Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones
Posted by AutoModerator@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 76 comments
A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.
Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.
Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.
aford515@reddit
What are reddit subs that give me more curiosity about this field and dont doom it and give me spike of anxiety mixed with existential dread?
Daex33@reddit
Curiousity about what field? Comp Sci? With software you can build practically whatever you want, so the thing to do is figure out what do you want and then dig in. Prices are not as low as they used to be but still Raspberry Pi is quite cheap if you need hardware and for a desktop/web/mobile you only need a computer to get started.
casualPlayerThink@reddit
Since there are subreddits for anything, the answer is anything you are interested in, and we don't have the context to know otherwise. Are you interested in small electronics? Go for askEletronics, or IoT-related. Are you interested in aviation, drones, and photography? Go for /drones. Coding? Any adjacent stuff? Non-related? Semi-related? ... The list could go forever.
Also, you can have anxiety and existential dread from anything, so it's hard to tell.
aford515@reddit
I just dont wanna have a full ai marketing page as a feed
kitatsune@reddit
How can I be polite about asking my more Junior coworker to use her common sense?
She needs a lot of external validation/confirmation that she's doing something right and her constant asking for clarification is starting to annoy me. Would everything really be that vague to a Junior with 1 year of experience? How can I make her more self-assured in her skills? At this rate I'm worried she won't ever be able to do tasks independently.
dbxp@reddit
Get her to analyse the ticket and then stick a meeting ylin your calendar to go through all the questions at once. It's a useful skill to learn and it will make things easier for you.
mattbillenstein@reddit
I think you need to convey to her you trust her to use her best judgment to make the small decisions independently - if she's really stuck, it's fine to seek advice, but otherwise to do what she thinks is best. And to not worry to much about making small mistakes - that's how we all learn.
MattDTO@reddit
Only give advice by asking questions. What have you tried so far? what happened when you tried that? what do you think it means? how do you know if it means that? now that you know what it means, what is the next step to try? did that step work?
Drairo_Kazigumu@reddit
Are there any math books (like discrete math, calculus, or linear algebra) that a CS major should utilize and learn more about to become a better software engineer?
dbxp@reddit
Stats, nothing to do with statistical programming but being able to make charts and graphs which are actually useful. You'd be surprised how many people don't know what a standard deviation is.
Daex33@reddit
No, unless you get a job in a specific area which is math heavy, e.g. computer graphics, digital signal processing, etc.
Equal-Buyer1760@reddit
I'm a junior dev with 1 yoe and joined a new team recently and i've realized that my tech lead isn't very good at their job. When I say this, I really did give them the benefit of a doubt but over the past few weeks I've seen them not know how to do things that I was able to figure out on my own 1-2 months after starting to work. This includes simple things like debugging, running tests, checking logs etc. They've been on the team for a lot longer than I have so it's not them being new but just not good. What am I even supposed to do here? It legitimately takes them a full sprint to do maybe 1-2 days worth of work. I'm supposed to be the one learning but I've been spending time helping them instead
Daex33@reddit
Honest take here, you probably need to find a different job. At this stage in your career it would be highly beneficial to have really smart, productive people as role models to learn from them and see how they do things. You want to be exposed to a well running engineering team if possible.
If finding a new job is not an option, again just going to be direct here, you probably need to put up with it. Just shut up and do the job. Code speaks.
Punk_Saint@reddit
Don't bring this up, don't try to change them. Your job is what matters and you getting paid + getting experience years is what matters. When you feel like you learned everything you needed to, move on to a better job.
Let me reiterate: your job is to be a junior developer and grow and learn, don't make it your responsability to fix other people's crap unless they come to you with it
casualPlayerThink@reddit
Did you try to bring this up within a discussion/chit-chat to discover his/her background with tech?
Many times, tech leads are either the founders or someone who stepped up to solve things. My project manager and engineering manager at one of the projects I am working on have less than 2 years of actual engineering experience. They act more like a politician or administrator (or enforcer), and their goal is to ensure all problems are solved, the deadline is met, and the solution is delivered.
