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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.

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