| > Have strong mentors to help you navigate and grow in the company. Sometimes that mentor is you. It's good to know if that is explicitly expected of you in your role, because you will need to budget time to do it properly. It is an extremely important role for any team, so take it seriously too. For project managers/employers reading, it is paramount that you make mentorship be part of the senior developer's roles. As your company grows, you will be churning through employees as new hires and as people leave. It is very easy to not notice that you just lost all of your domain knowledge because you thought everyone was on the same page, but actually you had your senior developers too busy to effectively spread the tribal domain knowledge. Documentation is great, but there is nuance and depth to complex software decisions that can't be captured in text in a reasonable amount of time. Not only that, but you probably have less documentation than you think you do, no matter how much you asked for it. People don't read it either. They will sooner google a problem, or ask a colleague. Some developers absolutely do not like the role because of the regular interruptions, I get it, but some people are more than happy to help be a go-to. It remains the favorite part of my job. Make it a question in your interview process so that you can make sure you have someone who is going to be happy making sure your domain knowledge is shared throughout the company. |
I would happy to do it if management acknowledges that managing people as a senior dev will take time away from doing actual coding work.
But somehow, they think you can manage to pull off doing deep coding work and managing people at the same time. This refusal to adjust expectations is just baffling to me.