So, not knowing your company's full context, it might be that the tech lead has worked more on the management part rather than the IC, as well as possible he/she has background in a different tech and are not familiar with the current stack.
Also, very high potential, he/she is a faker, who was put there because of connections and has no real value, but tries to play along.
Extra note: I have met a guy who worked on the same project for 15 years at that time. Was older than me, like 10+ years, but had no understanding of unit tests or OOP in general (C++, JS, and PHP). 10+ years, with the mindset of a junior.
An extra story: I have worked with a payment company as a contractor, and their entire leadership was university college roommates. They were the CTO, CFO, and CEO. With no prior work experience. Most of their decision were immature, inexperienced, straight-up dangerous, and bad. Their company and entire product collapsed due to the constant bad decisions. They even hired a friend as an architect, with zero knowledge of the stack (AWS & TS). It was a disaster.
Equal-Buyer1760@reddit
When we met we discussed their background and they’ve got over a decade of experience. I wouldn’t even know how to bring this up to them without sounding like I have an ego problem but I know they’re not doing anything management related either. It’s genuinely concerning to me since I have to spend time helping them when I should be doing my own thing for questions that aren’t good
ProgrammingQuestio@reddit
I'm curious how people here talk about their work with their spouses. My wife has never programmed a day in her life and doesn't find it interesting. At times I want to explain what I'm working on because honestly I suck at explaining and explaining what I'm working on to a non-technical person is a great way to practice ("if you can't explain it to a 5 year old, then you don't understand it" sort of thing). She has a low patience for me using her as a whiteboard sesh lol so I'm curious how this sort of dynamic plays out for other people.
Daex33@reddit
Explaining technical concepts to non-technical personnel is actually a key part of the job. So when I talk to my spouse about work, it's really similar process as talking to some business or leadership stakeholder, assume they have no idea what am I talking about. Usually the stories are more well received if you can connect it to something which people have as a lived-in experience. "You know that annoying cookie popup that you get when opening most website?... "
I don't know what you work on but usually you can draw on something that everybody who uses phone or computer can understand.
Punk_Saint@reddit
I'm just 5 years of experience, but I always try to explain it in her terms, as she is a Vet. So I always make the example of the project being a cow...
random8847@reddit
I'm not exactly inexperienced (8 YOE), I’m currently the sole developer at a small, 5 person company.
Since finding AI my boss (CEO) has become somewhat hysterical out of fear that someone else will beat us to market.
He's started using Claude himself and is implementing features at such a pace that it's impossible to do any code review. He's dropping 8k to 16k lines of AI generated code into a single commit at EOD every day. Keep in mind that he's not a developer, but more of a technical CEO who manages systems operations and hardware.
I told him his commits are unreviewable, to which he replied, "It's fine, code review is not needed, just glance over the changes to make sure obvious things like passwords and API keys are not committed, nothing else needs to be reviewed". And to make things worse, he doesn't even read the code himself before committing. So literally the code has had zero eyes on it.
I tried to explain how dangerous this is, to which he replied he doesn't care. He wants software to be treated like a black box and wants us to not touch a single line of code going forward.
He genuinely believes in 1-3 years time any idiot will be able to create projects which will, in his own words, "have dirty code, inefficiencies and even security issues, but the reality is that no one cares about those things". Yes, he really said that.
I've tried so much to convince him how dangerous his thinking is but he simply does not care. The things that he has said are so shocking to me that I'm starting to contemplate whether I'm working for a dead product that's never going to succeed.
