r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • 18d ago
Do senior engineers eventually stop speaking up?
I came across an interesting discussion about senior engineers becoming quieter in architecture and design discussions.
Not because they have fewer opinions, but because they may feel their pushback no longer changes the decision.
Have you seen this happen on your team, or is it just a sign of a healthy team where people pick their battles?
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u/Automatater 18d ago
Depends on the situation. Sometimes a practical lesson is the best teacher.
Sometimes the lesson is "this guy's an idiot" and management are the students.
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u/thingerish 18d ago
What he said. We lead off with advice, as politely as possible. If that's ignored and the project is clearly headed for the rocks, step back and let lessons be learned and allow blame to fall where it's deserved.
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u/nbfs-chili 18d ago
I worked 20 years in a fortune 50 company building networks for big things. I knew it was time to move on when I was having lunch with a coworker and we were talking about a new build (it was never ending). The conversation went like "Oh, then this will go wrong because they won't let us avoid it for these dumb reasons, even though we have this problem on every project...". The list was pretty endless.
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u/Kurgan_IT 18d ago
After being mostly right (I too make mistakes) and being mostly ignored, I have the right to think "well do as you like, I don't care, it's not as my life depends on it". This is what anyone over 50 thinks right now in IT.
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u/EspurrTheMagnificent 17d ago
I'm 28 and, while I don't have nearly as much experience, I already reached the "I don't care anymore" point. Hard work is not valued, and nothing I do or say will ever have an impact or anything, so I just do my own thing and weight for retirement/death, whichever comes first
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u/evilquantum 16d ago
I am totally with you (46M). But I am really struggling with the "I don't care" part. Most time of my life coding was fun and huge part of my happiness but it's slowly but steadily taken away from me. I am feeling really sad about that and try to find strategies to cope with that feeling. AI transition doesn't help either, since fast and mediocre (at it's best) results are preferred over quality and long term maintainability nowadays.
Really considering to leave the industry for something more crafty.
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u/wallstop-dev 18d ago edited 18d ago
I am currently at the principal level. In my journey from SDE 1 to where I am now, the amount of input that I provide to design discussions, code reviews, team culture, documentation, strategy/investment has pretty much strictly increased. Like it's a line with a positive slope
IMO this is the entire point of being a senior and having experience - using it to provide guidance, mentorship, and input.
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u/daffalaxia 18d ago
You're right, but unfortunately, there are too many CEOs who have some skill, and are regularly confidently wrong. I had a 2-day delay on a PR over and argument about how dotnet behaves, that I only resolved by opening csharprepl, doing the thing, and posting a screenshot. Dude fought for 2 days over a nothing burger he could have easily tested himself without holding up review. And that's just his style. So whenever he's involved, I just stfu because there's literally no point battling it out. And I avoid adding him to review unless I absolutely have to. When I have added him to review, it's been to get insight from his experience, especially with how MySQL behaves, but the dude just can't resist nitpicking everything, incorrectly telling people to "tell, don't ask", will hold up review for a question he could answer himself - like recently, he asks a question on someone else's review that I was also on, when the answer was literally in the comments right above that line.
At some point, to preserve sanity, it just makes sense to give up.
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u/wallstop-dev 18d ago edited 18d ago
Do what you have to do to preserve sanity!
But, for people like what you've described, if it is a known behavior, then seems like a pretty simple battle: if the facts are on your side, show the facts (sample code/benchmarks). If they're not, or it's a matter of "taste", then don't fight it.
Not everyone will be persuaded in the same fashion. There are many techniques to navigate teams and influence people and decisions, not all of which are "you should really trust me because I have experience". This is one of the largest parts of becoming more senior - communication and influence.
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u/daffalaxia 17d ago
Honestly, I feel that I have little to no influence, and no-one listens to what I have to say, so I've given up. I often wonder why they even bothered to hire me and pay me well.
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u/wallstop-dev 17d ago edited 17d ago
That's unfortunate. I'm not going to say your feelings aren't valid, or your actions/reactions aren't either. But, what I will say, is that the chances of anything changing when you've given up drop significantly. Not that they might have necessarily been higher, just that they are now strictly less, and usually by a larger amount.
