Skip to main content

Growing up

... as an engineer.

I've spent some time reading and thinking about my career. One of the hiring managers I talked to recently in an interview took some time to tell me what he considered a "senior engineer" according to his criteria. It was probably the most humbling but insightful experience during my job search (the whole job search was quite humbling, but not always so insightful) and I am really thankful he took the 10 minutes to tell me what I was missing.

1. Depth. The tools I had the most exposure (in terms of time) to, I wasn't actually an expert in any of them, like Java or Javascript. Just because you write a lot of code doesn't mean you're really good at it.
2. Breadth. I had a lot of exposure to a lot of different technologies, but I certainly could learn a lot more.
3. Communication. Be direct, succinct, and honest in all things, especially when responding to questions.

I think I can sum it all up in one phrase: Always be coding and always be reading.

Here are areas that I am pretty sure I can start improving right away:

1. Java/JVM -- getting up to date on the latest JDK, learning about GC/JVM tuning, etc.
2. Concurrency -- this isn't something I've done a whole lot of work on. This is the year I am going to get further with my self-study on operating systems.
3. Optimizing my workflow -- e.g. continuous integration/deployment, unit testing, developing tools... stuff we all claim we don't have time to do, but after watching/listening to Edmond Lau's Google Talk, I really have to do this if I want to increase my output and effectiveness. I picked up The Effective Engineer as well and will be reading through it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The end of summer

It's been a wild year. Gains and losses. COVID-19 and the shelter in place. Lately, fires. Today was a very dark day, literally. For about half the daylight hours, there was so much ash in the air that it looked like it was close to sunset, but it was definitely not anywhere near as beautiful. Red sun following us everywhere. Bubonic plague found on fleas in Lake Tahoe. The list goes on and on. Everyone is tired. Exhausted. Burnt out. There is no respite, just a new normal that seems like an even steeper climb than before. Sleep gives way to another day with no refreshment. Yes, that's how things seem. But there have also been bright moments. Time spent with family, especially with the little one. Growing and nurturing plants, building things, trying new recipes, going to the store to shop for dinner, reading books, coloring with crayons... We grow closer together, weaving together a blanket of love and memories that we wrap ourselves in.
Post a Comment
Read more

Resizing /root partition in Debian 7 (Wheezy)

I've usually been afraid to do anything drastic with the underlying filesystem because of how many times I've messed up the filesystem to begin with, and also because of how much time it takes to reinstall everything. This time, I decided that it was ok to go ahead and take a little risk here. My Linux machine is an old X61s, and its purpose is for me to experiment and learn more about Linux. I started getting a message that I was running low on space on root. Sure enough, the 300MB was all used up. I was hoping that GPartEd could help me with resizing the partitions. I couldn't see the partitions because it was all under an lvm. My plan was to shrink /opt slightly, then grow root. Thankfully, the formula isn't too bad, but there are a few steps. The first link I resorted to was this one: http://blog.shadypixel.com/how-to-shrink-an-lvm-volume-safely/. I didn't reboot to resize /opt; I just resized it after unmounting it. Unmount /opt:   # umount /dev/chrono...
Post a Comment
Read more