve our products for the customers, in contrast to the developers who have an attitude of "this'll do".
• haidrali 7y ago
  listen this talk by DHH you might get an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfmrkyP81M&app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LfmrkyP81M&app=desktop
  • codesternews 7y ago
    Thanks!
  • aledalgrande 7y ago
    I had missed that video, it's great!
• tetek 7y ago
  1. Don't bitch about legacy software 2. Are willing to help with getting proper requirements 3. Don't need a JIRA task for everything 4. Don't say they are done if something is untestable 5. Are willing to do stuff other than their skill (eg. one of the graphics required for the project is too big, top engineer opens up gimp, resizes and continue. Bad engineer will report to manager that design team did shitty job, reassign JIRA ticket, write two emails and wait for new a graphic) 6. Top programmers deliver well packed, documented software, keep repository clean with easy setup steps accessible for everyone. 7. Top engineers enjoy what they do, and are making the project enjoyable for everyone, keep high morales and claim responsibility
  • codesternews 7y ago
    Also, Don't bitch about other's code. You don't know in what constraints they have to write it.
    • bobosha 7y ago
      Just "don't bitch" period.
      • masukomi 7y ago
        other than avoiding hurting people's feelings. why not? (honestly asking) bad code should be called out. It's reasonable to feel frustrated by bad to terrible decisions that your predecessors made and left you to clean up the consequences of. when a group of people is presented with a shitty situation verbally commiserating with your co-sufferers is a form of group therapy. Yes, it has to be tempered with hope and humor, but... bitching is good. Cynicism actually helps ward off burnout (barely, but it's one thing that contributes to warding it off).
        • haecceity 7y ago
          All existing code is bad code.
        • 7y ago
• chrisbennet 7y ago
  If you’re working at the edge (or beyond) of your competency that’s normal.
• ericb 7y ago
  * Better googling. Time-restricted, url restricted, site restricted searches. Search with the variant parts of error messages removed. * Read the source of upstream dependencies. Fix or fork them if needed. * They're better at finding forks with solutions and gleaning hints from semi-related issues. * Formulate more creative hypothesis when obvious lines of investigation run out. The best don't give up. * Dig in to problems with more angles of investigation. * Have more tools in their toolbelt for debugging like adding logging, monkey-patching, swapping parts out, crippling areas to rule things out, binary search of affected code areas. * Consider the business. * Consider user-behavior. * Assume hostile users (security-wise). * Understand that the UI is not a security layer. Anything you can do with PostMan your backend should handle. * Whitelist style-security over blacklist style. * See eventual problems implied by various solutions. * "The Math."
  • huffmsa 7y ago
    > Assume hostile users (security-wise). Ah, a personal favorite of mine which often makes other people uncomfortable. 1. Users are like Marines, if it can be broken, it will be broken. If it's use is not clearly marked, it will be used incorrectly. If it can be fucked (literally or figuratively), it will be fucked. 2. Users are malicious and are actively trying to backdoor everything you do. Why? Because it's the first thing I do with a new product / what I do with the competitions products. 3. It is the developers responsibility to mitigate the above cases.
    • kingbirdy 7y ago
      > If it's use is not clearly marked, it will be used incorrectly. In my experience clear markings aren't enough to stop it being used incorrectly.
      • huffmsa 7y ago
        Ah yes. Should be revised to "unless it is clearly marked, it will rarely be used as intended. Even when clearly marked, users will misuse in ways you couldn't imagine"
      • 7y ago
• huffmsa 7y ago
  1. Knowing when it's okay to implement a "good enough" solution versus taking the time to implement the "academically correct" solution. Or otherwise put, knowing when to do things by the book, and when it's okay not to.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
    I'd go further: - knowing how to make the solution "the right level of good", as opposed to "academically perfect" or "unmaintainable hack". - being able to design and implement a "good enough" solution that is still reasonably maintainable (if needed) much better and/or faster than others
    • huffmsa 7y ago
      "Correct enough" is the phrase I usually use here. Knowing where on the scale to set that mark requires being able to bridge speed of implementation, execution, maintainable, upgradability and the overarching business goals you're building for. So really a broad range of understanding that only "excellent" senior developers will possess
• FunnyLookinHat 7y ago
  * More interested in working methodically than frantically. (If the alarms are firing but they still follow method over shotgun approach.) * Reads the docs of dependencies rather than blindly googling.
• EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago
  Care about their responsibilities
• hprotagonist 7y ago
  * Consider ethics first. * Happy to ask the uncomfortable questions early. * Will ask technical questions proactively without caring about maintaining face. * Has good discipline and communicates well.
• vidanay 7y ago
  Have the ability to distinguish causes from symptoms.
• analog31 7y ago
  I call myself a scientist, not an engineer, so I conveniently rule myself out of contention. But I think the best engineers... * Multidisciplinary * Quantitative * Scientific * Curious, skeptical * Thorough * Willing to abandon a bad idea * Willing to advocate a junior colleague's good idea As an add-on question: Which of the properties mentioned in this thread do your organization actively drive out of people?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• hadiz 7y ago
  Play video games. I am actually serious.
  • aretaic 7y ago
    I'm curious, could you please elaborate?
    • hadiz 7y ago
      Much like a codebase, some of the brilliant engineers I've met relish the video games that lets them scour around the universe, think about strategy, and get into action. It's like watching someone attempting an Olympic weight-lift move.
      • someisaac 7y ago
        What games do you recommend?
        • hadiz 7y ago
          Unfortunately I don't play games myself. But Anno 1800 is something my very good colleague plays these days.
• giancarlostoro 7y ago
  One thing I havent seen posted which I mention in threads like this one anywhere I am online: humility I don't care how good you are, if your personality is hostile and toxic, you're not making the team productive. If you can't take honest feedback during peer review, or QA or even from the client, then you need to evaluate why. The best engineers I know are humble. They don't freak out when you point out a bug, they look into it and figure it out, then they share with you what they found vs what you found in order to determine if it is indeed a bug. Then there's developers that think all their code is perfect and sacred. Nobody likes working with those kind of developers.
  • tartoran 7y ago
    Humility is underrated. I know a few devs that are not only a pleasure but inspiring to work with. Unfortunately few appreciate this virtue, schmoozers always get ahead.
  • bob33212 7y ago
    There is a grey area where a non-technical manager wants to make a decision without understanding the long term impacts of that decision. Is the good engineer submissive here and go with the flow or does the good engineer put their foot down and suggest that that is not a good idea?
    • skybrian 7y ago
      There are sometimes alternatives: - Let people learn from mistakes by making sure they can be backed out easily. Do more prototyping, etc. - Figure out how to make mistakes more visible to everyone, not just you. These are also helpful when you are the one making the mistake.
    • giancarlostoro 7y ago
      No, of course not. Humility doesn't mean you become completely submissive. There's a fine difference between a great engineer blurting out "THAT WILL NEVER WORK, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING!?" and... "Hey, Jim, I think that's a reasonable proposal, however, I have some concerns ..." which do you think sounds like the professional / good engineer, and which one sounds like a Junior whose ahead of themselves? I've met people who literally believe humility to be a weakness, I think a lot of people misunderstand what it means to be humble these days.
• awill 7y ago
  They're better owners. They ship, and follow up on bugs until they're proud of what they shipped.
• celim307 7y ago
  Know when the juice is worth the squeeze, whether it be a refactor, a political fight, or even the job itself. There are not a lot of hills I'll die on anymore, while when I was younger everything seemed life or death. Now I got other things to worry about.
• b0sk 7y ago
  They have a great mental model of the inner workings on the product. Even for a part of a code they haven't seen in a long time. When you debug code with such a person, you notice that they seamlessly translate the piece of code on the screen to the mental model and back (it probably takes hours for Jr engineers to piece those together). Neo deciphering the matrix is a good analogy.
• rv-de 7y ago
  overengineer and prematurely optimize everything because a pragmatic approach to software development is too boring and you couldn't use a lot of fancy tools and features otherwise. tongue in cheek, yes, but with a grain of truth, I'd argue.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    I'd argue that those who do so are "top engineers", but not actually top engineers. They have the reputation (especially in their own minds), but they're not the real deal.
• chance-name 7y ago
  The best engineers I know do their best to discover the core problem. They ask why a problem should be solved. They also challenge “known” assumptions and do their best to discover the real constraints to a problem.
• sunasra 7y ago
  1. Research & Finalize architecture design before jumping to code 2. Take code as documentation. This helps to debug things faster 3. Focus more on problem solving than language/tool priorities 4. Listens more and always towards exploring and experimenting new things. This improves breadth knowledge
  • ahartmetz 7y ago
    1.5. Be willing to rethink the architecture when it turns out problematic. I have seen systems that probably looked good as a diagram before a line of code was written, but had to work around their own architecture with gross hacks. Architecture is important, but organizations employing "software architects" tend to be bad at software.
