Ask HN: What did you learn as an early engineer?

Things I wish I would have listened to/learned better early on.

1. Don't overthink the problem.

2. Don't try to engineer for the unknown, work with what you know and what is specified. You can't plan for anything else, no matter how good you think you are. As stuff pops up, address it then. Be brutally clear about this to your employer/client.

3. Nothing beats experience, but execution. Even if you have a ton of experience, but don't execute it doesn't matter. In fact, experience sometimes cripples people into not executing quick enough, usually because they are trying to think through things too much. Basically, don't let your brain get in the way.

4. What zerodefex said is really pretty accurate. What a hacker would produce is a lot like what you produce when you have some experience but aren't trying to impress anyone or think through all possibilities.

5. Done is better then perfect.

Knowledge != Experience. Education, Sex, Race, pffh - all bullshit - experience trumps all of it. Top talent doesn't need bullshit technicalities and qualifications to shine and anyone that uses any of the above to tear others down has hit the glass ceiling of their own ability and see no other way to look good without tearing others down. In day to day life, these people sometimes seem like they are getting ahead, but in my experience, you can't escape karma and these folks almost always get weeded out over time (on a competent team).

I'm sure you've seen the image showing the creation of a simple program and the variations created during different stages of a programmers career (http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer....). You aren't the exception, you will find yourself following this exact progression in your career.

Oh, and mind your ego, rockstar's aren't worth the trouble if they are a complete asshole to everyone around them. No one, I repeat, no one, is worth so much. Also, don't tie your self-worth to your career and job level - it'll hurt 10x more if and when you get laid off or fired the first time. It's not personal, it's just business.

Last thing, no matter how valuable you think you may be to the company, the closer you are to the frontline of bringing new money into the biz and the easier this correlation is seen by management is the real measure of how important you are to the company. Sales is the lifeblood of any company, don't fool yourself into thinking technical ability by itself trumps someone half as good as you technically but 3x the salesman you are.

There are real engineers out there who wear safety boots, hard hats, supervise 100s of tradesmen and labourers. When they screw up it takes millions of dollars to fix the problem. And yes, they went to university for 4+ years and did hard subjects like math and physics as well as their advanced subjects in their specialisation (civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc)

Software engineers and IT project managers have it very easy - it is only through their lack of real world experience that they think that what they do is hard. Real engineers see them as whinging, precocious pansies.

Once you get over that culture shock, you start appreciating your choice of software wrangling as a profession.