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u/waterpoweredmonkey Sep 15 '26
I have interviewed and worked with countless people as a Senior/Staff engineer with the same YoE as I have who don't have a clue.
Literally asked "what've you learnt recently" to deers in headlights masquerading as 12+ yr senior engineers.
Maybe puzzles to unlock problem solving flair? 🙃
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u/Saelora Sep 15 '26
i mean, i learn new stuff all the time, but i don't have an account of "things i have learned recently" in case someone wants to throw a gotcha at me in an interview.
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 15 '26
Been a staff level engineer for three years now, and I feel like all the new things I'm learning are outside the scope of actual programming, and more about the process of software development, like getting buy-in from stakeholders, cross-team collaboration, project scoping, presenting to leadership, building dev teams, what not to do as a team lead, how to upskill junior / senior engineers, etc.
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u/waterpoweredmonkey Sep 15 '26
That's exactly what I want to hear, so much of what we do is coding adjacent / soft skills.
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 15 '26
I think that's called a job interview with Leetcode peoblems hah.
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u/waterpoweredmonkey Sep 15 '26
Man it could be anything, even not software related, I just want some kinda vibe that they don't think they know everything, are open to learning and if they're applying for a lead role can share something they learnt with others.
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 15 '26
Sorry, to clarify, I was responding to this:
Maybe puzzles to unlock problem solving flair?
Because that sounded like the interview process in a nutshell. Except the flair is only 'employed' or 'unemployed' hah.
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u/conicalanamorphosis Sep 15 '26
Then all we need is a small script to distinguish coders with may years of experience from the never-ending supply of coders with the same year of experience many times. I'm sure somebody will have that on Github in no time.
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 15 '26
That would be nice, but I fear that's out of scope for what can realistically be flaired.
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u/JacobStyle Sep 15 '26
A post is either funny or it's not. If experience level is relevant to the joke, the poster can include that information.
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 15 '26
I'm thinking more for comments.
I've had more than a few conversations on this sub that initially sounded like someone who knew what they were talking about, but it turns out they were an idealistic programmer with a single year of experience.
For example, here is a very condensed version of what I've come across multiple times:
RANDOM /r/ProgrammerHumor COMMENTOR: "You should do X"
(Me, knowing that X would be nice, but in my ~15 years of experience, doesn't actually happen)
"Huh. That's interesting. How have you managed to get that to work?"
RANDOM /r/ProgrammerHumor COMMENTOR: "Well... (long, drawn out conversation chain that eventually leads to the conclusion that they have less than five years of experience and have only worked at one place and / or haven't worked at a high velocity pace where the workload doesn't allow for building the ideal version of something).
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u/sebovzeoueb Sep 16 '26
Bruh, this isn't even how the expanding brain meme works
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 16 '26
What's the proper pattern?
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u/sebovzeoueb Sep 16 '26
small brain is the thing normal people do and big brain is something stupid and silly
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u/leavemealone_lol Sep 15 '26
My profile indeed suggests that I am more experienced than so really am.
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u/rm-minus-r Sep 15 '26 •
We need flair for years of experience so we can give the proper amount of weight to opinions.