Saurav Rawat’s Post

The subtle art of Debugging The ability to implement a concept in quicker time by reading the docs The serenity of making those around you and colleagues, high spirited The clarity of your instruction that helps junior colleagues, solve their blockers oh! what a life of a senior dev #softwaredevelopment

A burned-out Senior Dev can damage a lot more than the code. They can make the Junior Devs burn out faster as well. Affecting the productivity of the whole company. Managers and CTOs should avoid this at all costs. Yet, most times the opposite happens. Senior devs become the go-to persons for basically everything. From writing code to refining requirements and hiring new people. They burn out the fastest. The solution? Empower your Junior Devs so they can make it easier on the Seniors. Give them the freedom to mess it up. And the responsibility to fix it when they do. You will end up with a very happy and very skilled team. And nobody will end up hating the freaking place.

The biggest difference between a junior and senior dev? It’s how they handle the non-happy paths. The errors The edge cases The unexpected A junior writes code for when things go right. A senior writes code for when things go wrong. If you’re a junior dev, and want to level up; Here’s the lesson: Don’t just focus on making your code work—ask yourself, how can it fail? Think about bad inputs, failed connections, and edge cases. Great code isn’t just functional—it’s resilient. Aim up.

Your devs’ happiness with working in your codebase is a huge part of its success. The moment one of your devs starts wondering if scrapping everything and starting over will be easier than fixing what you currently have, your project is all-but doomed. #StaffEngineer #code #developer #SoftwareEngineer #leadership Pictured below: Actual photo of a Staff Software Engineer singlehandedly holding back the "scratch it and rewrite" monster.

There are many devs who are smarter than me. There are many devs who have better memories than me. And, yes, there are even devs who are better looking than me. However, I have the superpower of being dumb *and* forgetful. So I have to write myself a pretty high-quality tutorial any time I do something remotely complicated. Otherwise I'll trip over my own feet and get hopelessly confused. Over time, these tutorials start to get discovered and shared around by other people in the organization, when they also have to do or at least understand these complicated things. Slowly but surely, they start to gain newfound confidence in their own abilities to understand and work with even the scarier parts of the codebase. And, over time, I like to tell myself, the lead times for a great many bug fixes, feature requests, etc. across the org start to go down. Not because things were ever impossible for the person doing them. But simply because they don't have to experiment for 4 hours/days/weeks themselves to figure out what the heck is going on.

Junior dev VS Senior dev approach: Both tried 2 approaches to fix a bug, and one worked. Junior, commits the fix and moves on. Senior, spends time understanding why the 1st approach did not work and the 2nd did. It's not about finding the fix, you should understand the code flow end to end

Senior Developers, the best kind of influence is not authority. Is knowledge. Everyone respects knowledge because everyone respects hard work. Show Junior Devs that you know what you are talking about. Help them out when you can. You will gain their respect and their admiration. Without ever having to appeal to your Senior Dev title. 

Dos and Don'ts when you join a project as new dev. + you are not hired as a lead. + there is lead/architect in place. 1. Don’t judge the code day one. 2. Don’t try to rewrite every part you touch. 3. Don’t assume your way is the only way 4. Don’t make global changes without consulting 5. Always ask if you don’t understand 6. Don’t rush ticket completion 7. Understand the business side 8. Focus on delivering value 9. Repeat the patterns 10. Repeat the patterns 11. Repeat the patterns … 99. Repeat the patterns 100. When you feel comfortable with the codebase and understand why things are as they are then propose changes you want to make.

I choose Javascript

A true senior developer stands out by staying calm, cool, and collected under pressure. It’s not about indifference, but about being ready to solve problems when everyone else is panicking. Master the art of calm and elevate your impact as a developer. #developergrowth #calmleadership #seniordev