Before AI, things were great as he never got involved in programming, so we never had such issues. This has been a very stable job for me for the past 4 years, the WLB and pay have really been great. On top of that, there's the threat of AI in the current job market, so I didn't want to leave this company. I genuinely don't understand what I'm supposed to do here.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Formal-Berry-3279@reddit
The silicon valley (AI & startup) has adopt 996 for a while, I wonder how they spend the time at workdays. How's 996 looks like in China big tech companies:
> 9:00 a.m. clock in at the office. Turn on your computer, make a cup of tea/coffee, clear your desk, and 15 minutes pass. Using project communication as an excuse, go to the UI and flirt with the girl. Half an hour passes. Ten paid minutes to take a shit. Back at your desk, staring at your computer until 10:00 a.m. , working, typing. Take a paid piss at least once. 11 o'clock began to plan what to eat for lunch, and in all directions colleagues private paddling group heated discussion, leadership asked said to discuss the project structure. Twelve o'clock on time to go out to dinner. Come back at 1:00, go to bed. Get Up at 2:00, Get Sleepy, run out to the balcony for some fresh air and make a cup of tea/coffee. In order to collect B-end customer demand, go to the Ministry of Commerce to tease the girl, most of the half an hour later. 3:00 to start work, typing code. Paid to take a piss. Paid to do nothing. At 5 p.m. , a heated discussion continues with the group of rowers about what to have for dinner. 6:00, dinner. Come back at 7:00, tap for 10 minutes, code for 10 minutes. 8:00 p.m. , participate in the daily company complaining meeting of the paddling group. At 8:45, you start packing. 9:00 sharp. A full and busy day was over. This is 996. Got It?
ref: https://www.zhihu.com/question/432539930
-Knockabout@reddit
Putting this in here because I don't think it's a problem unique to experienced developers. I'm not sure it'd be left up for broader sub discussion, because I guess it's more of a general career issue?
How does one handle a head of division making UX and design decisions, rather than the developers and design team? She has real experience in the field, but has been in a management role for a decade now. Recently, she has started requesting large changes to a feature that has had its design finalized, directly going to the developers instead of opening a dialogue with the designers. She has also made these kinds of "because I said so" decisions on other projects. This feels scummy to me; supposedly it's because she's trying to cut down on trivial uses of the (admittedly extremely overworked) designers' time, but it feels more like she's cutting them out entirely and believes she knows better. This is not a trivial change at all, and I'm concerned that it reflects a growing company culture of "design isn't important" and "just get it out the door", which inevitably leads to big refactors down the line when the UX sucks. We do not have anyone doing formal UX research unfortunately, so no data to point to for UX decisions.
How much should I push back on this? I do have some weight in my organization, but she's my boss's boss, and has steamrolled my boss before on other decisions. I also do not want to imply I think she's being scummy or arrogant, as it's obviously not exactly professional. I also do not have design experience myself; I'd be arguing on the behalf of the designers, which also feels pretty bad, but the designers have just been keeping their heads down. I get it, but it's not fair to them IMO, or to the developers.
hiddenhare@reddit
I agree with your sense that this is just pure incompetence. Lowering the company's design standards would be a valid leadership decision in some cases, but bypassing designers without actually lowering the standard of design is indefensible. Unfortunately, I've seen plenty of leaders make similar mistakes.
There's no legitimate way for you to fix mismanagement from your boss's boss, especially if you weren't hired for your design skills or leadership skills. It genuinely isn't supposed to be your job, and if you try to legitimately raise the alarm, it won't work. Your options are to silently weather the storm or switch to a different company.
You could try to find an illegitimate way to fix the problem, but to overpower a strong personality two levels above you in the hierarchy, you'd have to be so forceful and duplicitous that it would probably cross the line into bullying. If somebody figures out what you're trying to do, it would definitely be severe enough insubordination to get you fired.
Personally, the furthest I'd go would be to raise the issue very frankly with my boss, and gossip with a couple of designers to find out whether there's already a ton of pent-up pressure there. I'm not scared of fighting with my leaders, but in this case, I wouldn't try to be a hero - the cost/benefit looks really bad.
-Knockabout@reddit
I'm kind of at the point with the company that I'm just trying to rake in the salary for a while longer while I battle some health issues (I can do my job and nothing else right now). The vibes have been rancid lately. So I honestly am beyond caring if I get fired, though ideally I'd be able to get my pitiful amount of unemployment. I am actually one of the "survivors" in a wave of people quitting, as my sub-department has been insulated from the worst of things. So I know it's not just me feeling it.