    • ahartmetz 7y ago
      The second part may read as a non-sequitur. The connection is that in organizations that have separate architect roles, architects are shielded from their mistakes because they don't work on implementation, and their work usually isn't questioned. The worst thing I remember is a web API where some call could fail but didn't tell you, it just gave you some kind of plausible looking inert data. The call to query system status was separate, so there was always a time of check / time of use problem. Also there was a transition period when the original call did return an error but the system status API didn't yet. Nobody (I hope) comes up with such a disaster while implementing and testing it.
  • tartoran 7y ago
    1 1/2 Do a prototype to get a better picture
• rado 7y ago
  UX don't matter
• api 7y ago
  A few I don't see mentioned: They are strategically lazy, putting a lot of thought into how to simplify at all levels. Great engineers loathe complexity and indulge in it reluctantly. Solutions should never be more complex than what the problem domain demands. A corollary to above: they use language features and constructs to solve problems, not to show off how smart they are by constructing the most "clever" bit of language gymnastics with which to waste the time of those who have to maintain the code later (including the author!). They know assembly language and the basics of CPU architecture regardless of what language they use so they understand what is actually happening. They also have a grasp of other aspects of the system like networking and storage even if they do not do much with those directly. They know the history of computers and computing and how things have been done at various points in the past. This helps them spot fads and rediscoveries of old things that have been tried already as well as generally deepening understanding. They are skeptical of fads and don't instantly adopt whatever thing is trendy unless it's a genuine improvement.
• harel 7y ago
  A lot of good points were made. I'll add one I think was missed (and I'll avoid the title "engineer"): A top developer knows that the stack does not matter to the user. The stack provides interest or a familiar or economical grounds to said developer but the user - they couldn't care less.
• gargarplex 7y ago
  Are there any books you know that have been recommended to you by top engineers? Preferring recommendations for books with exercises.
• zaphar 7y ago
  One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet that I think to engineers do is read the side code of the third party libraries and frameworks that they use. Usually when they are trying to figure why something is broken, but sometimes just when they are learning how to use it.
• stickfigure 7y ago
  I boil it down to two things: #1 Rapidly Climb Learning Curves The ability to quickly learn enough about new subjects to be useful. New technologies or APIs; new algorithms; mathematical or statistical subjects; and most importantly, your problem domain. Some of this ability is a skill, "knowing how to learn", which covers google-fu, reading comprehension, prioritization, time management, etc. Some of this ability comes from having enough aggregate experience that new information just clicks into place like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Some of this ability comes from the confidence of having climbed enough seemingly insurmountable learning curves that this next one is "just another day at the office". A sign you're doing this wrong: "I need training!" #2 Understand The Customer IMHO, the best engineers are half product managers. You can easily get a 10X improvement in productivity by building the right features and not building the wrong ones. Yes, professional product managers are great, but technical limitations often impact product design. A great engineer knows when to push back or suggest alternatives. This requires empathy not only for the customer, but for the product management team. This ability is also tightly coupled with #1 - you need to quickly come up to speed on the problem domain, whatever that may be. If you wan't to be a great engineer, don't study algorithms (until you need an algorithm, of course), study the particular business that you're in. A sign you're doing this wrong: "Whatever, just tell me how you want it and I'll make it that way!"
  • mindtricks 7y ago
    As a long-time product manager, I completely agree that customer empathy and domain knowledge go a long way, especially around tactical needs. The easiest way to start is to just ask yourself, "If I were using this product/service/feature, would I want it to work this way?"
    • drewcoo 7y ago
      That comes right before getting customer data or asking them, right? It's easy to make up just-so stories and completely disconnect from customers' reality if you're stuck in your own head.
      • 7y ago
• rasengan 7y ago
  Code all day and all night.
  • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    For the most part, no. That's what wannabes do, trying to prove they're top engineers. Most top engineers quit when they're tired, because they know that if they keep going when mentally tired, they create more problems than they solve. There are a few top engineers that get bored when they're not coding, rather than getting tired after doing it too long. But that's kind of orthogonal to whether they're a top engineer or not. In over 30 years, I've known one person who was both a top engineer and a "code all day and all night" (or at least all evening) person.
    • rasengan 7y ago
      You just said I was right lol
      • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Wrong. Doubly wrong, in fact. Wrong in your first post, and wrong now. I did not say you were right, no matter how you try to spin it.
