Share: Being a software engineer

Daniel Lim
Nov 6 · 2 min read

Being a software engineer does not mean one coding tasks after another. In my opinion, there are a number of principles will enable us to become better engineers every passing day.

A good book to learn is http://www.effectiveengineer.com/, which can be summarized as below.

  1. Fundamentals
  • Master Javascript instead of Javascript framework.
  • Keep up to date with latest version of stack you use, in demand tech backed by leaders.
  • Code a lot, language agnostic.

2. Better Design

  • Test driven.
  • Iterate on design instead of doing everything in 1 step.
  • Programming best practices.
  • Design good api, education tech talks.
  • Lots of data > smart algorithms.

3. Managing expectations instead of overworked 100%

  • Not all code improvement creates value.
  • Level of empowerment and ownership.
  • Trade off building the “right” thing against moving quickly.
  • Trade off code quality with iteration speed, selectively review code based on risk and impact.

4. Focus on value 80% impact from 20% work

  • Metric to drive progress. Productivity > hours work.

5. Own your education

  • Optimize on learning when working on tasks. Working on unchallenging things is huge opportunity cost.
  • Acquire new skills daily. Read good code. Jump into code you don’t understand.
  • Invest in high demand skill.
  • Learning compounds.

6. Priorities.

  • Limit work in progress. Context switch is costly.
  • Do riskier task first. Allow buffer room for unknown. Reduce risk early.

7. Invest in speed

  • Automate common task. Invest in test. Shorten debugging loop. Invest in time saving skills. Master IDE.
  • Invest in onboarding materials to ramp up new members.
  • Invest in simple building blocks
  • Automate mechanics not decision making. Recover quickly. Idempotent. Retry able not leaving global state.

8. Communicate proactively

  • Validate ideas early and often. Be extra vocal and get feedback.
  • Ask for and give direct feedback to accelerate own growth and team.

9. Improve your writing

  • Track you accomplishments as you go. Quantify the results.

10. Be professional and reliable

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