Would politely raising the alarm in a public setting (ex. group Teams channel) not do anything at all...? Or generally asking in public channels when/if the designers will be involved? I have taken a firm stance up to this point of "I will try anything, but we need to actively watch for if this improves anything for us vs just adding a different set of problems", which I thought was reasonable, but it's difficult to actually measure anything objectively. So it just ends up "she said, she said" (to be more accurate to the situation). Which is an age-old software development problem I suppose, but I feel strongly that this is not the way to go. Is there any way to actually measure failure/success from this change?
I'll admit there have been other decisions she's made that I find extremely questionable. I do not consider myself an arrogant person, but I think some of the changes to our workflows she's proposed has only made things worse and slower, and I have no clue how anyone with her experience would come up with this stuff. Maybe she's trying to impress her leadership, I don't know. Or maybe I'm just stupid, and these changes are fixing something somewhere...it's possible I'm biased against her. Looking back, I'm still not sure why, but I left a meeting with her and a couple others having a panic attack because I felt violated, which is still the only word I can think of for it. I've only had panic attacks a handful of times in my life, so it surprised me. To be clear, there were no HR issues, or anything like that...more like bringing us in as the only benefactors of a terrible work situation for everyone else...? It made me deeply uncomfortable, and I really dread interacting with her now. That is probably coloring my perception of her work as well.
You're probably right, and I should just leave. But I really like the people I work with directly, and I like my actual work. I know we can do better than we're doing now without compromising the stuff leadership cares about (time, money). Am I just naive? I'll admit I'm also concerned with finding another role as a frontend developer with how things are right now. I'm confident in my ability to learn anything at a decent speed, but obviously that doesn't help much with meeting backend requirements/tech stack requirements in a resume, and because of my aforementioned health issues I would be searching for the increasingly elusive full-remote role...
Jesus, sorry. I'm going to leave it up because some of it is probably useful context, but maybe this is weighing on my mental health more than I thought.
ccb621@reddit
-Knockabout@reddit
For what it's worth, there's no secrecy around who is proposing these changes. You're right that I should talk to my boss; I just hate that it feels kind of conspiratorial to discuss a particular person in a meeting like that.
I've been trying to give her grace for that reason. But I also think she's dismissing our designers' experience.
GovernmentBroad2054@reddit
I'm pretty new to the development world. I started vibe coding since last year, at this time. Now it's about one year. I've delivered 20+ product demos for practice and 1 real product.
I pushed the product alive/online. Then I realized oh no, it couldn't support much traffic like a robust product. When 100 users visited it, it worked fine. When it's over 100, the website got really slow. The APIs reacted slow, the backend worked slow and etc.
I realized there're a lot I need to learn. So Dev Experts, I need help with what I need to learn in order to build a robust product? Even using vibe coding. Maybe some code review knowledge? Dev process knowledge?
My goal is to build a website or a mobile app by my own, definitely leveraging the capabilities of vibe coding.
Notary_Reddit@reddit
Going to give you broad advice that's a starting point. I would guess there is three big pieces of knowledge you are missing.
One, you don't understand what algorithmic complexity is. Some algorithms are simply way faster than others. Google "introduction to algorithm complexity" spend 30-60 minutes watching intro level videos. That should get you enough info so you can start asking an LLM questions to learn more whenever it's hitting you in the face
Two, the architecture matters a lot. 90% percent of this can be solved by picking a standard front end framework, back end framework, and plopping it on top of Postgres. I am not sure if It is still around but stack overflow had a good blog about how simple their architecture was to serve millions of visitors. If you use a simple react framework, put it on top of Django (for python) or "top web frame work in $LANGUAGE" and you follow the pattern of APIs you will have the right primitives to work with. From there you need to split your data cleaning. Ask an LLM to generate 2-3 possible database schemas for your use case. In a new session ask it to audit each schema for performance problems. Make it keep explaining until it makes sense.
Third, you don't seem to know how to profile and optimize your system. Carpenters say "measure twice cut once". Don't try to make your system faster until testing and finding what is slow. Ask an LLM to give you a summary of code profiling techniques. Ask it to develop a load testing plan for your current website. You should be able to run mock traffic and see slowness when 100 users can cause the problem.
Hopefully this is a good starting point.