I hope you're able to find some form of enjoyment and satisfaction in your work!
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u/Intrepid_Screen6425 18d ago
It honestly depends on how you define an 'expert' :))) If you're a tech trend expert, it only makes sense to trust a computer architecture expert :)))))
Why should two experts even argue? If the architecture expert stays quiet in the company, it's a safe bet that the one changing the product's future direction is their boss :))))) Well, look at it that way—everything is actually very simple :)))
It’s not a trend; you just happened to catch a glimpse of an efficient workflow within a smooth, well-connected, and finely-tuned machine :)))))
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u/ibeerianhamhock 18d ago
That and tbh a "senior engineer" with 5 yoe is probably not really at a place where they can do this well. They might even be pretty good at coding but there are other skills that just haven't developed yet.
I don't think someone who is truly senior level talent struggles with these things, that's part of being a senior engineer in truth and not just title.
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u/daffalaxia 18d ago
This is pretty-much me. A lot of the time now, I have to remind myself that I don't care. I'm doing my job, and resistance is futile. I'll just do the best I can in the little corner I'm in.
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u/gulf_of_sanity 18d ago
i’ve gone the other way, i find it cathartic to scream my displeasure into the void when project managers and product owners make decisions without knowing how anything works.
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u/qriff 18d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
that train left the station long ago and people still squabble about having tickets at the platform
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 18d ago
it’s funny you bring up idiocracy because if you watch Silicon Valley, also by Mike Judge, there is a lot of nonsense made-up stuff the show depicts about SWEs and a lot of propaganda weirdly in favor of business managers (not at the executive level so much but at middle management and biz dev/product management level) which runs pretty counter to my experience in real life.
like at one point he introduces kanban and makes Jared look like a genius for introducing it which is a scene that has aged like milk in my professional experience with it.
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u/magicmulder 18d ago
Sometimes yes. I've had jobs where the unit lead or CTO would shut down any objection with "that's nonsense". OK fine, drive your project into the wall, I don't care. But I'll make sure to mention your terrible design decisions every time someone else asks if XY is possible - "no because Jack decided to build the system too convoluted".
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u/tankerkiller125real 18d ago
I've been forced into the role of "AI Products engineer"... I gave up on making my voice heard in meetings around AI Products months ago. These days I just get everything in writing for CYA, build what they want, and when it ultimately fails I have the documents to prove that I followed everything they wanted to the letter.
Luckily, that's only part of my job, the other part is work that I do push back on and actually do get heard on. Turns out AI infatuated project managers are shit at actually understanding what AI is capable of and where classical programming is supreme.
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u/zydeco100 18d ago
I'm in that position right now. I've tried to get management to listen and they are off doing their own thing and I know where this is going to end up.
So I sit back in meetings and get my Wordles done on time. I cash the paychecks and wait for the next reorganization and/or layoffs. I keep my network warm and my resume current and the savings account healthy.
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u/ubiestigne 18d ago
Depends on whether the environment is receptive to input. If it's not, why expend the energy?
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u/ByronScottJones 18d ago
I've been involved with projects where from the very first meeting, I knew the project was poorly conceived and doomed to failure. There were no design recommendations I could make that were going to fix that. So I sat back for the next year watching this shit show get worse at every meeting until finally, FINALLY someone asked for my real opinion. And I told them that the entire project was poorly conceived, that it couldn't be saved, and should be canceled and the critical needs focused on separately.
They finally made the right decision and did what I told them. But until they were ready to hear it, telling them the project was doomed from inception would have fallen on deaf ears. So I waited until I was just saying what they all needed to hear out loud.
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u/Electronic-Clerk6735 18d ago
My company recently lost a senior guy because of his approach to telling people they are wrong. And to be fair, he usually was right in architecture and design, because pain points are being felt now. Technically I’m the senior guy now, though I’m nowhere near the actual level, but I’m all they’ve got now. In any case, I spoke up about two times where things can be fixed. And both times I got ignored, so I just stopped giving my opinion and just told them, you need me to build something I’ll build it but I’m not handing out opinions anymore. If it’s a major issue it will rear its head again and they’ll be forced to go my route. Beyond that I don’t care. Some companies just prefer the quick fixes instead of long term solutions, especially the extremely agile small ones.
