What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Senior Developer

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Hey folks, I am just leaving the office. It's a late one. It's 7 at night. I had to do an interview. I say like had to. I did an interview. That's I had the had to part is that's why I'm here. Um so that one ran a little bit late for me. We're going to experience dev subreddit for this one. Um, and I'm I kind of I don't know what I'm going to talk about for this yet, how I'm going to answer, but I'm really hoping that we get some comments. Sorry, there's some people I was just talking with and they were pointing at me. Um, I'm really hoping to get some people in the comments that want to share their perspective on this. But no pressure obviously. I just think that there's a lot of people with some interesting insights to share. And if they're comfortable doing it, hopefully it's not a lot of effort to be able to talk about it.

But the question that was posted on Reddit was really around like what advice do you have for your younger self? And it was specifically around you know becoming a senior developer. So that transition going into senior. There was another post I saw that was like, you know, if you could go back, would you be a developer? But this one was really around like advice your younger self as you become a senior developer. Like what would help you do that role effectively? So I thought it'd be fun to talk about. I don't know yet the things I want to talk about for this yet. So probably be all over the place with it. Like I said, if you guys got some thoughts on this as we chat through it, would love to hear from it from you in the comments on it. And I'm sure other people would appreciate it, too.

So, I think one of the things that comes to mind for me is like, and this is definitely like with my manager hat on, I think, but I think a lot of people don't realize that when you start to become more senior, sort of just by definition of that, there's going to be people that are going to be more junior than you. And probably what a lot of people don't realize is that um you'll have more and more people starting to to emulate your behaviors. So you you end up having people that will follow in your footsteps. they'll do the things that you do. Um, the way that you I'm not saying everything like um, you know, like they're an exact copy of you, so to speak, but more like the behaviors that you show, other people will start to emulate those.

So, when we think about culture on a team or how we approach different things like in our teams, the things that we value, like other people will be looking up to you for those things. Other people will even subconsciously start doing the things that you do or uh kind of following closer to the approach that you take. And other people that are more senior, right? Some people do this more consciously than others where they're like, "Hey, I see what this person's doing and I admire what they're doing." And as a result, they more proactively try to emulate. But other people, it's a lot more subconscious. And in my opinion, this is the thing that I just want to draw attention to is like there's like that can be really powerful in a good way or dangerous because if there's things that you do that if

you don't have awareness of them or maybe you do and you're like whatever like I don't care like other people will start to do those things more and more because you are becoming more senior and by definition more junior people will end up start starting to emulate that behavior. So, I want to try to see if I can come up with some specific examples. Why is it 7:00 and they are metering the highway? This is crazy. We got to take advantage of that. Um, yeah. What the hell, man? It's 7:00 at night. I've never even seen this highway metered on my way home, even during rush hour. That's not a good sign. Um, okay. So anyway, some examples of what I mean are like, you know, uh how how do you treat code reviews? Like what kind of feedback are people giving on code reviews, right?

Are people asking good questions? Are they trying to understand what's going on? Do people even do they care to jump on to code reviews? Are they like, you know, uh procrastinating on them? What's your team's culture for documentation? Does anyone write documentation? Does anyone care? There's all sorts of like little things. How do you um Oh man, I just I don't have a good way to to put this into words, but like Oh, don't you dare try to come into this lane without a signal sir or ma'am. What's your approach for like like making a safe like it's like psychological safety, right? When people ask questions, is that like a thing that you welcome or do you make people feel stupid when they ask questions? Right? And like this just like all these little things that you could be doing or not doing are going to have potentially a dramatic effect over time as you become more senior.

And so I just wanted, you know, part one here is like to remind people of that that people will be looking up to you and emulating your behavior. And I think, you know, advice from my younger self that would be doing that transition. My god, you know what it is? It's because it's raining and as soon as it rains, no one knows how to drive. Um the advice for my younger self going into seniors like is to think about that is that if you're ever in a situation where you're I don't know you're thinking about how the team is like you like being on the team or you want to influence the direction of the team or like like you care. I don't know a better way to say it. Some people like, you know, they show up to work, it's their nineto-ive, like whatever, just kind of do the tasks in front of them and that's fine.