GovernmentBroad2054@reddit
Cool thanks for the feedback and sharing those valuable content with me.
Such_Nectarine3478@reddit
Hey. 3ish YoE. A couple of months ago I was given more autonomy and given a large, important, feature to spearhead, including figuring out the requirements, deciding on the direction to take, etc. By this time I was already working as a sort of "bridge" between my main project and an adjacent one we want to connect with this main one, so I was found to be doing about 60/40 effort. Thing is, I'm not sure if I'm burning out.
It took me a while to reframe my thinking from ticket-taker to actually starting to crawl with this initiative, moving forward not focusing on perfection but just having a direction to move toward and making progress towards that direction and figuring things on the way, at least that's what I came up with from looking at the senior in the project, and things he has said, etc. I set up meetings, got guidance from business experts and sometimes from the senior, and made progress towards the "idea" of what was to be done. Presented my updates and the direction I was moving towards, based on the information I got, but it seems I've been put in the back burner once again. The ticket I've been working on has been put on blocked and management says my solution is "not specific enough", and that I should focus on more digested tickets. That was kind of demoralizing at first, because I do reckon I didn't do that good of a job, I didn't expect to, I knew I was gonna fumble before figuring it out.
I genuinely have no idea what I did wrong, but that's not the problem. I can take in stride bad feedback, but I just don't care anymore. I think about the broader initiative I was working on and I just think I'll find the same outcome. I think about my other smaller tickets and think about the senior's arbitrary PR comments like "too many tests", nitpick this, nitpick that. Or being grilled in Friday standups for not having updates, not moving the project forward, despite splitting my time on two projects.
I just feel really disillusioned with my job. I don't even care anymore. I figure a lot of these things are just run of the mill particularities of the field, but I can't help but think I might be burnout. The new set of responsibilities involving a novel part of the job for me, on top of everything else, just pushed me over the top. That's what I think. Any advice? I'm thinking of taking PTO for a week to recover. I had to take last Friday off because I was so cynical about another day of work I couldn't do anything.
I figure out i might be too early to lead such big initiatives, but I also wonder if my "junior" status in the company (everyone else has 8+ YoE) has affected the perception people have of me and my work. I welcome the learning opportunity but I think I might have exerted myself up to burnout in the process.
hiddenhare@reddit
This is an unacceptable way to cancel someone's project and downgrade their responsibilities. You're right to be upset.
It sounds like your manager is neglecting their duty to look after your professional development; do you have one-on-one meetings where you could raise this with them?
You're describing feelings of burnout, but they sound remarkably severe, verging on a mental health crisis (speaking from personal experience). Your comment history mentions bipolar syndrome, which sounds like a good fit. I can't give you medical advice, but consider that the strength of your emotional reaction here might be counterproductive - if you can't get it under control, it's likely to prevent you from fixing the problem.
If you're in a country where your bipolar syndrome is a legally protected disability, you should consider disclosing it to your manager. They can't help you if they don't know what's going on, and talking honestly about your situation will feel much better than hiding it.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
Who gave you the big project? Do you know why its not specific enough?
Such_Nectarine3478@reddit
My guess is it's management behind the big project initiative.
I don't know why it's not specific enough. Management/the boss aren't very communicative about it. I think sometimes that it's just a made up excuse for whatever reason to get me off this project. I just know that "it's not specific enough", even though I think I was pretty clear about what I was working towards and to me it was well aligned with what the business requirements were. Honestly communication at this company is kind of awful. A lot of important discussions, as in, directional, happen under the table with management and the senior only, and the senior isn't particularly good at leadership and communication so it just feels like I'm out of the loop a lot of the time.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
That sounds really frustrating. Who put you on the project in the first place? Was it something you proposed? Who are the stakeholders - what do they say?
HR91924@reddit
(Web dev with 3 years of experience) How to handle working with a senior who doesn’t care much about code quality and tries to avoid bothersome tasks? We have a tech lead and other developers on the team, but it gets tiresome discussing work with him specifically, and it takes me a lot of effort to be as respectful as I can when I point out things that should be taken into consideration (if I’m asked about the task, of course).
