Ask HN: What is your best advice for a Senior Software Engineer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your best advice for a Senior Software Engineer?

27 pointssidcool8 comments

Sometimes, we senior engineers seem to lose our way. What is the way forward for us? What are the new avenues. I would call anyone who's been coding for more than 7 years a Senior Engineer.

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One really good thing to do is to switch from the mode of "when someone gives me a problem, I can solve it" to "I can find problems on my own."

This is:

* Much more satisfying, since it gives you control over your environment (https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-fin...).

* Allows you get more done in less time (https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/), which means you can work better schedule, instead of long hours (https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/02/11/working-long-hours/).

* Makes you a much more valuable employee, and therefore gives you negotiating leverage - to say "no" to your boss (https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/08/16/how-to-say-no/) but also to make more money or even reduce your workweek (https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/01/08/part-time-programmer...).

Take it easy. Work Is not your baby. Don't attach emotions to work. Do all you can for 8 hours and then forget the moment you get out of the door. Don't respond to emails from home. Don't carry work phone unless you must.

Invest in family, kids, hobbies, health, stocks/bonds, travel etc. There's more to life than work.

Remember you work to live not live to work.

Good luck finding a job, on the east coast at least, that will actually let you do this and not work you to death.

Understand that your junior developers will learn how to treat people from you. So, be humble, kind and approachable. Long term, that will yield an amazing culture full of people who like coming to work.

I'd like to add:

Remember your days as a Jr. Dev.

You catch more flies with honey.

Promote growth.

When mistakes happen speak soft, but convey ramifications of the mistake.

I always repost this amazing essay in case someone missed it when it rose to the top of HN.

https://allarsblog.com/2018/03/16/confessions-of-an-unreal-e...

Previous discussion from 5 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16775166

I would say, just because you have 7 years of experience, one is not automatically a senior developer. It could be 1 year's worth of experience 7 times.

I agree with you. I just mentioned it to set a context. Else it would have been very open to interpretation.

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