What are your standards for a senior software engineer?

7 pointsxueyongg4y ago3 comments

Do you all have any resources or good articles on what are considered a fair and reasonable standard of senior software engineers?

3 comments

thiago_fm4y ago

There are many of those on the web, just search and you will find many lists.

Senior software engineer basically means you have a lot of experience. Great senior SEs have not only just experience, but they made most of it, by trying a lot of solutions, failing, they were driving their own career and decisions most of the time. They were present at their work, not just cruising.

Just do the above and you'll become a great engineer. Companies will fight to hire you. Just remember to not neglect life outside work and you'll have life by the balls.

xueyonggOP4y ago

Given an early start up, where the fullstack engineers has to be heavily involved with product (like a forward deployed engineer), what kind of skillsets do you think is important?

runawaybottle4y ago

Understanding trade offs at a high clip. This is going to be counter intuitive advice, but making a lot of bad tech decisions actually leads to the desired outcome (what not to do).

Just try to put a time limit on how long you will allow yourself to do that. I’d say no more than one job (2ish years, an accelerated pace of just being an awful dev). Try all the bullshit under the sun, and then consciously stop and move on to another job.

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