There are also times when I check a PR out of curiosity and find something that could have been done better, and I get irritated, which is bad on my side. I want to know how I can manage my emotions in these situations, as well as what the proper attitude to have at work is, so I can do my role and be as helpful as possible without being a bother to others or feeling stressed about it.
brvn13@reddit
Hi there, do you think one will be writing actual code in the future or will AI just write it for us and we just review it ? For context I am a junior dev and I have this anxiety, that this will happen and I wont enjoy the actual job as much anymore.
Notary_Reddit@reddit
I am responsible for building a business critical system where scale matters. We are not quite "web scale" but we are building toward it. I no longer write my code by typing every character. Codex is better and faster, especially for tests. I tell Codex exactly what I want and it makes it happen. I expect the jr devs on my team to do the same.
With that said, there is still a lot of use for jr devs. When we have observed a bug someone has to investigate it. Sometimes the task is clear "upgrade our major language version" but it still takes leg work to upgrade everything, test everything, make any modifications. Task after task, human judgment is involved. If you get your satisfaction only from writing beautiful code it might be a bit rough for you. For me, "I know exactly what shape this code will be, now I have to spend two days coding it" was one of my least favorite parts of the job. Now with Codex that's an afternoon instead of a couple days. I'm enjoying my job more than ever.
brvn13@reddit
Thanks for you insight. I am mostly worried about that AI will suck the joy out of developing a nice solution for a problem as well as most of the logical thinking processes. For me this process includes writing most of the code yourself. When AI wrote the code, I do have a harder time to understand it thoroughly.
Notary_Reddit@reddit
Its going to be a rough transition for some folks. I have found a lot of satisfaction in figuring out how to get Codex to write code as good or better than I would have written. I care a lot more about the really critical code paths and give it more specific instructions. For tests I let it run loose. Consider this, you now have a coworker that can write 100s of lines a minute and will rewrite it as many times as you want until it's exactly what you want. You are still responsible for any code you merge to main, iterate until you feel good about merging. I often need 2 or 3 iterations to get everything right. If it would have been a 4 hour task, I get the first working implementation in 20 minutes, I can spend 40 more minutes iterating and still come out 3 hours ahead.
MeetYouInOdesa@reddit
Maybe this was asked before: is it still worth it to learn to code manually as a junior/mid with the existence of gen agents?
MonochromeDinosaur@reddit
I find I’m better at reading code if I’ve written some manually recently.
The longer I go without writing code myself the more lax my code review skills become.
MeetYouInOdesa@reddit
How do you cope with this narrative of “write as little manual code as possible” pushed by companies? I feel that we really need to spend a significant part of our time writing code manually in order to keep our skills
MonochromeDinosaur@reddit
I do that but I always carve out at least one task where I code it manually. It’s not ideal but it’s something.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
Yes absolutely. What's the point of you if you cannot contribute anything? Even if you're using AI I need to be confident that you know how to code and review the code
MeetYouInOdesa@reddit
I agree with this, but is that still valued nowadays? My company keeps pushing this narrative of “orchestrating AI” instead of writing code manually and you start to think that they’ll eventually need a few seniors only to orchestrate them properly and that’s it.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
Those few seniors better understand the code well then. And as others have said knowing how to code makes you better at understanding the whole system, at knowing how well/poor the AI results are etc. Orchestrating AI is great when people who know what they're doing use it. I can trust the results. When clueless people use it they don't know if its real so I can't know if its real either, and you can really tell the difference.
If there are only a few seniors companies can be really picky. And the people who know their shit will stand out.
Literally how much value add does someone who doesn't actually know how to code add? What do you need them for? Set up an AI to prompt the AI if the human in the loop isn't going to make a difference anyways.
Daex33@reddit
There's some recent research indicating that reading/understanding code is activating different brain centers than writing. With the advent of AI, I would recommend to spend most of the energy trying to improve reading ability and understanding how things actually work (AI can help with this too). I see a huge potential risk for 'brain rot' if you outsource all thinking and understanding to AI, and I think it may be irreversible. I don't necessarily believe you should be 'coding manually' to combat that however, because I don't know if that would actually help.