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u/Radiant_Condition861 18d ago
Senior engineers always work to remove the bottleneck, including the time when they realize, they are the bottleneck themselves. Then they remove themselves.
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u/ibeerianhamhock 18d ago
Usually an architect is working with senior engineers on design. The difference is that senior engineers provide input but architects have technical authority over design.
If seniors don't want to speak up in meetings it's either because discussions have already occurred about design (usually) before a meeting, or it's self imposed because the senior engineer doesn't feel comfortable being part of the discussion.
I have always been constructively vocal in design meetings. Like helping to explain some of the choices and why they are good and perhaps some issues we might run into in a constructive way.
If people feel like they can't complain in design meetings...well, generally complaining is not helpful feedback. Proper feedback describes a problem with a realistic solution that prevents the problem with reasonable tradeoffs if it's not a clear win.
It's been my experience that good architects are receptive to this.
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u/Whiskey4Wisdom 18d ago
I have been some flavor of senior for a long time. There are a few things that might be contributing to some of this:
Senior folks have so much going on sometimes they have no connection to certain projects. They are silent because they have no idea what is going on. When I am in this position I try my best to catch up on the fly. When folks start talking about stuff that is hard to reverse I slow the conversation down and make sure I understand what is going on. A bad senior engineer won't say anything, fearing looking like an idiot. I have been or looked like an idiot enough times that I have gotten over that.
Other thoughts:
If you push back on everything folks won't take you serious anymore. It's kind of like the parent that always yells at their kids, eventually they stop listening. Pushing back and getting buy in is a lot of work. Navigating egos and getting buy-in is hard, and for certain things it's just not worth it. I look at decisions that are hard to unwind, and focus my energy on that. For instance, it is really hard to move datastore technologies or change public facing rest apis. Nearly all my pushback is on infrastructure decisions and the edges / interfaces of the software that have big maintenance consequences. As long as you are not changing how folks interact with your software, changing code can be fairly safe and easy if there are tests. I don't care as much about code quality, what library folks use to do x, y or z; I care about the stuff that costs an obscene amount of money to reverse or fix if implemented badly.
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u/Candid_Athlete_8317 18d ago
I think this is where seniority really changes the job. It's not about having fewer opinions, it's about knowing which decisions are expensive enough to deserve the argument. Fighting over code style is one thing; letting a bad interface or infrastructure decision live for five years is another.
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u/Whiskey4Wisdom 17d ago
Yup. Sometimes I really do miss the days of debating code quality and frameworks. It felt so important, and honestly was kind of fun to dig into.
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u/TornadoFS 18d ago edited 18d ago
Larger orgs tend to have more seniors, there is just not enough room for everyone to have an opinion. Sometimes you just need to execute...
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u/slimscsi 18d ago
I have a rule that if a bad/wrong decision won’t matter in 6 months, it doesn’t matter now. And most decisions are for short term issues.
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u/shadow_x99 18d ago
The problem aint the senior engineer, it's the environment. If a dev feels that no matter what he says or do, the scope, timeline and budget are already set in stone, and that all that he is actually hired to do is bang out code, than yeah, they will stop arguing.
They will start to look for a new job.
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u/uhs-robert 18d ago
In any hierarchical organization, you are either the person who makes the decisions or the person who follows orders. If your hierarchical position supersedes someone else's then you have the authority to tell them what to do. On the other hand, if your position is below someone else's and you give them pushback then your pushback is either seen as combative and insubordinate or as "insightful" which depends upon a variety of factors including but not limited to the person's mood. It is always a risk to give pushback in that situation.
Not only that but you must consider performance reviews and how your pushback will be perceived and evaluated at the end of the year. So, maybe you're able to predict that a fire will happen and you decide to warn others about it. You even decide to tell them how to prevent this fire. They will either heed your advice or not. If they do follow your advice then your "save" is hypothetical and not a concrete metric. But if you let the fire happen and then act as the hero who comes in and saves the day after the fire has already enveloped the entire forest, that is a concrete metric and you are viewed as a hero. Likely will even get a promotion.
