I think over time you get to learn to be practical as an engineer. So what all you got was a google link when you ask for help? Did it solve your problem? If yes then they responded correctly and there's nothing to concern yourself with. If no then what they did was not helpful and you might consider ask for more clarification or ask someone else. Getting feelings involved will only cost you more energy and distract you. I've had coworker sending me links to chatgpt for my question and it worked, and I appreciate that now I've learned to use chatGPT for that family of questions more before I need to waste time asking around.
Do you think a senior software engineer should know everything? . We keep learning new stuffs every day. It all depends on the exposure that you get in your day to day work. I am in this field for 13 years . Started as a mainframe dev in 2011. Then after working in same old tech stack for 6 years , I decided to jump to Java . Then I moved to a Java based product where it took 4 years and 100s of questions everyday to get to an intermediate level of that product. Though I know most of the things in that product , the product is evolving in parallel with lot of new frameworks every day / every month / every year. Definitely we need references and docs to learn them. And now for past 5 months am working on pure Java Springboot grade and maven apps with rest APIs which is again new for me because the other Java based product has simplified frameworks to do a lot of stuffs. You learn every day as a software engineer. I am still not satisfied with all these jumps and am trying to learn flutter over weekends. And I am referring a lot from google links / stackoverflow.
That is good advice, on how to climb the corporate ladder, in a mega corporation. I've been at this for more than forty years. And I've seen a lot of managers with just a few years of coding experience get promoted beyond their skill sets, resulting in high turnover and then layoffs. They don't last. While you are solving those problems, you should continue to study, and work to analyze the code that the other engineers have written. in other words, you should be focusing on self improvement. If you're focusing on corporate advancement, that is what you will become skilled at, it will be obvious to everyone, and you may look good to your bosses, but your colleagues will be talking behind your back. Eventually it will be obvious to everyone that this is your primary skill, and that you don't add value. Then your entire team gets laid off with you.
i'd say a lot of these points are short sighted they may work for a while, but eventually, you will be figured by your colleagues that arent chasing visibility above all else friendly warning - the latest tech purges were extremely brutal towards engineers that seem to follow this trend, and managers that hold part of the blame for enabling such behavior my suggestion (15 years in tech) is to play the long game and just do good engineering, instead of spending too much time thinking how to look good some work isnt visible, nor does it show immediate impact, but it may be way more important in a grand scheme - and good engineers, or bosses (the ones that really matter) will respect that
Exactly. When it comes to layoffs they'll keep the people that they can't replace. Which will be the ones that actually know their shit, even if they weren't "visible".
Yea this is completely true, the one thing I would add, is to try to add value out of your own initiative. If you’re just completing tasks handed to you, that’s fine, and it can be rewarding in terms of performance evaluation , but if you can figure out ways to improve the product or operations and actually get them done it allows you to make tangible wins and make a name for yourself. It can be hard to do this in certain corporate cultures, and there’s a decent chance you may need to push a bit to get the opportunity and potentially work extra hours but it can pay off. It’s weird how often going out of your way to make the company successful can pay off. If you’ve got a good manager they will usually mention to their bosses that it was your idea and you’ll be able to present them to people. When it comes time for promotions it’s hard to ignore a video taped presentation of your work. This also helps you find opportunities on new teams as it gets your name out there to a larger group.
Totally agree on this. IMHO the truth is in between. Focusing on coding alone is sustainable, but only coding does limit your potential. Trying to bullshit everyone is not sustainable, unfortunately some people are very skilled doing just that. Those people can make it to the top and take the company to the bottom. Seen it happen. But in the long run always unsustainable. You need to be able to communicate your ideas in easy to understand ways to your peers and bosses and being able to write good code are the combo that makes seniors so valuable and indispensable. I'm always honored to work with them.
I was an IC for 15 years, and then a manager for the last three years. Listen to the advice in the video. It may sound like fakery, but it is absolutely needed beyond SWE II levels (also, you need that clout to get stuff done beyond a level). Once I became manager, I have personally been in calibration meetings where my director remarked about three promo candidates "I know what A and B have been doing, but I don't know anything about C". Guess what, A and B got promoted, C didn't. So now I coach my team and plan their projects a year in advance in order to get them promoted. But don't count on your manager going to this trouble. I do it because I felt I was neglected by my managers and I want to do better. But other people don't. In fact I too am supposed to be doing useless things beyond my team's charter in order to get promoted (which because my manager's still don't give a shit, nobody has coached me on). It's good to take pride in your craft, but don't get left behind. It's your career, own it. You can't do good work when you keep getting ignored and get hopelessly burnt out (ask me how I know :o) ).
I’ve seen and worked with too many fakers, like “managers” who don’t know how to do or cover any work, people who claim the project without the knowledge on how to do it (and just steal others’ credit once they get them done on their own). Stay away from the fakers and don’t become one.