But if you're like, I really care about what's going on here. And I don't mean to say that in a way that's like it's right or wrong to feel a certain way. Sorry for making it come across that way, but some people like they they kind of want more out of out of work than just like let me show up and and code the things and go home. It's not wrong or right to feel a certain way on that, but if you want more out of it, like you become part of influencing that. And I say that because I would want my younger self to realize like, hey, there were things that you really did care about and like you wanted to drive change and be part of that change. And I feel fortunate that I was able to do that a lot of the time, but it didn't always feel that way.

Sometimes it was like, man, like it feels like climbing a mountain here or like pushing a boulder up a mountain. Like, why am I even bothering? And I I think that if I could remind myself like, hey, you know, you're becoming a more senior person on the team, like other people, I don't know a good way to say this, like if you're kind of, you know, leading by example, other people will follow that. I got to move lanes over here. This is going to be a disaster. Give me one sec. Sorry, folks. How am I going to do this? Nice. And we're behind a cyber truck. Great. What a what a dumb vehicle. Um yeah, I think that I would want to remind myself that, you know, when things feel kind of challenging that way or it feels like it might feel a little bit hopeless is that if you do a good job leading by example, you will have other people that kind of rally behind that.

Um, I'm not saying that it happens instantly or without effort or it's trivial or anything like that, but there will be momentum there. Um, and I would want I would want my younger self to know that. Um, I think something that's important. I think I I feel like I got a handle of this just because of where I was working um and the environment we were in. You know, I would want my younger self to know that as you become more senior, there's um sort of expectation of like the way you have to influence others needs to happen more and more. So whether that's working across teams, working with different roles and things like that, um like that starts to take a different shape. Um, and sort of to prepare for that, which Sorry, I'm trying to change all these lanes here. We got one more to go.

Still behind this cyber truck. It's like a wall. Um, yeah, like you're going to need to understand that, you know, parts of your job now are going to require like interacting with different roles, different stakeholders, different teams, trying to influence. And this is why I'm like I in my environment that I was in, I I kind of had that because it was small. always like you didn't really have a choice. You kind of were embedded in that from the beginning. But if I wasn't, I would I would want my my younger self to know that that as I get more senior, I need to understand that I need to understand that in order for me to have more impact or to work through more complex things, there's going to be an expectation that I can do that kind of uh those interactions more effectively. And what does that mean?

Well, it means understanding your audience. Like, who are you talking to? How do you communicate to them in a way that it's going to be meaningful? That might mean like upleveling things that you're trying to talk about. It would mean understanding how to go into more technical detail. Um, it will mean that you're working with people that operate differently. Sorry. It's one of the reasons why the highway is slow. Oh, someone's pulled over. Um it means that the more people and you'll learn this right the more people you work with the more that you realize like people are different right different personality types people like working different ways but like I would want my younger self to know that right it's not not a cookie cutter approach and the reason like just sort of like another reason why I think it's important to know that or to have awareness of that early.

It's like you might find that it's frustrating to work with some people, right? Like, man, I hate working with Jimmy cuz Jimmy's a pain in the ass and like Jimmy like it's always frustrating cuz like I don't, you know, Jimmy never gets it. He's always missing things or whatever. And it's like, you know what? Like maybe how you're working with Jimmy is not effective and maybe there's more you can do on that. And it's frustrating because you're not doing the things that you could be doing when working with Jimmy. That's not to say that other people can't improve and get better or whatever, but you might be facing frustration because you you legitimately don't know how to work effectively with certain individuals and that's okay. So when you feel that frustration, when you're in those scenarios, like reminding yourself, hey, look, like this is a challenge.

you know, it would be great if you can work on and try to solve. And that's probably going to help you in the future for working with other people because it's very likely that it's not just because Jimmy's stupid or because Jimmy's malicious. It's probably because you and Jimmy don't see things the same way or you don't understand the effective way to work with Jimmy. By the way, sorry if your name's Jimmy. I'm making you feel bad, but hopefully that makes sense, right? like use these things that feel frustrating as lessons to be like, hey, look, like this is an opportunity to get better. I still have this kind of that happens to me where I'm like, man, like I was I'm not going to get into the details, but I was talking to someone recently about a partner interaction and I was like, man, like this is really frustrating for me.