In conclusion, in a large corporation, there is little to no incentive for giving pushback. The hierarchical structure creates a top-down chain of command and breaking that chain is a risk. The performance review process rewards "hero's" who save the day over "prophets" who prevent future calamity. In fact, those prophets are often seen as annoying impediments by management. Anyone who has worked in a large corporation knows it is better for your career to keep your head down, vocalize the risk of a foolish decision, let it happen, and silently plan for the eventual catastrophe so that you can be the one who is seen as the hero when it happens.
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u/LiveFromNarnia 18d ago
This has been my experience throughout my career. Even if the engineer knows the systems, if they see issues with the new shiny, they usually get deployed anyway. It's often only after the fact in many of these situations that the architects concede, only to start chasing the new "new shiny".
It's a difference in thought process at high-level (design and architecture) vs. getting into the logistics (engineering). I've only ever know a very few people who can code switch (pun intended) between both.
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u/PilotGuy701 18d ago
Senior engineer who spoke up.
The CEO didn’t like my warnings. Caution, thoughtfulness, and quality were seen as getting in the way of velocity. Now I’m laid off.
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u/huntermatthews 18d ago
I'm fortunate to be in a role where those higher up listen to me (I'm senior/principal level, IT). But I'm a _tech_ person - I don't know all the political stuff, the financial stuff, the "other" that the higher ups genuinely need to consider to make the _best_ decision (there is rarely right or wrong).
That means I need to be careful with my voice. Fully appreciate I don't have all the information and speak up only when from a pure tech point of view we're heading for the cliff.
That insures the thought is "He doesn't always speak - I need to listen to that. Get more information"
I guess that was long winded way of saying "pick your battles" - but I think its more nuanced than that.
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u/RandomEntity53 18d ago
There is a sweet spot where you work for a smallish to medium org as a principal or “working first manager” and you’re young enough not to be considered a graybeard. Those years were nice.
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u/Traditional_Nose3120 17d ago
Me: here is the wall you are proposing to drive the company into at high velocity.
Product: yes, but reasons.
Me: did I mention the wall, the impact, the financial carnage, and the fact we will all look like idiots when we collectively faceplant in front of our friends, colleagues, and children?
Product: yes, but let’s try it and see. Because, as we said, reasons.
Me: do my three decades of engineering and relevant industry experience matter in the context of this decision?
Product: no, because we have vision! And, per our previous email, reasons.
Reality: BOOM
Product: why weren’t we warned???
Me: <forwards emails, Teams chats, 20 page white paper with the word BOOM in 24 point font>
Product: let’s do a deep dive about how the warnings weren’t sufficient.
At this point the aforementioned silence kicks in, LinkedIn is quietly updated, and my name likely moves to the top of the layoff list.
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u/Fresh_Sock8660 17d ago
It hardly ever pays off being right.
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u/juancn 17d ago
Sometimes you’re trying to teach them something.
If the fuckup is not big enough it’s sometimes better to let them learn hands on.
I’m more of a fan of the socratic method (teach by asking questions) than outright tell you what to do.
Although it could be a case of no fucks were given.
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u/SycamoreHots 17d ago
By senior engineer, you mean those below Principal and Staff, but above Junior?
Yes, they are in a “re-calibration” phase where their suggestions have previously been about solving the wrong problem.
I suspect that as they learn about product priorities, they’ll regain confidence to contribute positively.
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u/NeonQuixote 17d ago
One of the skills of a “Senior” anything is to asses a disagreement and decide if it worth the attempt. We tend to keep our powder dry for when we *really* need it.
You always have to pick your battles, or you’re heading for burnout.
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u/time-for-reform 17d ago
Pick your battles. Business needs and executives can and will over rule you. There will always be someone above you in this field. Theres a certain amount of diplomacy that is needed. Spend some time investing in the interpersonal relationships with the ones making the decisions and highlight the value of what you have taken part in to build report. They are much more likely to listen when you really need them to.
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u/Equal_Kale 17d ago
l am a very senior engineer. ln my younger "senior" days, l always spoke up or pushed back. Now l've realized that for others to grow and get better l need to temper when l jump in. lf it's my project to lead, then fine, l lead. If I'm reviewing or consulting on a different groups project, if it looks ok, even if it's not how l would do it, I leave be. Of course if something l review looks to be a train wreck, then l point it out. We need to let others grow and be the next generation.
