Experienced Devs

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Posts should be relevant to those well into their careers.

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An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding (skamille.medium.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I generally don't like "listicles", especially ones that try to make you feel bad by suggesting that you "need" these skills as a senior engineer.

However, I do find this list valuable because it serves as a self-reflection tool.

Here are some areas I am pretty weak in:

How to write a design doc, take feedback, and drive it to resolution, in a reasonable period of time
How to convince management that they need to invest in a non-trivial technical project
How to repeat yourself enough that people start to listen

Anything here resonate with y'all?

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[–] Drop_All_Users 1 points 1 year ago

Soft Skills are soooo important, and the number one (which I think is getting kind of pointed out above) is communication!

You need to be able to explain things in a non technical way.
You need to understand who your audience is and what is important to them. Do you have a technical priority that you want to get built? Then you need to explain it in terms of your company goals, quarterly OKR's or how it could impact revenue.
You need to be able navigate conflict, know which battles to fight, and how to deescalate if necessary.
You need to be emphatic, and you need to use that empathy to help guide less senior developers.