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I hate these lists because I don’t think a senior engineer is a one size fits all skill set. You can be a mediocre coder but amazing at social aspects and mento

I hate these lists because I don’t think a senior engineer is a one size fits all skill set. You can be a mediocre coder but amazing at social aspects and mentorship. You can be an anxious wreck in social situations but have amazing engineering abilities.

bilalel 5y ago
One can also take one skill out of the list as goal to achieve. I don't think an engineer is able to be perfect in all skilset. This kind of list should be seen as an inspiration and challenge you in the skill we are lacking from.
pc86 5y ago
Both of these are true but I don't think either one could be a very good senior engineer (passable, maybe) and probably not even a passable principal/staff engineer.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  An engineer who can solve a hard problem is better for a project than a team of great people who just can't figure out how to do it. A senior doesn't have to be a leader.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Yes but someone who can't effectively determine what problems need to be solved doesn't scale, not does this engineer scale to problems big/hard enough that they require more than one person
  - jghn 5y ago
    In most cases there becomes a point of diminishing returns in terms of pure engineering skill. At that point it is far more efficient to be able to improve over all output, not just your own. That's where these skills come in. Think of these as things which become critical after the engineer has mastered the skill of solving a hard problem.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > At that point it is far more efficient to be able to improve over all output, not just your own. There's only so much you can improve if the output is low. After all, if all your seniors spend their days managing, who does the actual coding? Juniors. And what happens with them after they've "mastered the skill of solving a hard problem"? They become seniors, stop coding and start teaching the next batch of juniors. This seems like purposefully limiting the quality of the work, and increasing the time it takes. > there becomes a point of diminishing returns in terms of pure engineering skill It's quite surprising, if we think about it - software engineering is about as close as you can get to pure productivity multiplier. It shouldn't have diminishing returns, not so soon. It should have exponential returns. After all, the same skills that can be applied to a problem, can be also applied to a meta-problem of solving the problem faster.
      - ashneo76 5y ago
        I agree. I disagree with the forced rat race perspective that elevation of engineering is management. By that town, all managers need to go do some technical work and get better at that.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        As I have learned in offshoring projects, that is a matter of scale, you just need to scale the amount of juniors carring stones, the quality is overrated as long as the product line (completly unrelated to software) keeps working.
      - minusSeven 5y ago
        In software engineering what 1 person can do in a day 2 person can do in 2 days.
qsort 5y ago
There is such a thing as a Mendoza line, though. Being mediocre at coding is fine if you can make up for it with other skills. Being downright bad is not. Same thing for running meetings, writing passable English, being able to explain technical concepts to laymen and so on.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  If you are running meetings I'm not sure you are still in the senior developer category. These are more lead developer skills.
  - walshemj 5y ago
    I think the author means "senior" as a concept (For varying levels of seniority, from senior, to staff, and beyond.) and not just a point on a progression path. #1 Running meeting and knowing how they work is a really good skill for every one to have
  - Mehdi2277 5y ago
    Junior level developers at companies I've worked at are often taught to run meetings as part of helping them grow. If a couple junior developers work on a project then having them take turns facilitating the meeting was common. My team's meetings at my last company we also had everyone take turns facilitating it. There were some pre-meeting tasks that the facilitator was also responsible for like organizing some documentation related to last week on-call alerts + commenting on any product metrics for the main product we worked on (most of the time it was looks normal). A lot of growth I've seen is about having people get opportunities to do things more commonly done by people at higher levels. While most design documents are written by seniors or above sometimes mid level/junior engineers get an opportunity to write one and all design documents get a lot of feedback anyway.
  - tayo42 5y ago
    That doesn't make sense, leading meetings is a basic skill. Unless you mean something else then what I think you mean by meetings. This is stuff we've been doing through high school and college doing stuff like group project meetings. Personally I've lead meetings at all levels in my career so far
nomdep 5y ago
This was written with the tunnel vision of a middle manager. Take it with a grain of salt
jmchuster 5y ago
There's nothing "wrong" if someone is an anxious wreck socially while being an amazing engineer. It just means that the company also needs to hire a good manager to take care of this brilliant individual. VS if they could hire someone who's maybe not as brilliant, but still sufficiently good to execute the engineering tasks that the company requires, but doesn't need a manager or anyone to tell them what to do, just does it and makes everything run smoothly. In fact, maybe even communicating with other teams and helping them run even smoother than before. Then you can see where in the first scenario you had to hire two people and only one in the second case, and in the second case you're getting even more additional value with your senior engineer doing partial manager-y things. So now the second individual is maybe 2x as valuable to the company as the first, and you can see it's a no-brainer for the company which to go with.
watwut 5y ago
> You can be a mediocre coder but amazing at social aspects and mentorship. I don't think you can. You can be good developer and amazing and mentorship or social aspect. But if you are mediocre one, you can teach others what you dont know.
- aliasEli 5y ago
  When I was a university student we had teacher assistants, who were more senior students. In most cases the best teacher assistants were not the brilliant students but rather the more mediocre students. The cause is that these mediocre students had really struggled to understand the material and therefore could really understand our problems in learning it. Many brilliant people are really lousy teachers.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Teacher assistants are not recruited from mediocre students. They are all good students and all above average interested.