Like I actually feel like genuinely insulted working with this person because of how they how they talk to me. And I and I mean this like legitimately, but I don't think that this What's going on here? This person's going so slow. I need to figure this out. Come on. Okay, sorry. That person was going below the speed limit in the fast lane and it goes down to one lane, so we had to get in front of them. Um, yeah. So, working with this partner, I don't think that they're malicious, right? But like, it's frustrating enough that I need to literally remind myself this person is not malicious. I don't think that they're a stupid person. And I don't think that they're actually like a mean person, but the way that I feel when I'm working with them, it actually really bothers me. So, you know, I'm I'm going to be 37 in another few months, so like almost 40 years old.

I've been managing engineering teams for 13 years. And I'm still learning that there's people that when I work with them, I got a lot to learn, right? I haven't I haven't met everyone. and I haven't met every type of personality. And instead of just being upset with someone and being like, "Wow, this person makes me feel like or like this person makes me not want to like, you know, work on this kind of stuff or whatever." It's like, okay, well, like why? What's like what's actually going on in these interactions that makes me feel this way? Right? And I think, you know, in this case, it's like sometimes I think that there's um I wanted to say like an education gap. I don't mean like this person's not educated. I mean um there's an opportunity like as a as a partner to us where I can give them information.

I can educate them on how things work. Not not that they're um undereducated. That's definitely not what I meant. Um, so like these opportunities where it's like, hey, they probably don't understand how some of these things work. And instead of just being frustrated by that, there's a combination of like they don't really understand, they're trying to push things forward in some direction. They're trying to do their best and it's it ends up being like friction for me. Or there's an expectation on them that they need to communicate things, right? This is a this is a really common one actually. Um, this is for people that have to work with others that feel like they're being micromanaged or like why won't, you know, why won't this PM leave me alone for status updates or my manager won't leave me alone? Like having this understanding that they might have some pressure to go report status.

It's not an excuse for it, but like when we start understanding why people are doing certain things, then we can figure out how to respond to them without just feeling like everything's shitty. It's kind of the meta point. So, um, yeah, I I think that's some advice for my younger self is that figure out how you, you know, work effectively with different roles, different stakeholders, and different personalities. Um, some other advice, you know, things change fast. Technolog is always changing. Um, so part of me I think I've done an okay job with this, but part of me would be like, hey, look, like, you know, keep your eyes open for things on the horizon in terms of like tech changes and and that kind of stuff. Like don't be don't ignore it. But at the same time, like that does not mean you have to, you know, every month go pick up a new programming language or tech stack, right?

Like I I don't think this is the best example. Like I don't think that I would recommend to other people or even myself in the past like hey focus all your time and attention innet like I don't think that's actually good advice. That's mostly what I've done right because my work has kind of put me in that path and even stuff on the side I'm like that's where my interest is so I do it. I don't think it's what I would recommend. But I also wouldn't recommend to someone every, you know, every month or whatever. Just change what you're doing. Buddy, you got to speed up or I got to pass you. It's one or the other. Now we know. Okay. Um, so yeah, there there's a balance to be struck, right? And I think in hindsight, like I've pro I've been pretty fortunate that it's worked out this way.

I feel like .NET has actually evolved a lot. That's worked really well. Um, but like I think I would have uh benefited a lot from from doing more web development, right? And as much as I joke about like I don't like JavaScript, whatever, cuz I don't um I think it would be great if I was a lot more comfortable with it, like why why wouldn't I want to be? But at the same time, you know, the the joke would be, okay, well, if I went too far that way, am I just learning a new JavaScript framework every day? And the meta point being here that I think that there's a lot to be gained from understanding the fundamentals. And I I think I've done a decent job of that. And that's what I would recommend to my my younger self becoming more senior is like awareness of shiny things is great, but you don't need to go try and learn every single shiny thing, right?

