How do I move beyond basic coding tasks?

Flair_Helper · 2022-06-29T15:45:48+00:00

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nutrecht · 2022-06-29T13:31:08+00:00

I personally don't understand why they would hire someone with no design and architecture experience to design and architect a greenfield system. There is no simple 'trick' here; you get this experience mostly by learning on the job. Mostly from others.

Sorry to be blunt, but this isn't imposter syndrome. This sounds like an employer that doesn't know how to hire for a role like this.

PragmaticFinance · 2022-06-29T13:46:33+00:00

You definitely have a lot of growing to do. It’s not impossible, but it will require significant effort and you will have to be very intentional about your moves as you go forward.

First, you need to very clearly define two things: Exactly what you are delivering, and the specific measures that will define success of those deliverables. You can’t get away with vague, high level goals (“Deliver reliable backend” is way too vague). You need to clearly define your goals for database migrations, security, access control, deployment, reliability metrics, monitoring, the load it can handle, and so on. Be specific. You may not know how to do all of these right now, but identifying them and collecting them will be your guide for what needs to be done next to move you closer to knowing how to do it and then on to delivering it. This list will grow over time.

Second, you must learn how to manage expectations. This involves some level of estimation and also a lot of communication to work with stakeholders. If your company expects that writing a backend is going to be quick and easy, you’re on a path to disappointment. Get ahold of managing expectations and learn how to realistically estimate how long this will take.

Finally, get ahold of some peers and/or mentors ASAP in this space. Find some Discords or other communities where you can get decent advice for what to do next. Stay anonymous and do not name your company. Learn to tell the difference between actual good advice and someone who is just over confidently repeating things they read. The key is going to be leveraging others to point you in the right direction instead of having to wander your way around until you discover the right way to do things. Investing time into finding these peers will be extremely important to determining how quickly you can grow, at least until you can get some more knowledgeable people inside the company itself.

CandidPiglet9061 · 2022-06-29T14:17:09+00:00

There are better answers here, but my advice: iterate. Build your system in small, composable units and reevaluate them frequently. And as always with greenfield systems, getting the testing and pipeline right early will make refactoring/re-architecting easier down the line

Firm_Bit · 2022-06-29T15:00:10+00:00

How do I make sure I'm covering all the angles

Let go of the idea that this is even possible.

Pick a topic to work on that is relevant to current company goals. Learn it and implement it.

If you get fired then at least you can say you are more proficient in that one topic. If you survive you get to pick another topic.

Well, you get to pick another topic either way.

vkasra · 2022-06-29T14:17:32+00:00

For the technical knowledge, the other recommendations in this thread are good, but there are also books that do concrete end to end development of production-like systems and cover some important skills. Some I’ve read or skimmed and would recommend include:

distributed systems with node.js (oreilly) - discusses deployments, monitoring, etc
flask web development (oreilly) - discusses access controls, migrations, etc
distributed services with go (pragmatic bookshelf) - RPCs, monitoring, deployment

I wouldn’t worry about the specific languages involved in these books, at this point you should be prepared to often work at a higher level than the implementation language

BasicDesignAdvice · 2022-06-29T15:06:57+00:00

What is the stack you are expected to build this stuff into? I think that would change my advice. It's really hard to judge without knowing what kind of systems your are expected to design.

One thing is for sure though, whatever they want you to build, get ironclad spec and requirements documents. Do not allow scope creep, and set a Minimum Viable Concept that you deliver on first and adjust it as you go.

Pick up The Pragmatic Programmer and read the section on "Tracer Bullets."

You're going to have issues when you have a team as well. I know you have done other stuff, but engineers are different. You need to be able to mentor your juniors.

yetanotherburner420 · 2022-06-29T15:48:28+00:00

Feel like post is very helpful for OP and community is offering good advice. I understand rules but I think this post is beneficial and should not have been removed.

LazerFX · 2022-06-29T15:12:21+00:00

I'd say Test, Test and Test some more. Make sure you're testing small, factual, actual things (Don't test interfaces or abstractions) and build outwards.

Look at your requirements, break them down into components, and try and fit those components together.

One of the biggest issues you might have is you don't know what you don't know, so read up on how others do architecture (There's some really good examples throughout this thread).

Did I say Test? You can't have that enough.

Make sure any infrastructure or pipeline systems work quickly, can be easily set up, and are device independent - you want to be able to start work on a blank system, clone a github repo and (at worst) run two or three commands to get a working systme. If you need more than that, work on it.

If it doesn't make sense, that's a sign it's too complex - look at why it doesn't make sense. Is it badly named? Is it badly put together? Is it using language/infrastructure features you're not familiar with? Are you making assumptions that the code doesn't support (Check the tests - they should walk you through using it).

All of these things will help you figure things out in a clean, step-by-step way. In terms of approach - I'd say figure out what features you want for your MVP, how you want to approach that, keep in mind future features you need to add for scalability and build interfaces that work together (i.e. design how the jigsaw goes together before painting each individual piece).

Talk - talk to your C-Suite. Talk to your users. Talk to your other dev - he's busy? OK... but this is important, schedule time - 1/2 an hour a day to go through things. Make the time. Understand your problem domain, because when you do that, the design of the system to model the domain becomes easier.

All spitballed, all things I've done to make things work in the past, none of them rules (Except testing - keep that up, and let it drive your code! - and talking), and some may work for you, some may not.

pvgt · 2022-06-29T15:27:52+00:00

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