What does it take to become a good software engineer at this time? | Hacker News Reader

What does it take to become a good software engineer at this time?

The question that has been bugging me a lot is what it actually takes to be a top 1% software engineer. Should I read a lot of OG books and try to implement compilers, databases and languages etc.. Or should I just learn a technology like Java, Python and find a job and just grow in my org and then switch for better roles.

I would love to know perspective of Senior engineers here. What worked for them, how they learned things and mastered it. And, in this world, where AI can just do trivial things for you, how does one get good at anything?

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“In this world, where AI can just do trivial things for you, how does one get good at anything?”

You get good by doing non-trivial things. Consider developers like Linus Torvalds and Jeff Dean. Not every developer has the skill to write an operating system or to design and implement a distributed system. Another way of putting it: it is one thing to use ChatGPT, but it’s an entirely different matter to have the skills to make your own LLM.

If you want to stand out as a developer, don’t shy away from in-depth studies of hard topics.

People skills are far more valuable than hoarded technical skillsets. Learn to work top-down as well as bottom-up.

I wholeheartedly agree. It’s not enough to be good on the technical side; it’s also important to be good at interpersonal relationships and understanding the big picture of the organization where one is employed. I’ve found this to be true in both industry and academia.

But if you're not good technically does it matter if you're good? I notice two type of people who I see as successful in my company

1. People who are extremely good technically. They don't have great people skills. They are almost hard to get chummy with. They only respect you if you're as good as them technically or if you belong to the following group 2. People with great personalities, charisma. They are not technically excellent. They are not the people you go to if you want to develop a streaming database. But they have vision, they have a broad view of things and know what to improve, where to work etc. They are not software engineers, more like team leads.

Then there are people who are neither great technically nor have charsima that make people gravitate towards them. People who are just fumbling in mediocrity, wondering if they are in the right place and feeling stuck (like me )

I agree.

When I'm hiring, the accumulated skillset of the candidate, while important, is not the most important thing. More important things are: the ability to work effectively on a team (communication and cooperation skills), the ability to quickly learn new things, and strong problem-solving skills. If you have those, I don't care as much about your exact skillset because you can learn whatever skills you might be missing or weak on.

I've got some resources that might help you: (https://github.com/cloudstreet-dev/Computers) (https://github.com/cloudstreet-dev/Soft-Skills-the-Hard-Way)

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