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A key skill of a senior developer is a sixth sense for this kind of unspoken requirements, and asking questions to flush them out. Not always possible, of cours

• nine_zeros 6y ago
  > A key skill of a senior developer is a sixth sense for this kind of unspoken requirements, and asking questions to flush them out. Not always possible, of course. While true, a key requirement for even senior developers to function well is good management or a good team lead. If effective management doesn't exist, the senior engineer should be made manager/team lead since he's doing that work anyway. On the other hand, if management is micromanaging, then the responsibility of clarification is on the micromanagers. Management of knowledge workers is a hard job. Most managers are incapable of understanding their reports and understanding their OWN standing among their reports.
• tstrimple 6y ago
  This is why it’s important for devs to understand the problem being solved with their code, not just blindly executing to a spec that everyone knows doesn’t spell out every last detail the customer is interested in. Stop treating devs as fungible spec builders and more as partners of the business so they can shift from building against specs to solving real problems. The devs who have this “sixth sense” are finding a mismatch between the spec and the underlying business problem problem they know they are trying to solve.