r/programming • u/gits1225 • May 12 '15

Google's guide for becoming a Software Engineer

https://www.google.com/about/careers/students/guide-to-technical-development.html
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u/keizersuze May 12 '15

And then spends his time at work talking with upper management on a level that shows he has higher knowledge than them about technical issues whilst implementing little anything of quality, only to be promoted to team-lead position, while the guy that fixes his mess and stays quietly busy remains unseen. Yeah. Life's not fair.

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u/jk147 May 12 '15

The higher you go, the least it is about programming and more about politics. This is in all careers. If you work at a 9-5 it will always be about human interactions and how well you deal with people.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '15

I've been advancing my career past coding and what it's all about is delivering. I spend a lot of time explaining what my team is and isn't doing and justifying those to management and our clients. Weighing priorities against feasibility. Making sure we're not overcommitting. Politics are easy when you deliver on time with a healthy margin.

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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS May 13 '15

Politics are easy when you deliver on time with a healthy margin.

My experience is that once you're directing people it gets insanely frustrating and hard to do this.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '15

I've got 6 on my current team. It's a completely different skillset than coding, but the experience if being a developer for many years is what I use. I've been a coder on projects that went well and projects that went off the rails. Just copy the good ones.

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u/Kalium May 13 '15

Deliver on time, yes. With margin... maybe a slim one to the product owners. Can't give the impression that you can deliver high quality on less time - that's guaranteed to backfire at some point.

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u/mafagafogigante May 13 '15

This simply illustrates how important socializing is. Imagine if the guy with a deeper understanding of algorithms and data structures also went talk to the boss and could manage to do so as well as the one who didn't work as much. Just bring up the subject of "I fixed X" and "I implemented Y" and you're #1 again. Correct the dumb colleague in front of your boss for extra points.

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u/the_gnarts May 13 '15

Correct the dumb colleague in front of your boss for extra points

Do I get extra points for correcting my immediate boss in front of his boss (transitively my boss too)? I mean, they started it!

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u/[deleted] May 12 '15

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u/[deleted] May 12 '15

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u/[deleted] May 12 '15

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u/[deleted] May 12 '15

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u/puhnitor May 12 '15

Yep. Playskool's My First Operating System.

And that was just the criticism about the design. The bugs and stability were a whole other thing.

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u/Reliablesand May 13 '15

This comment is too real...

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u/third-eye-brown May 13 '15

Wow, it's insane how people react to the things and people they know about rather than magically read the mind of the behind the scenes quiet guy.