Helping others is not just transactional. Mentoring others and celebrating their wins is not just about visibility. It is about building trust into the culture of your team. Getting code to work is just a part of the equation. Yea you hit a home run today, but your team could still lose. I hope you don't burn yourself out chasing visibility. I hope you drive meaningful change. That's where you'd learn best and contribute the most
That's the corporate politics, I prefer to rely on my practical skills, don't care about making myself visible in the corporation, thus anytime when they fire me I can easily find job on free market.
Sick advice. The more I am in my engineering career, the more I learn how rare people are who actually enjoy writing documentation. As I venture into management, I’ve been trying to build up more documentation culture with my team but have been having trouble selling it to them. I’m going to bring these points to them as well as share your video.
Problem in the software engineering world is that managers dont know how to rate programming skills. But is kind of easy - junior sofware engineers become mediors when they dont need to get hand holding most of the time and can bring input. - medior software engineers should be validated on their code and input by their seniors. -seniours should get validated on the total project they are working or have been working on.(how does it work/bugs/easy to maintane and change or even replace(clean independent code)) and warn for problems(legacy code).. And is resposible for the project. -managers should only be doing the managing stuff: keep people happy. and priortizing projects/features or even decisions (2 seniours have 2 different solutions and cant chose), but should not rate the mediors or juniors. his job is only to keep them happy. Managers should get rated by how happy are his engineers, and about if he made/hired the right senior engineers(failed projects)
1 thing to add - if you are in a terminal role, you might simply like it there; Unless the pay difference is significant, you might want to evaluate if you want to move to a less coding oriented role.
10 year in engineering. I've only seen rockstar coders be promoted to high positions in companies, as in their code changes changes the industry, which is rare I can count on my hands how many people did it this way, the other way which he describes is the most common way to be promoted.
Thank you for the video🙏... COMMUNICATION is sooo important yet so hard. Most of my work stress comes from me knowing something I think that no one else knows.
I have been learning to ask for help after a 30 minute timer… it hurts the ego sometimes, sometimes I feel like I should be better… but this actually sounds like sound advice thank you
I have this advice to you: Google is not a measure of anything, cause it is not a company where you achieve by doing great. Old companies dont too. A good mid size company is better.
So for documentation, I actually just got done a technical writing course in college and we watched a lot of videos about how Google has their own technical writing team for customer documentation engineering documentation and API documentation doesn’t a lot of the team cover that already senior engineers have to do that as well
That’s was just a nice way of letting you know their was a company politics at play ,😂😂😂, also writing a docs is actually a nice stuff to do , also I would say write a blog , which would also go beyond the company and become worldwide
Love the framework to make it easier for people to help you: -What’s the problem you are looking at -Why are you trying to solve it -What have you tried?
Currently trying to learn JS and got a tutor and has been disappointing since he doesn’t seem interested in actually communicating with me or tutoring me. So I’ve ask for help but did something wrong idk. Just wanted to put my experience out there since the video mention asking for help
Dont waste your money. Chances that you find a good teacher is slim. Buy a $20 JS course on Udemy. Thats all youll ever need. The one by Jonas is amazing
Hey I’m trying to learn python lately and got a tutor too. I’m looking for someone to learn with so I can get more motivation, do you have discord and are you interested in studying together?
It is a lie that you become „Senior“ in 4 years, in his case working in google, where google has created “fake senior levels” so instead of being a junior middle senior levels, there all the levels are “senior” with an L attached to it, so in reality this is advice of how to become a normal junior level developer with high ego ( because of google ego ) or as google calls it “senior level 1” == junior level in real life.
Dunno about google, but you can become senior pretty quickly if you know your stuff and can mentor juniors. We have another name for the real seniors. Either staff engineer or principle engineer.
Most code in the real world is garbage, as it is all done quickly to complete features for the sprint. This naturally build up Tech Debt to the point where the system becomes a burden to maintain and slows down productivity. Software Development is in a huge crisis as there is rarely any investment allowed for good design that builds a solid long term foundation.
I dont agree with the second halve of your video. Do what you are good at the most. If you not good in writing documents and someone else is, let him do it. Just doing somehting that a none programmer/manager you can rate you in, should not be the thing to get you succeed. A good team has someone who is good and like to do each part of the work that needs to be done. Of course as a seniour you should be able to rate and check everything.
People who say “Google it” are slow in the head. What is the point of human interaction if I can Google or Chatgpt literally anything a human could ever say?
Coding is a tool and it should not be your only tool. What are you trying to achieve? To get a bigger paycheque? Ok once you get it, what then? I figured my (and probably most other people's) real goal is to be financially independent and that requires a totally different skillset to achieve - talking to ordinary people, smart investing, simple side hustles that generate money for not much effort. Basically, your salary cannot be your only income. What if you get Alzheimer's or some other mental health issue that makes it hard to do software engineering? You have to think for yourself and not let these billionaires fool you into having this narrow mindset. Of course you're making the world a better place by working at Google, but you're also making very few people very rich (excluding yourself).