I tried the 'learning' mode in Claude for my personal project where Claude left some "Human TO-DOs" and while it was fun exercise, it was largely inefficient. The learning part that was useful was reading some framework functions and seeing what are the options available to me, but figuring out correct syntax to do what I want is at this stage probably just a waste of time, AI can do it faster.
IMO you should definitely focus on building knowledge and understanding how things work, but not worry to much about 'manually coding'.
OtaK_@reddit
Absolutely yes. Without your own competence you cannot verify or assert the quality/veracity of LLM output. And you gain that competence by doing, not magically wishing for rainbows.
And keep in mind, LLMs, contrary to all the marketing bs we're being served, are still unable to produce meaningful code for hard problems. They're decent to use as a rubber duck on very restricted scope, but anything beyond that is a waste of time.
casualPlayerThink@reddit
In short: yes, you should learn
Long/tl;dr Will you ever became a car mechanic if someone aleays just told you witch bolt to touch and you never memorize/learn it yourself? Also, would you blindly accept sometimes you have to use icecream scones and sometimes you have to open the stove door because someone says so? Llm/gpt makes easier, you can rely on natural lang, but this is just a way of the work, not the actual work. You know, with the recent 20 years of increased tech payments, the entire scene inflated, 80-95% of people should not be in the industry (see dedicated bangladesh/indian/us colleges that spit out people designed for only work on one field, rarely providing real value). Now Llm bloat the industry even more, increasing the numbers from 95 to 99.5%.
Ok_Grape_9236@reddit
Hey experienced lot, I am a senior engineer, mum in tech in my late 30s, trying to understand if there is a bias against woman in tech who are fat. I am not autistic but stating it tech for 15 years means I am a blue personality so analytical and logical around decision making. I have gained weight post pregnancy and I am working on it but work and home management makes things very hard sometimes.
casualPlayerThink@reddit
Yes, there are. Women tend to be more mean towards female collegues, also, way too many leader a#h#le, and see female collegue/hire them based on the "taste in women". Shouldn't be like this, but the tech still extremely toxic towards females.I helped in interviewing juniors and filtering out resumes, and many many many cases, the leadership throwed out fenales cv who wasn't sympatic enough by picture. Ridicoulus and retard stuff, and as I protested against such decision, I met quite hostile leaders. (Note: in 4 different country, 10+ companies, 4 different language)
Ok_Grape_9236@reddit
This wasn’t a dev this is a pm.
nickjvandyke@reddit
You probably already know of it, but /r/womenintech might have more insight too
Dimencia@reddit
I mean... the thing about biases is most people don't recognize that they have them. So there's nothing anyone here could say that would convince you nobody cares about your weight
But if anything, I am a little skeptical of skinny devs by default - they clearly don't spend much time in front of a computer (except for the young ones whose metabolism just hasn't stopped working yet). So you're probably fine
PancakeWithSyrupTrap@reddit
should EM write code ?
I'm biased towards a no from recent experiences. my EM will sometimes push buggy code, then I have to clean up the mess. this makes me furious.
but that's just me. curious what others think.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
As an EM I write code sometimes. Often if its a small task that I don't want to interrupt others work with. That doesn't seem to be the actual question you're asking though.
PancakeWithSyrupTrap@reddit
In my case the EM refactored the code not because it was critical but because it was "nice to have." And this caused features to break and customer escalations.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
I mean, I don't think this is related to the overall question of how much code should an EM be writing. It has to do with your team structure. And apparent lack of review process
PancakeWithSyrupTrap@reddit
I blocked the PR. but the EM was just being a pain so I ended up approving it. I report to the EM so there is a power imbalance.
ivancea@reddit
The question for me would be: why should them, if it isn't their job?
I'm all good with EMs writing whatever they want. In my team we sometimes have a week where we make any project we want to try things, and EMs are absolutely on for the party. Also PMs. But normal days, they are very busy with their job.
