What Even Is A Senior Software Engineer?

What does it mean to be a senior (or staff) software engineer? How are we preparing the next generation of software engineers to maintain the software we've created? In this episode, Matt and Kris are joined by Bill Kennedy to discuss tech communities, training software engineers, the landscape of learning, how artificial intelligence is affecting it all, and so much more.

Supporters get access to an extended conversation with Bill, where we get into more depth on artificial intelligence, the Go team, and more! You can get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• The Market for Lemons

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (01:10)
  • Intros & The Rain (01:10)
  • Mr. Gopher Man (02:35)
  • Introducing Bill Kennedy (03:08)
• Chapter 1: Tech Communities & Software Engineer Training (04:57)
  • From Ultimate Go to Ultimate Software Design Live (04:57)
  • Software Engineers & Criticism (10:01)
  • Saying The Wrong Things (15:12)
  • The Times Have Changed (16:08)
  • You Learn More From Your Mistakes (24:44)
• Chapter 2: The Learning Landscape (28:25)
  • The trouble with senior engineering (30:10)
  • The difference between programming and coding (35:04)
  • What is legacy? (39:19)
  • It's All About Packages (44:06)
  • Expanding Into Rust (51:23)
• Chapter 3: Giving Back (59:43)
  • Sustaining open source projects (59:43)
• Chapter 4: Passing The Baton (01:13:28)
  • The need for written documentation (01:27:50)
  • What AI can do for you (01:33:50)
  • When do you do something? (01:40:57)
• Epilogue (01:50:05)
  • Helicopter taxi (01:50:34)

Socials:

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (01:10) - Prologue
• (04:57) - Chapter 1: Tech Communities & Software Engineer Training
• (28:25) - Chapter 2: The Learning Landscape
• (59:43) - Chapter 3: Giving Back
• (01:13:28) - Chapter 4: Passing The Baton
• (01:50:05) - Epilogue

Creators & Guests

Host

Kris Brandow

Host

Matthew Sanabria

Matthew is an engineering leader focused on building reliable, scalable, and observable systems. Matthew is known for using his breadth and depth of experience to add value in minimal context situations and help great people become great engineers through mentoring. Matthew serves the Go community as a member of GoBridge. In his spare time, Matthew spends time with his family, helps grow his wife's chocolate business, works on home improvement projects, and reads technical resources to learn and tinker.

Guest

Bill Kennedy

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What is Fallthrough?

A deep and nuanced conversational podcast focused on technology, software, and computing.