Ask HN: Advanced topics of study for senior developers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Advanced topics of study for senior developers

8 pointsDesafinado6 comments

Long story short, I'm currently employed in a company where my skills are stagnating, but which I'm planning on being employed by long-term. So I've been trying to keep my skills up to date, in lieu of more direct, cutting edge experience.

To date I've studied the following, but don't have the free time to build anything of significance:

- Web Application Security

- 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know (book)

- Modularization / Single Responsibility / Programming Best Practices

- A little bit of React

- Test-Driven Development

- Some administration related info in my bread-and-butter of choice (Java)

- Project Management

- A variety of books on leadership

- Technical leadership

In security and architecture I'm definitely on the beginning side of things and may do more.

I'm wondering: is there much else out there topic-wise that could provide any value?

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You should be able to identify these things based on your interests and gaps in your knowledge e.g. “I want to learn more about backend development”, “network stuff comes up every once in a while but I’ve never studied it properly”, “this programming language would be nice to know in the future”.

Where do you want to go in the company? Where does the company want to go in its industry or in other industries? Where do you want it to go? Do you want to continue with your current project or move to another one? If staying, do you want it to stagnate or do you want it to grow and change (ideally in an appropriate way)? Do you want to direct the changes (management/leadership role), do you want to guide the changes (technical/leadership role), or do you want to implement the changes (technical role)?

The answers to those questions determine what you need to study if you're going to stay within a company. Don't study React to study React. Study React because you want your project to utilize it (or to move to a project which already does). It has zero value for study beyond that purpose if you're going to stay in place and not using it (and assuming you're not just studying it for personal edification or to feed into some other learning goals; I'm learning Go not for work, per se, but to practice more with distributed/concurrent applications which is for work, but will likely be done in another language or languages). If you're in a position for it, start a pilot project utilizing it. If not, find an amenable and like-minded manager who can put you in a position for that pilot project. And failing that, study leadership/management (find a mentor) so you can get into a position to push a pilot project through.

Thanks. In my current role there's not much flexibility to use new technologies (basically nil), but the salary/benefits make it too good of a deal to leave. So I'm left with the tradeoff of my skills decaying while getting retirement security in return.

I know I'm good, but I worry about finding a new job if the need ever arose, because of candidates with direct, recent experience.

I feel like a broken record here, but if you haven’t already seen it I can warmly recommend this article by Julia Evans – “Some possible career goals”. I think it’s very useful and inspiring.

https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/30/some-possible-career-goals/

You should check out https://dataintensive.net/

generally a great resource for mid/seniors.

Learn mathematics. Learn about orgs. Finances. Quantification keeps you grounded.

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