Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by virgilp 3045 days ago
I am flabbergasted that you're senior and measure your productivity in "code produced". What is that, LOC? Can type faster than a recent graduate?

Good junior devs will be more skilled in some areas than you are. Maybe it's stuff you're not interested in; or just stuff they're really interested in. The only way a good junior dev doesn't "out-code" you, ever - is if you're only skilled in a very narrow niche (bonus points if only few people are interested in it, at all).

Junior devs absolutely can, and often do, build "wrong things" faster than senior devs. The measure of seniority is in my mind about knowing what to NOT build, in the first place.

1 comments

> I am flabbergasted that you're senior and measure your productivity in "code produced". What is that, LOC? Can type faster than a recent graduate?

Who uses LOC? I'm talking about completed, tested, accepted features, as defined by our project teams.

> Good junior devs will be more skilled in some areas than you are.

Well, yeah...of course. I'm not comparing myself to someone who works in an entirely different field. A junior front-end dev will be better than me at front-end stuff. I'm talking about a junior in my area, who I'd be in a team with or would mentor.

> The measure of seniority is in my mind about knowing what to NOT build, in the first place.

I agree with that statement.

> I'm talking about completed, tested, accepted features, as defined by our project teams.

Still rather strange metrics for productivity in a senior engineer. This is more what I'm taking about: https://zef.me/the-100x-engineer-6d50a690a866

If you're really senior, you shouldn't be working on the kind of features that get delivered at a rate of "5 per sprint". More like on stuff that gets delivered once every year. The junior SHOULD outperform you in "code produced" - they just shouldn't outperform you in dollars produced (or saved).

You do what your team and company needs. If they need me to work on a big re-engineering project, or build a core framework feature, I do it. If they need me to get onto a regular sprint team for a while and churn out the backlog, I do it.