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The senior engineer death spiral

285 points · 150 comments · nsavage

  1. alembic_fumes · · focus · HN ↗
    I am having a hard time believing that anyone who uses the word "bro" this much is capable of advising anyone with seniority, because I don't see how they themselves would have the necessary seniority to give such advise.

    But I suppose the message, hard to read as it is, is something that some people need to hear. I've seen this first hand a few times, mostly in people who got promoted by working really hard and the more they got promoted the harder they felt like they must work to keep proving themselves. This often led into burnout.

    I don't know; I don't really want to blame the people themselves or say that they're the ones responsible of their own condition. People, and I want to say technically minded people in particular, are each rather fallible when it comes to our own humanity and the psychology underneath. And so, I'd much rather see this same advise be targeted to managers and senior teammates: when you notice a colleague who seems to have gone in too deep, have a friendly chat. They might very well be blind to it, or trying to ignore it to push through just that one more time.

    1. toast0 · · focus · HN ↗
      Bro, I've been in this industry since before y2k, and in the right circles, people much older than me have been saying bro/brah forever.

      Mostly surfers and skateboarders, but some of those peeps end up as senior engineers.

      1. stasomatic · · focus · HN ↗
        Bruv! Surf's up.
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