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Company: "Here's some big problems, can you help?" Senior Dev: "Yes!" C: "How would you recommend proceeding?" D: "I've studied the problem and my profession
by perrygeo 5y ago
Company: "Here's some big problems, can you help?"
Senior Dev: "Yes!"
C: "How would you recommend proceeding?"
D: "I've studied the problem and my professional recommendation is to implement X, migrate away from Y and refactor Z."
C: "Oh, that seems like too much work and would disrupt the teams already working on Y and Z. Let's do it this way instead (points to Confluence page written by an intern last summer)"
D: "..."
C: "So you're not able to help us after all?"
- dvtrn 5y agoThis hits too close to home, even as a staff engineer.
- renewiltord 5y agoAn average L7 at Amazon will see that "limit disruption to Y and Z" is simply a constraint to the engineering problem and make it work. That's sort of what makes someone at that level - the ability to detect the cost for moving different constraints and being able to demonstrate the technorganizational advantage from doing it. Combine that with the ability to get grassroots implementer support and you have a pretty able leader. Everything is just constraint solving in the end, and the hard part is maintaining pace.
- perrygeo 5y agoOf course. Implied in the senior developer's solution ("migration") is a plan to navigate those challenges - technically, politically and socially. What I tend to see is ignorant management insisting that there must be an easier way, rejecting all empirical evidence to the contrary, even going so far as to reject the concept of engineering tradeoffs entirely. It's as if the experience and accumulated wisdom of the senior ICs is valuable only insofar as it makes them slightly more productive code monkeys, merely speeding up the existing plan put in place by management without any say in said plan. Why even hire senior employees at that point?