Why is that a like why is that thing that's shiny shiny? What makes it shiny? Is it just because it's new? Okay, like be aware of it, but like is there something to learn from that? And maybe there's a lesson or something we can uh extract from that some fundamental understanding. So you don't need the shiny thing to get that, but you can understand like hey the shiny thing is a good example of that. Let me see how I can apply that to different parts of uh my programming or software engineering. I think That's one of the lessons there. So, remind myself of that. Um, I I don't know if this is a good one for me, but it it probably needs to be said like in terms of becoming more senior, like advice for myself would be like there's there's more to life than your career, I think.

And the reason I I'm I feel kind of challenged by that one is because uh I'd be a hypocrite if I like, you know, if I didn't acknowledge that like still most of most of my time and attention is on my career, right? And like full transparency, I'm not I'm not hiding it, right? Like I I am so grateful that I was able to meet uh who is now my wife. Like that for me was a sort of like a big fear in my life. Like I'm never going to meet someone and have a relationship. But now we're together, we're married. Like that is and it's not like okay check the box now you're done with that. No, it's like that's still you have to keep investing time and effort into that. That's your relationship. That is for me that truly is the most important thing.

But when we have and you know this is conversations I've had with my wife but like when we talk about kids and stuff I'm like I actually don't think I'm ready for kids. Not because I don't like the idea of having kids. I think children would be amazing but I don't think right now. And I say that don't you dare. What are you doing man? I say that because um because I think there's still a lot in my career that I want to accomplish. Like I am prioritizing parts of my career more than kids. I don't think that's wrong or right or anything, but that's like mentally where I'm at. But I I think that I would like to remind my younger self of that while I'm still earlier in my career. Not like I'm, you know, maxed out in my career or something like that, but I think I would want to give my younger self that advice.

It's like, hey, just so you know, there are other things outside of just work. I think it's uh it's easy to fall into that trap. Might depend on like personality types and stuff. I'm not a psychologist. I don't really know. But yeah, I think I think that's something that I would want my younger self to know is like, hey, look, it's great to have goals and try to progress in your career and aspire for certain things. Like I think I would always encourage people to do that, but it doesn't just have to be a paycheck or a level. That's a lot of stupid drivers on one drive. Let me tell you, this person had a full calendar year to merge into this lane. and then decided last minute, ah I should probably merge into this lane so I can get off the highway as they're uh about to cut me off.

But they're not going to cut me off. We're going to move away from the dumb people. Yeah, I think that's about it. You know, I think there's probably a lot more if I sat down. There's probably a lot more lessons to kind of compile, but I think those are the things that come to mind for me. And like I said at the beginning of this, I'd be super curious to see what other people have to say, I'm sure there's probably some thoughts on like, you know, now that we now that we see how AI and stuff is being introduced or like the path some of us took like whether we went to college, university boot camps, did other career paths first, stuff like that. I think people that have different journeys through this kind of stuff will have very interesting advice to offer. I would love to hear it and I can guarantee you if you take some time to write a comment about it that other people would really value it as well.

So something to consider if you don't mind taking a moment to do that for others. Um but yeah, with that said, if you have um questions you want answered on the channel, just leave them below in the comments. You can go to codemute.com and submit a question anonymously. Be happy to to make a video for you to try and answer. And you can check out my other YouTube channels. If you're not tired of my voice, if you want to learn how to program in C or program with AI tools, you can head over to Dev Leader. It's uh primarily programming tutorials. Otherwise, you can go to Devleer Path to Tech if you want to see resumeé reviews or have your resume get reviewed. It's totally free for now. And um otherwise, the Devleer podcast is where I interview other software engineers and uh hear about their career journeys.

It's also where I do my live streams every Monday at 700 p.m. Pacific. I would love to see you there. It's an AMA format. Come ask questions. I'll answer them live. Doesn't matter um what the topic is. Usually I take a topic from this channel, code commute, and talk about it there. But if you just want to ask about anything else, happy to try and spend some time on that. Um but that's it. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being here and I'll see you in the next video.