• notyourday 7y ago
  De-risk. De-risk. De-risk.
• xwowsersx 7y ago
  The best engineers I've worked with always ask the question "what are we trying to solve here" whenever working on something that involves more than a trivial time investment. Nine times out of ten, answering that question clarifies critical issues and avoids going down to a high cost path.
• kthejoker2 7y ago
  I can't recommend Gary Klein's Sources of Power enough, it is stuffed with awesome mental models, real life parables, research findings, and one quotable passage after another on expert decisionmaking. From the book, things experts do more/better/faster/etc than novices. * Identify patterns faster and successfully predict future events more often. * Recognize anomalies - especially negative anomalies i.e. something didn't happen that should - quickly and take appropriate actions. * Identify leverage points within their architecture to solve new problems and deliver new features faster and with less effort. * Make finer discriminations of events and data, at a level of detail novices don't consider. * Understand the tradeoffs and consequences of an option. * (I like this one) Recognize expertise in others and defer as many decisions as possible to that expertise. * Their ability to "context switch" when describing a situation to other experts vs novices vs non-particpants. And one that's not explicitly from the book but is contained in its wisdom: * Skate where the puck is going, not where it is.
  • BoiledCabbage 7y ago
    All great advice - will have to check out the book
• srikz 7y ago
  There are many qualities, which have also been listed by others but I found to be extremely common is this: Be very organized / systematic.. - in their thoughts and how they articulate their points during discussions - in building their personal knowledge base - in how they approach problems, be it during solving a customer problem (adding a new feature) or debugging code
• BerislavLopac 7y ago
  Abstraction.
• okareaman 7y ago
  If you believe Uncle Bob Martin it's the ability to pair. He recently tweeted "If you don’t like pairing, don’t pair. But be prepared for the folks who have developed the pairing skill to fly past you."
• honkycat 7y ago
  1. NEVER practice Coincidence driven development. If you get lost, and no longer know why something is not working, do not just keep fiddling and changing things. Simplify the problem. Disable all confounding variables and observe your changes. Open up a repl and try to reproduce the issue in your repl. Read the source code of your dependencies. I have seen this a lot: People fiddle with dependencies trying to get them to work. Crack the code open and read it. 2. Choose your battles. Not every hill can be the one you die on. You cannot control every part of a code-base when you are working on a team. People are going to move your cheese and you need to learn to not let that affect you. 3. Learn to lose. Similar to the last one. Treat technical discussions as discussions, not a competition. Use neutral language that frames your ideas as NOT your ideas, but just other options. Keep an open mind and let the best idea win. 4. Write tests. There are outliers here, but the majority of talented engineers I have worked with are all on the same page: If you don't have tests, you cannot safely refactor your code[0]. If you cannot safely refactor your code, you cannot improve your codebase. If you cannot improve your codebase, it turns to mush. 5. Simplicity is golden. Keep your projects simple, doing the bare minimum of what you need, and do not refer to your crystal ball for what you might need later. Single responsibility principle. Keep your Modules and your functions simple and small, and combine them to create more complicated behaviour. 6. Quit shitty jobs. If you are not learning at a job, or they are abusing you, you need to get the hell out of there. Burn-out is real. Burn out on something cool that helps YOU, not pointless toil for some corporate overlord. 0: Martin Fowler's Refactoring 2nd edition
• AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  Being able to type/write accurately and quickly. Seriously overlooked skill. Huge in the terminal, huge on the business/product side.
• logandavis 7y ago
  Great thread, great answers! Follow-on question: OK, so how does your company's interview process test for these traits? It's mind-boggling to me how many organizations understand that the most important traits of a great engineer are "soft skills" (how many answers here are about really understanding big-O complexity or pointer math?)... and yet are content to interview candidates with whiteboard algorithms problems. Interview for greatness, not for having-brushed-up-on-Djikstra's-ness!
• jdsully 7y ago
  The #1 trait is they will dig until they fully understand the problem. When writing code if the first draft Is not good they will rearchitect until it makes cohesive sense. Time spent getting it right the first time saves significantly more time than dealing with the fallout of not doing the right thing.
