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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Oldie Programming: Career Advice, Questions, Change of Directions
 
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hirvox
Sep 8, 2009

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

I was just looking for a thread like this, thanks! I'm being considered for a senior software engineering position, but I've got to ask: What does it mean to be a senior software engineer? I'm comfortable with my skills, but I know there's more to it than that. Any veterans care to chime in?
More often than not, the job is not about writing lines of code. It's about helping your team work more efficiently. Sure, occasionally you get to immerse yourself in implementing an algorithm or design pattern that would have took junior engineers days or weeks to develop. But it's more important that your team gets poo poo done. You talk with the customer and figure out what they need (which can be different from what they want). You turn vague functional specifications into implementable tasks. You read countless pages of bad API documentation and figure out how to use it. You research new tools, plugins and libraries and choose which ones will save your team from performing busywork or stop them from reinventing the wheel. You make sure that every part does what it's supposed to, and that they fit together to form a coherent whole. You teach other developers best practices. You help them debug problems. You set up servers, version control systems continuous integration processes and define policies on how to use them. You enforce those policies. You automate. You document everything you do, so work doesn't stop just because you're in a meeting, in a conference on vacation or on sick leave. You lubricate the proverbial gears.

* # ¿ Feb 8, 2014 10:27
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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 06:46
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hirvox
Sep 8, 2009

Skuto posted:

Homework in recruiting
If the "homework" in question was real work from their backlog, it might imply that the company expects that the people who do get hired do other unpaid work as well.

* # ¿ May 24, 2014 08:46
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hirvox
Sep 8, 2009

Arachnamus posted:

This may be straying into e/n, but do any of you find yourselves so disillusioned with software development that you seriously entertain the idea of throwing it all in and never touching a computer again?
Not with the field itself, no. Ways to make better code that can run anywhere and everywhere keep getting invented. That said, it can be disappointing if your day job doesn't let you work in a completely buzzword-compliant environment. But you can always take baby steps. Try to introduce something in each project to improve your workflow, architecture or code quality.

* # ¿ Aug 15, 2014 19:55
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Oldie Programming: Career Advice, Questions, Change of Directions