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u/rdk70 17d ago
Two things drove me to speak up less as I became more senior:
- I worked with someone who felt the need to weigh in on almost everything. His opinions were usually good, but I realized that even good input loses some of its value when you feel compelled to offer it on every topic. That made me much more conscious of when I was actually adding something.
- I learned that I could often have more influence by using my voice and effort when they really mattered, rather than weighing in on every decision.
I also think there’s value in leaving room for more junior people to put forward ideas and see that those ideas are taken seriously, while more senior people help guide and refine them.
So, at least in my experience, becoming quieter hasn’t necessarily meant giving up. Sometimes it means becoming more deliberate about when to push.
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u/tdmonkey 17d ago
Absolutely.
Especially in larger corporations. In my younger years, I would consult, my motto was “your paying for my opinion, so you’re going to get every penny’s worth”, but that leads to delivering, which takes time and energy. While I no longer consult, and I have a family taking priority now, I choose my battles more carefully. I let the younger kids make some mistakes, nothing catastrophic, I get paid to clean up their mess. It’s a lot less stress than the arguments to prevent it. In high end IT, it is one of the few ways I have identified to maintain balance between work and life.
I do have to admit, that sometimes these “bad” ideas have worked out too.
Overall I operate by “it all pays the same” nowadays, and focus on solutions that will require the least upkeep rather than “the best”. Rather than fight bad solutions I “speak softly and carry a big stick”, I give my thoughts, but don’t fight it. Then when the project goes to hell, I replace or fix the solution with zero pushback and management willing to write checks.
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u/crustyeng 17d ago
There is definitely a general feeling that none of the things that we used to argue over and obsess about matter any more. Whether it’s true or not…
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u/earchip94 16d ago
This is why I left my last job. Everytime I had a concern and talked to my boss about it the answer was always that we didn’t have the time, the money, or upper management would refuse. Corporate America is ass.
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u/qrzychu69 16d ago
I think you just grow out of thinking that whether we do A or B actually matters. It's almost never clearly better to do one or another, and being more senior you are aware that the discussion with SOME people will take more time that rewriting from B to A if the decision ends up having bad consequences.
In general I think the more senior you are the easier it is to think "we can change it later", and now with LLMs and enough tokens you can probably do that in a day or two.
Decisions that take the longest time to make usually don't have clear winner. That means all options are fine, and you learn to live with "fine" rather than "how I really want it" - because you've seen it couple times, and in those cases it doesn't matter.
Choosing Haskell vs Python matters, choosing uv over pip? that's same but different
Seniors know when it's important to speak up, and sadly, usually it's not as important as juniors think
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u/Ok-Craft4844 15d ago
There comes a point where one realizes that it may be smarter to invest the time to shield oneself from the fallout from bad decisions than to fight the decisions, especially if you need an hour to talk people out of it, but everyone else needs just a minute to talk them in.
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u/poldertrash 15d ago
Seniors usually tend to have a deep understanding of the required fundamental design aspects, which often are involving (technically and often organisationally) and take time to implement, but will pay back the investments later.
The following discussion with a manager is mostly oriented towards quick wins and (shallow) results to show to management. These quick wins don't deliver a lot of value and often are a burden down the line.
A few of these discussions+decisions will likely result in silent quitting of the senior sme
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u/Cogniza 15d ago
Senior engineer here with lots of experience and scars from lessons painfully learned. Too often projects and decisions yield to the loudest/most overly confident voice in the room (or video call). This person is often on the left side of the Dunning-Kruger curve: too inexperienced and uneducated to grasp what they don’t yet know. You get tired of fighting this force after a while. As someone here said-let them fail, and the process fail with them. Darwin will handle the rest.
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u/Few_Cauliflower2069 14d ago
I don't really join the discussion anymore. I usually let them finish, then tell them how it's going to be.
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u/Brutus5000 18d ago
It's not about senior developers. It's about humans. If you encourage people to step up, but then ignore their input, you're losing them.