bilalel 5y ago

One can also take one skill out of the list as goal to achieve. I don't think an engineer is able to be perfect in all skilset. This kind of list should be seen as an inspiration and challenge you in the skill we are lacking from.

pc86 5y ago

Both of these are true but I don't think either one could be a very good senior engineer (passable, maybe) and probably not even a passable principal/staff engineer.

alisonkisk 5y ago
An engineer who can solve a hard problem is better for a project than a team of great people who just can't figure out how to do it. A senior doesn't have to be a leader.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Yes but someone who can't effectively determine what problems need to be solved doesn't scale, not does this engineer scale to problems big/hard enough that they require more than one person
- jghn 5y ago
  In most cases there becomes a point of diminishing returns in terms of pure engineering skill. At that point it is far more efficient to be able to improve over all output, not just your own. That's where these skills come in. Think of these as things which become critical after the engineer has mastered the skill of solving a hard problem.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > At that point it is far more efficient to be able to improve over all output, not just your own. There's only so much you can improve if the output is low. After all, if all your seniors spend their days managing, who does the actual coding? Juniors. And what happens with them after they've "mastered the skill of solving a hard problem"? They become seniors, stop coding and start teaching the next batch of juniors. This seems like purposefully limiting the quality of the work, and increasing the time it takes. > there becomes a point of diminishing returns in terms of pure engineering skill It's quite surprising, if we think about it - software engineering is about as close as you can get to pure productivity multiplier. It shouldn't have diminishing returns, not so soon. It should have exponential returns. After all, the same skills that can be applied to a problem, can be also applied to a meta-problem of solving the problem faster.
    - ashneo76 5y ago
      I agree. I disagree with the forced rat race perspective that elevation of engineering is management. By that town, all managers need to go do some technical work and get better at that.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      As I have learned in offshoring projects, that is a matter of scale, you just need to scale the amount of juniors carring stones, the quality is overrated as long as the product line (completly unrelated to software) keeps working.
    - minusSeven 5y ago
      In software engineering what 1 person can do in a day 2 person can do in 2 days.

qsort 5y ago

There is such a thing as a Mendoza line, though. Being mediocre at coding is fine if you can make up for it with other skills. Being downright bad is not. Same thing for running meetings, writing passable English, being able to explain technical concepts to laymen and so on.

ipaddr 5y ago
If you are running meetings I'm not sure you are still in the senior developer category. These are more lead developer skills.
- walshemj 5y ago
  I think the author means "senior" as a concept (For varying levels of seniority, from senior, to staff, and beyond.) and not just a point on a progression path. #1 Running meeting and knowing how they work is a really good skill for every one to have
- Mehdi2277 5y ago
  Junior level developers at companies I've worked at are often taught to run meetings as part of helping them grow. If a couple junior developers work on a project then having them take turns facilitating the meeting was common. My team's meetings at my last company we also had everyone take turns facilitating it. There were some pre-meeting tasks that the facilitator was also responsible for like organizing some documentation related to last week on-call alerts + commenting on any product metrics for the main product we worked on (most of the time it was looks normal). A lot of growth I've seen is about having people get opportunities to do things more commonly done by people at higher levels. While most design documents are written by seniors or above sometimes mid level/junior engineers get an opportunity to write one and all design documents get a lot of feedback anyway.
- tayo42 5y ago
  That doesn't make sense, leading meetings is a basic skill. Unless you mean something else then what I think you mean by meetings. This is stuff we've been doing through high school and college doing stuff like group project meetings. Personally I've lead meetings at all levels in my career so far

nomdep 5y ago

This was written with the tunnel vision of a middle manager. Take it with a grain of salt

jmchuster 5y ago

There's nothing "wrong" if someone is an anxious wreck socially while being an amazing engineer. It just means that the company also needs to hire a good manager to take care of this brilliant individual. VS if they could hire someone who's maybe not as brilliant, but still sufficiently good to execute the engineering tasks that the company requires, but doesn't need a manager or anyone to tell them what to do, just does it and makes everything run smoothly. In fact, maybe even communicating with other teams and helping them run even smoother than before. Then you can see where in the first scenario you had to hire two people and only one in the second case, and in the second case you're getting even more additional value with your senior engineer doing partial manager-y things. So now the second individual is maybe 2x as valuable to the company as the first, and you can see it's a no-brainer for the company which to go with.

watwut 5y ago

> You can be a mediocre coder but amazing at social aspects and mentorship. I don't think you can. You can be good developer and amazing and mentorship or social aspect. But if you are mediocre one, you can teach others what you dont know.

aliasEli 5y ago
When I was a university student we had teacher assistants, who were more senior students. In most cases the best teacher assistants were not the brilliant students but rather the more mediocre students. The cause is that these mediocre students had really struggled to understand the material and therefore could really understand our problems in learning it. Many brilliant people are really lousy teachers.
- watwut 5y ago
  Teacher assistants are not recruited from mediocre students. They are all good students and all above average interested.