Lessons I learned as a software engineer

some good lessons in there

on the PR topic tho: my latest challenge is putting out my rage fires after people lazily post a claude (or other aigen) review without any understanding themselves, forcing me to defend the code against agent errors. Yes, there are also useful things in there, but people are getting lazy - since "coding is solved", they seem to think PRs are also solved :/

Re 7 (Test your code. Future you will thank you): Also leave a file of notes. Future you will thank you.

I mean, as you work on a system, write down how it works in a text file. Something surprises you, doesn't work like you expect? Write it down. You finally understand why it does things a certain way? Write it down. Things that you see that might become problems that you don't have time to fix now? Make a note.

Keep it loosely organized, at more or less up to date. Check it in at the relevant level of the code repository. Future you will thank you.

Re 10: The perfect job doesn't exist. If your job is pretty good, sane management, interesting work, decent pay, good coworkers, do not lightly walk away. Those are not easy to find. Ride it as long as you can unless you have a really good reason to do something else.

But jobs are only good until they're not. The magic can go out, slowly or quickly. When it does, don't hold on to "it was really good once". It was, and that was wonderful, but it's not anymore, and that means it's likely time to at least start looking around.