In any case, code passes a review round, the expected quality will be the same, so there's no problem at all. If your EM pushes buggy code, the problem is the lack of reviewing process. Fix it, and your EM won't push bugs anymore™! Plus they'll learn from the reviews. Don't forget EMs are also people. They may want to try it because they like it, or to try things, or because they have some free time. Help them
PancakeWithSyrupTrap@reddit
I blocked the PR. but the EM was just being a pain so I ended up approving it. I report to the EM so there is a power imbalance.
ivancea@reddit
There's the problem then. I can assure you, if an engineer tells an EM to not be something, it won't be merged.
Of course, it always comes with reasoning, from both sides. The EM has reasons, and you too. If the reasons to merge it are strong enough, then merging it is the right thing to do
Dimencia@reddit
Most EMs were once regular software engineers, and EM was the only real path forward in their career. Many of them still want write code every now and then, and it's probably better to let them do it than make them hate their jobs - and it can help them keep those skills fresh, and understand the projects so they can contribute more to the team
But they should obviously follow all the same processes as the other engineers, working on stories you've all groomed together, and submitting a PR for review. If you approved the PR, that's on you, but if they skipped the process, then yeah that might be a problem
PancakeWithSyrupTrap@reddit
I blocked the PR. but the EM was just being a pain so I ended up approving it. I report to the EM so there is a power imbalance.
Imoa@reddit
If they have time and bandwidth and want to sure. It still has to pass the sniff test and I’ll review it but I don’t care who writes good code as long as it’s good code. Buggy code I’m still not approving.
GoodishCoder@reddit
No, that's the job of individual contributors.
Daex33@reddit
I mean they should prioritize doing their actual job first and foremost. Hypothetical scenario that their team is operating at peak efficiency, has projects lined up for the next year, and nothing for them to do, sure they could be 'coding' a prototype for a new thing or whatever they want to do. If their code is messy and results in extra work for the team, that's a problem to solve individually and not 'all EMs in the world' kind of problem.
AggressiveAd5248@reddit
I personally think no, absolutely they should help unblock people as are former engineers etc, but they are engineering managers, there is plenty for them to be doing other than writing code.
Possibly the least effective thing an engineering manager could be doing is writing code, unless they are the only ones who can do it or time is very critical.
Curious_Cantaloupe65@reddit
I am jobless, layed off.
I got offered a role, pay is 40% less than my prev paycheck, 3month probation, can't leave as I have to sign a 2 year contract and even if I decide to leave then I will have to pay a penalty, can't even do a part time job or freelance cuz of NDA.
Should I go for this or keep finding new job.
Lichcrow@reddit
Depends on the values. If its 40% less from a 250k gig, then i would live off of 150k...
If it was 80k and now you have to go with 50, then things might be tight depending on your living conditions.
nickjvandyke@reddit
What's your prospects for other offers, and how desperate are you financially? Without knowing, pass is the clear answer, but maybe not for everyone.
Curious_Cantaloupe65@reddit
Not desperate, live with my parents.
So_Rusted@reddit
pass
Cesci_@reddit
Hi, I have an internship interview soon for a back-end development position. The job description is pretty brief, but mentions being able to code in either python, c#, rust or go, depending on what you are most comfortable with. I was wondering if it is common for back-end systems to be developed with so many languages, and if so how is this maintainable? Thank you for any help! :)
eatglitterpoopglittr@reddit
No, it’s not. What’s more common is for companies to say that previous experience with any of these languages is acceptable because they’re just going to teach you to use whatever their primary language is, and it’s easier to learn a new programming language once you’re fluent in at least one other language.
If their code base is actually written in all those languages then it’s probably a mess, but for an internship I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
casualPlayerThink@reddit
In short: no. EM just should help deliver and solve problems
Longer: Honestly, it is hard to tell. Many EM were engineer for 1-2 years, wich makes them junior. Then they became kind of a leader, over seniors usually... without the understanding, mindset or experience. Would it be better if there would be a generic requirements of 10+ years in engineering before anyone could became a manager? Yeah. Will it happen ever? No, infortunately. Also, EM as a title is kind of weird. Why do you need them if you have project managers? And vica versa.