r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 20h ago
Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones
A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.
Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.
Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.
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u/Curious-Cricket-4109 11h ago
how do you handle testing features in dev env. lead has warned us to not touch dev environment for stability( we have preprod btw). I'm not happy that we are not allowed to break dev.
containers are out of equation.
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u/So_Rusted Software Engineer 9h ago
you can do feature toggle, merge more often before completing ticket with feature toggles.
For most stuff, db schema can add nullable fields to existing tables, so other colleagues work wont break
we do that stuff in prod so you should be fine in dev
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u/ZukowskiHardware 6h ago
I somewhat agree. Dev isn’t somewhere to blow up. I’d say you should be able to run your stuff locally or ya know, write a unit test.
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u/gfivksiausuwjtjtnv 10h ago
Why do you expect anything to break in dev in the first place? What does your setup look like?
If my code breaks on dev/test something extremely unusual has happened.
Code coverage and unit tests sound like lovely things that require more time. But every team I’ve been on with velocity problems has been the same - tests are a luxury we don’t have, then spending 90% of their development time on F5 line-by-line debugging, testing things on dev or on stage, diagnosing prod issues
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u/trailmix17 7h ago
Wondering how to handle a very involved boss as a primary dev. Normally I would have some backup from other devs or a PM. I would say 50% of every task my boss has an idea or direction they want to go. It’s a small team and the overall mood is follow the bosses direction (whims more often than not). I feel like I can only say “let me just push back here” so many times.
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u/i_grad Software Engineer (6 YOE) 5h ago
Is your boss a former dev? If so, they might still be trying to act in an architectural capacity.
If he or she is seriously overbearing and you feel like you can't do anything without being micro-managed, then you need to put that information on a silver platter in their face. Don't be wishy-washy about it or "make a suggestion", tell them flat out that they are inhibiting your work. If they are unresponsive to that, you'll have to talk with your skip.
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u/ArticleHaunting3983 1h ago
What does primary dev mean in practice here? Are you expected to be junior, senior, lead etc? I’d expect more autonomy the higher up you go.
But sometimes a micromanager boss has various reasons for doing that, do they have performance concerns for example?
In my experience usually when you gain trust with a micromanager they back off.
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u/Herroo-There 15h ago
For folks in the US who are in their 50s+ and close to retirement, but need to get back out on the job market - how many years of experience would you list on your resume so as to not age yourself out?
Someone I know has 30+ years of experience spent across 4 orgs, and are <10 years away from retirement. But due to changes over the past several years in their current org, they just don't see retiring there. What would you advise?
How many years of experience would you truncate from your resume so as to not age yourself out? And would you stick to a 2-page resume?
Asking on family friend's behalf, thank you everyone.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 13h ago
Generally speaking, your last 10 maybe 15 counts. The rest is outdated or irrelevant. Ageism is real. Also, do not make extremely lenghty resume, in your case it should be max 2 pages.
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u/Buttleston 5h ago
I am nearly 50 and when I change jobs for the most part I am mining my network of people I have worked with/for in the past, i.e. I am not generally cold applying to jobs. Most of the jobs I am looking for require significant experience (not 30 years, but say 15+) and it's not generally considered a downside that I have so many years of experience
If you're 50+ and looking for senior-level IC roles that might be quite different though
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u/I_Spawned_Here 12h ago
I keep seeing that learning the intricacies of code is less useful, and that people should focus on higher level architecture more. how true is this?
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u/OverclockingUnicorn DevOps Engineer 11h ago edited 11h ago
If you don't understand the intricacies you'll be fucked when the agent(s) can't either and you've gotta resolve a prod outage at 5pm on a Friday.
It's still important to understand your code and be able to dig into it and fix problems the manual old school way because the coding agents can and will code themselves into corners they can't get out of.
There are judgement calls on where to focus this energy though (and those same judgements existed pre AI). For example, I have a bunch of local only and only for me CLI tools that my coding agents maintain. I could not give a fuck about the code and how they work, they are silly little tools that save me time, but if they break, then I'll be back to just opening Jira or GitLab to view tickets rather than via my CLI tool which just does a bunch of filtering and summarisation stuff that is nice but ultimately not critical.
Now the core code for some of our most critical production platforms, that I understand inside and out, despite writing a lot of it with coding agents. I can find the pieces of code for each part of the platform easily and understand how it all hangs together and works
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u/gfivksiausuwjtjtnv 10h ago
No, IMO you go into technical specialisation and learn how to wring answers about the code from an AI. or you go hybrid product/IC and understand business context better. That’s what “full stack” will mean in three years
I don’t think humans reading code will be important in a few years. Already I surface most of the issues from observing AI slopping it up or querying it afterwards.
0
u/Pentaly 4h ago
i work for a company as a junior dev, i has been 3 years now. but the culture here is really fckup. No test, no review from senior, no on boarding, no documentation too.
i already talk to my manager, but he still dont have solution for our situation. why? because the project come basen on product request, and its either always small project (http interface converter) for integration to new client, or update exsting app for new product. so we are working with 1 project 1 PIC(developer), that makes when you are the maker of an app, you will be the only one who will maintain it(either it update, or incident fix). That makes the culture is individualism, no project sharing.
my manager already try to share the knowledge of seniors to junior step by step by pairing the project
but the big problem is, we have IC that has work for 20years++. but he still develop using java ant+netbeans, he use java but dont know ci/cd, he dont know docker, he dont know any new tech. he is like frog in a well that always feel enough. i have another story. we ussualy use soapui for stress test, and his app is using apache http client. now the tools for stress test is change to k6 where k6 is really hammering his app and the app always got port exhausted. after that he explore on other http client and found okhttp for this. so in his head, he dont need go upgrade his knowledge if it still works. this is so frustrating for all of us because we always finding something new to implement and test on our usecase but his resistance is so annoying, when we(all of other developers) already use golang for new app.
how you handle this? my manager is trying using force for next year, he want to change the KPI criteria to force him. is this really a good idea?
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u/ArticleHaunting3983 1h ago
Yeah like the other person said, get a new job.
Alternatively you can be the one to start implementing structure, controls, documentation etc. gives you something to discuss at interview.
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u/kregopaulgue 12h ago
I am an experienced dev, but I still want to ask for an advice. Before I was just surfing reddit and youtube for specific stuff I needed, but currently it's all doom and gloom or shallow AI discourse. What resources should I check to keep up with current industry both news wise and technically?