Exactly. Everywhere I've worked had at least 3-4X more bugs than we had capacity to fix, and the bug count grew over time, net of any fixing happening. There was never difficulty finding problems to solve. Unfortunately most places don't give engineering the autonomy to solve critical issues. It's just feature cram and redesigns, over and over, and let the bugs pile up.
replyThe challenge is finding problems that are “worth” solving as a staff engineer. General “bugs” are not staff worthy. Staff need to convince leadership to fix an architectural problem that removes a whole class of bug.
replyThere are a lot of known problems... but there are also a lot of unknown, or at least unrecognized problems. Some of those unrecognized problems are going to be more useful and higher-leverage than recognized problems. The same "being a sponge" approach still helps.
replyI think this is more relevant reality. At Staff and Principal you have visibility into a lot of fires going around you. What helps is understanding the relative importance of what fire to douse and be at peace with the ones that you cannot control.
replyYou probably pivoted your career towards the startup space so you found it effortless. For others it is basically a castle with a 20m wall.
replyI am doing exactly same thing of creating a solution which can be applied to multiple problems at the same time.
replySometimes coworkers does not like that because they don't see me working on the problem, but on a tool which will resolve the problem and similar problems from our backlog.
He says: That taught me to let potential problems pile up. Listening the way I do leaves me with far more of them than I could possibly solve, and not all deserve action. Most don’t need to turn into projects the first time I hear about them; waiting can be a superpower.
replyYes. He also says: “How do you find problems worth working on?” a senior engineer I mentor asked me recently. My point is that I'm working in a whole different environment, and the challenge - to me - is never finding interesting problems to solve, but identifying the most important problem out of a large pool of known problems.
reply“Can be a superpower” is so empty. What does that mean outside of trying to proliferate some cliche?
replyJust means it can be powerful or useful technique that can feel “magical” when employed.
replyI wouldn’t overthink this.
Not overthinking can be a superpower, but writing eloquently can be a superpower, and not trailing cliches behind your pen can be a superpower.
replyNow everyone is a bloody writing critic and everything is a piece of master literature that needs to be criticised as such.
replyNo, but I’m getting really tired of seeing things that took less effort to write than it does to read. People have to process this AI-influenced LinkedIn-influenced SEO-optimized Reddit-template dung heap of worthless content-style and get past it, because even though expectations may be low, it’s in bad taste to the point that it’s starting to embarrass on a cultural scale.
replyThis is not distinct.
replyEven in a big corp there are always problems to solve. The point is to find problems that both:
1) are hard enough that someone junior won't be able to solve them alone, and
2) actually provide value to the company / users
It’s the same in a large corporate environment. I have a “personal projects” doc of ideas I’ve had to make development experiences better at my current role - it’s a couple hundred lines long.
replyI managed to get a couple of smaller tools out recently thanks to having copilot available to churn on them while I spend my time on prescribed work, but it would consume all of my time to even make a significant dent in it.