  • jasonpeacock 7y ago
    So many people stop when it works, without understanding why it works. Or not caring how ugly it is. They have no long-term perspective about the future cost of support - fixing bugs, adding features, or just understanding what was done. When something changes and their snowflake solution breaks, their first reaction is to blame the external change for causing their poor solution to fail. Top engineers don't do this. They understand why their solution works, they know its limitations, and their solutions are understandable and supportable. This significantly lowers the total cost over time and is what helps projects deliver on time with quality.
    • ScottFree 7y ago
      > So many people stop when it works, without understanding why it works. Most work environments train programmers to act that way. I find this is especially the case at workplaces that (sort of) follow scrum and agile. In most of these places, junior to mid-level programmers are given a task to work on that already has an hours estimate on it. Managers like to optimize efficiency and programmer time, so that estimate is always tight. Asking why we're doing this task is rarely received well and the tight time estimate means there's barely time to make the change work in the first place, let alone understand why it works. We're literally training our devs not to be top devs.
      • aledalgrande 7y ago
        The reverse side of the coin is an engineer who has complete leeway on what they do and they spend time "redecorating" their code ad nauseam. I think there is a golden mean to be found.
• l3db3tt3r 7y ago
  Tact: They have a broad and inclusive means of understanding/managing perceptions, and motivations that starts from humility. Their ability in troubleshooting, problem solving, risk-assessment, is detail oriented, and seeing the forest for the trees. Being keen-sighted, and maintaining a field of view, and depth of field. Informing, teaching, educating: They have a pervasive means of being able to explain, walk through a problem and/or solution to a verity of audience types. Some of the best at ELI5. Understands the Intent, over just the labeled end goal. (As basically what the US Military defines Intent as.) Ability to give and take critique (also sharing with Tact above). This always seems to infer just the negative, criticize/criticism, and the opposite is often overlooked.
• sys_64738 7y ago
  They say No.
• karmakaze 7y ago
  They understand the difference between essential and accidental (I prefer the term incidental) complexity. This isn't a simple categorization as something that may seem extraneous, may have a near-term benefit making it somewhat essential. What's absolutely undesired is that which is added by complex designs that serve no pragmatic purpose for the user or developer, other than the satisfaction of an executed grand design. This can sometimes be summed up as that uncommon form of common sense.
• acd 7y ago
  Key to good app performance starts at the data structures used in the app. If those algorithms have good run / insert time the app will run good. Cache layers is another key to good app performance. It is important to test the code base. The central bank system is making every day people poorer as they print new debt. They got wage inflation imported from cheap globalized goods wrong. This part is annoying to know since most do not understand this flow fully. It’s engineering but financial such. New printed money is flowing to automation and are deflationary. Understanding other engineering areas other than your own field and seeing strength/weaknesses in those.
• pomnia 7y ago
  Top engineers understand. The hardware, the OS, the protocols.They use that understanding to solve problems. The comprehension is the differentiator between top and anyone else.
• franzwong 7y ago
  # Prefer simple or replaceable solution. Avoid unnecessary layer of abstraction. If you can't explain to others within a few words, you will forget how it works and it will be unmanageable few months later. # Prefer un-opinionated framework. This comment is opinionated. From my own experience, opinionated framework only looks good in the first 5 minutes. You always need to implement a more difficult solution to solve problems afterwards. # Offload your task to your subordinates People can only gain experience by failure. It won't become a serious problem if you can give guidance and review. The major benefit is you can spend more time on anything else.
• m_ke 7y ago
  The most impressive engineers that I've worked with were great at focusing on the task at hand and finishing them without getting distracted by other issues that they came across in the process. They didn't optimize things prematurely or try to come up with new abstractions for things that might come up in the future. They didn't get into stupid arguments over minor details and were focused on completing and shipping features.
• ilaksh 7y ago
  Maybe some don't subscribe to narcissistic worldviews.
• ScottFree 7y ago
  They're interested in things other than their primary domain. Some of the best web developers I know spent some time making video games, programming microcontrollers, designing telecommunications systems, etc. They take the experience and knowledge they've gained from those other areas and use them to make better web applications.
• diehunde 7y ago
  Then don't hesitate when choosing a simple and maybe old-fashioned solution if it's the right one for the problem. This could go from simple algorithms, database engines, languages, to architectures and system design.
• backspaces 7y ago
  From 50,000 feet: - Top engineers are able to solve a problem, and are hired to do so. - Others are able to solve tasks, and are hired to do so.
• heurist 7y ago
  Trust your intuition, but don't be a dick. Pick your fights. Software is more art than science. Learn from those who have gone before you. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E86phiV8w2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E86phiV8w2M