Ask HN: What made you an effective software engineer in 2018? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What made you an effective software engineer in 2018?

17 pointsiron_oxide8 comments

Looking back what skill/technology/mindset/habit/etc made you effective this year? Any advice for junior engineers/devs?

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I think what made me effective was the ability to deliver within deadlines. This is mainly due to planning and knowing the technology and its quirks.

My advice to junior devs would be always read up and understand a technology to know how you plan. Sure there will be times where something unexpected comes up but having multiple scenarios helps that way you don't end up in a rabbit hole.

I used Typora to keep a to-do list almost every week (I planed to do it everyday, but failed). The to-do list history showed what I did, where I was and what to do. It makes me don't forget to finish assignments. It makes me do things in priority. It turned out to be valuable when my leader asked me to feedback what I did in this year. I cannot recall that many things I did without the journal I kept.

Keep organised. I use onenote and outlook but anything will do. I keep my inbox zeroed, make task level personal notes on onenote, and share info on onenote and Jira as appropriate. I try to avoid using slack for any information I’d want to retrieve tomorrow or beyond.

Being able to communicate with stakeholders, people in other departments if there are any, basically internal and external customers, and take that communication and convert it into meaningful and effective action.

What steps did you take to develop these skills?

I am lucky that my early education was focused on reading and writing, and that I was a natural reader and writer at a young age. I believe that those who can write clearly are generally able to think clearly. Being a decent writer means you can summarize complex ideas with a small word-count. I'd suggest focusing on those basics first - being able to summarize complex ideas in a way that a child can understand.

After that, I gained experience breaking tasks into smaller actionable pieces and delegating the pieces to others. It's hard to say how you can learn to do this. I learned over a long period of time by living life. I did do sports, and I was in the military and learned a lot as an NCO.

Recognising when it was time to transfer to a new position (within the same company) where I could continue growing as an SE, and acting on it.

Clojure

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