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Comment by alexpotato | Hacker News Reader

Being senior, to me, is best illustrated by a story:

Me: "Sometimes I feel like I'm psychic"

Co-worker: "How so?"

Me: "Many times on projects, I can tell at either the planning stages or the very early implementation steps if it's going to go well or be a disaster. e.g. people will say they love templated configs but they don't account for what can go wrong when there is a bug in the template etc etc"

Co-worker: "I don't think that's being psychic. That means you are a senior engineer who has seen so many projects that you can quickly pattern match on if the project is going to succeed or fail based on only the first 20% of the project."

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Ironically this can cause a lot of senior engineers to double down on conservative practices and fail to innovate or take risk imo. I’ve worked with several people at a higher level than me with more work experience who were for all effects and purposes complete idiots.

'Principal' engineer here, looking to perfect being the idiot! Knowing how to do things, and being known for it, has been an endless source of heartburn. All to say, I think there's wisdom at play. Even there.

Having 'innovated and taken risk', juice is rarely worth the squeeze. Watercooler is too crowded and layoffs too arbitrary. A middling job rewards exactly as well. Reliably.

I don’t know how to do almost every project I take on[0]. I’m finding LLMs to be a godsend. Helps me to learn stuff, without the sneering.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...

That's great (unironically) for you and the shareholders. I've lost the joy of learning things, honestly. After two decades of skill-building and 98% of it being utterly useless, I have a certain complex.

Said another way: the job needs 2+2, rewards poorly, and I'm too tired for Calculus.

I think we have to enjoy what we learn. I have no motivation at all, to learn stuff I don't like doing.

In my case, I really enjoy coding, and making stuff that people use.

Part of the impediments that I have encountered, is other people's attitudes. As long as co-workers and technical peers thought of me as "competition," they would deliberately make it difficult for me to access the stuff I needed to learn.

LLMs have absolutely no fear of me, and gladly give me exactly what I need (sometimes, too much).

I'm glad to hear LLMs help you out. They don't, here. Learning isn't the issue: I already have a wealth of information I can't put to use, or perhaps more accurately: won't be sufficiently rewarded for.

Perhaps I could use them for the parts I don't enjoy. Or I could... not.

It's all a wash, I guess is my point. While we're out here working, leagues are idling. I aspire to be more like them.

Learn for yourself then. I run my own company and learning new stuff so I can use it in my business is one of the few joys of being the owner. No permission required to try the new hotness (And if you screw up -- you have only yourself to blame.)

Ah, well, I need a business for this advice to meaningfully change anything :) Sounds like a lot of work.

I have been learning for myself, that's a category of useless. Would've been better spent knitting; therapy for applying the useful 2%.

No shareholders. I'm retired, after a long career, doing stuff I found meaningful, but never really earned me huge piles of money. Being retired has been wonderful. I get to learn whatever the heck I want. I still make stuff that is meaningful, but I don't make money at it (which isn't actually a bad thing).

I guess finding a meaningful life has always been more important to me, than being rewarded in money. I know that makes me a mutant, around these parts, but that's how I roll.

Ah, so you're part of why I'm working so hard!

That's great for you. Sarcastic this time. I truly meant well, now I don't care. To be clear: 'shareholders' was a quip at the industry, not you.

Well, you see, life has demanded I trade a certain meaning for value creation. Hence my attitude. There's that complex I told you about. Ghoulishly wanting reciprocation, or day I say, a payoff.

I'd trade half my salary/effort to live in my home town and closer to meaning... yet, I don't. Not an option. Can't avoid RTO forever or pay bills with back-pats.

Nice implication on my life meaning, bro. Sorry, sir. I lower the rim and you dunk. Well played.

Have a great day!

Happy (Western) Christmas Eve!

I'll do you one better! Same for your following year(s).

Not trying to counter your post but this reminded me of this --

"Have you ever noticed that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac?"

Though I agree there are some folks who resist change while others who seem to jump into new things without enough care about hard lessons of the past. And sometimes you are the one trying to keep things sane and mitigate risks while majority of your team seem to treat you as a joyless guy who always sees risks and drawbacks.

It's a fine line to ride. You want both stability and new technologies and you have to find a balance between them.

And obligatory: experience and competence may be correlated, but they are not the same.

I feel this way now, but with companies.

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