3 ms·

Junior developers are the equivalent of the draftsmen that used to work under architects. Just like how CAD has almost entirely eliminated that line of work, t

Junior developers are the equivalent of the draftsmen that used to work under architects. Just like how CAD has almost entirely eliminated that line of work, the same thing will happen in software development. Only the “architects” will remain. There is an implicit assumption made by the people concerned about junior devs disappearing that that’s where senior developers come from. The reality is that almost junior developers never gain significantly better skill, no matter how their age or title. I regularly work with people with decades of “experience” that still have no idea how to use a database engine. A real senior developer could write their own database engine from scratch. That’s the difference!

oceansky 1y ago
How would you verify if a candidate know how to use a database engine? This can actually have a lot of depth
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  I simply ask the candidate what a B-Tree is and how a database engine would use one. If they don’t know that, then the database engine internals will forever remain a mysterious black box to them. Explaining each of the four letters in ACID is the follow-up question if they pass. These are the equivalent of “why do we put steel rebar into concrete?” If you can’t answer these questions immediately upon graduating then you cannot ever be responsible for anything. You can only be entrusted to copy or “fill in the blanks” where an anctual engineer worked out the design.
8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago
I think this can be a bit unfair too. I learned to use database engines because I did a lot of solo work. Also learned a teeny tiny bit in school. But I never touch a DB directly anymore even though I'm a "backend" SWE. How is one to gain such experience in a huge company that pigeon holes folks into such specific roles? I mean I guess they can choose to jump teams or jobs every couple years to gain some breadth, but it seems cruel to force people to hop around to move up the ladder. (Even though I admit this is still the fastest way, but for different reasons!)

oceansky 1y ago

How would you verify if a candidate know how to use a database engine? This can actually have a lot of depth

jiggawatts 1y ago
I simply ask the candidate what a B-Tree is and how a database engine would use one. If they don’t know that, then the database engine internals will forever remain a mysterious black box to them. Explaining each of the four letters in ACID is the follow-up question if they pass. These are the equivalent of “why do we put steel rebar into concrete?” If you can’t answer these questions immediately upon graduating then you cannot ever be responsible for anything. You can only be entrusted to copy or “fill in the blanks” where an anctual engineer worked out the design.

8n4vidtmkvmk 1y ago

I think this can be a bit unfair too. I learned to use database engines because I did a lot of solo work. Also learned a teeny tiny bit in school. But I never touch a DB directly anymore even though I'm a "backend" SWE. How is one to gain such experience in a huge company that pigeon holes folks into such specific roles? I mean I guess they can choose to jump teams or jobs every couple years to gain some breadth, but it seems cruel to force people to hop around to move up the ladder. (Even though I admit this is still the fastest way, but for different reasons!)