4 ms·

Being senior, to me, is best illustrated by a story: Me: "Sometimes I feel like I'm psychic" Co-worker: "How so?" Me: "Many times on projects, I can tell at

Being senior, to me, is best illustrated by a story: Me: "Sometimes I feel like I'm psychic" Co-worker: "How so?" Me: "Many times on projects, I can tell at either the planning stages or the very early implementation steps if it's going to go well or be a disaster. e.g. people will say they love templated configs but they don't account for what can go wrong when there is a bug in the template etc etc" Co-worker: "I don't think that's being psychic. That means you are a senior engineer who has seen so many projects that you can quickly pattern match on if the project is going to succeed or fail based on only the first 20% of the project."

jbmsf 10mo ago
I feel this way now, but with companies.
therobots927 10mo ago
Ironically this can cause a lot of senior engineers to double down on conservative practices and fail to innovate or take risk imo. I’ve worked with several people at a higher level than me with more work experience who were for all effects and purposes complete idiots.
- bravetraveler 10mo ago
  'Principal' engineer here, looking to perfect being the idiot! Knowing how to do things, and being known for it, has been an endless source of heartburn. All to say, I think there's wisdom at play. Even there. Having 'innovated and taken risk', juice is rarely worth the squeeze. Watercooler is too crowded and layoffs too arbitrary. A middling job rewards exactly as well. Reliably.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
    I don’t know how to do almost every project I take on[0]. I’m finding LLMs to be a godsend. Helps me to learn stuff, without the sneering. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
    - bravetraveler 10mo ago
      That's great (unironically) for you and the shareholders. I've lost the joy of learning things, honestly. After two decades of skill-building and 98% of it being utterly useless, I have a certain complex. Said another way: the job needs 2+2, rewards poorly, and I'm too tired for Calculus.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
        I think we have to enjoy what we learn. I have no motivation at all, to learn stuff I don't like doing. In my case, I really enjoy coding, and making stuff that people use. Part of the impediments that I have encountered, is other people's attitudes. As long as co-workers and technical peers thought of me as "competition," they would deliberately make it difficult for me to access the stuff I needed to learn. LLMs have absolutely no fear of me, and gladly give me exactly what I need (sometimes, too much).
        bravetraveler 10mo ago
        I'm glad to hear LLMs help you out. They don't, here. Learning isn't the issue: I already have a wealth of information I can't put to use, or perhaps more accurately: won't be sufficiently rewarded for. Perhaps I could use them for the parts I don't enjoy. Or I could... not. It's all a wash, I guess is my point. While we're out here working, leagues are idling. I aspire to be more like them.
      - sumanthvepa 10mo ago
        Learn for yourself then. I run my own company and learning new stuff so I can use it in my business is one of the few joys of being the owner. No permission required to try the new hotness (And if you screw up -- you have only yourself to blame.)
        bravetraveler 10mo ago
        Ah, well, I need a business for this advice to meaningfully change anything :) Sounds like a lot of work. I have been learning for myself, that's a category of useless. Would've been better spent knitting; therapy for applying the useful 2%.
- albert_e 10mo ago
  Not trying to counter your post but this reminded me of this -- "Have you ever noticed that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac?" Though I agree there are some folks who resist change while others who seem to jump into new things without enough care about hard lessons of the past. And sometimes you are the one trying to keep things sane and mitigate risks while majority of your team seem to treat you as a joyless guy who always sees risks and drawbacks.
- juliangmp 10mo ago
  It's a fine line to ride. You want both stability and new technologies and you have to find a balance between them. And obligatory: experience and competence may be correlated, but they are not the same.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

jbmsf 10mo ago

I feel this way now, but with companies.

therobots927 10mo ago

Ironically this can cause a lot of senior engineers to double down on conservative practices and fail to innovate or take risk imo. I’ve worked with several people at a higher level than me with more work experience who were for all effects and purposes complete idiots.

bravetraveler 10mo ago
'Principal' engineer here, looking to perfect being the idiot! Knowing how to do things, and being known for it, has been an endless source of heartburn. All to say, I think there's wisdom at play. Even there. Having 'innovated and taken risk', juice is rarely worth the squeeze. Watercooler is too crowded and layoffs too arbitrary. A middling job rewards exactly as well. Reliably.
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
  I don’t know how to do almost every project I take on[0]. I’m finding LLMs to be a godsend. Helps me to learn stuff, without the sneering. [0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
  - bravetraveler 10mo ago
    That's great (unironically) for you and the shareholders. I've lost the joy of learning things, honestly. After two decades of skill-building and 98% of it being utterly useless, I have a certain complex. Said another way: the job needs 2+2, rewards poorly, and I'm too tired for Calculus.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
      I think we have to enjoy what we learn. I have no motivation at all, to learn stuff I don't like doing. In my case, I really enjoy coding, and making stuff that people use. Part of the impediments that I have encountered, is other people's attitudes. As long as co-workers and technical peers thought of me as "competition," they would deliberately make it difficult for me to access the stuff I needed to learn. LLMs have absolutely no fear of me, and gladly give me exactly what I need (sometimes, too much).
      - bravetraveler 10mo ago
        I'm glad to hear LLMs help you out. They don't, here. Learning isn't the issue: I already have a wealth of information I can't put to use, or perhaps more accurately: won't be sufficiently rewarded for. Perhaps I could use them for the parts I don't enjoy. Or I could... not. It's all a wash, I guess is my point. While we're out here working, leagues are idling. I aspire to be more like them.
    - sumanthvepa 10mo ago
      Learn for yourself then. I run my own company and learning new stuff so I can use it in my business is one of the few joys of being the owner. No permission required to try the new hotness (And if you screw up -- you have only yourself to blame.)
      - bravetraveler 10mo ago
        Ah, well, I need a business for this advice to meaningfully change anything :) Sounds like a lot of work. I have been learning for myself, that's a category of useless. Would've been better spent knitting; therapy for applying the useful 2%.
albert_e 10mo ago
Not trying to counter your post but this reminded me of this -- "Have you ever noticed that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac?" Though I agree there are some folks who resist change while others who seem to jump into new things without enough care about hard lessons of the past. And sometimes you are the one trying to keep things sane and mitigate risks while majority of your team seem to treat you as a joyless guy who always sees risks and drawbacks.
juliangmp 10mo ago
It's a fine line to ride. You want both stability and new technologies and you have to find a balance between them. And obligatory: experience and competence may be correlated, but they are not the same.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]