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How do I find problems to solve as a Senior Engineer

follow-up post from Lalit Maganti’s “How I Find Problems to Solve as a Staff Engineer”

The most obvious channel for me has been other team members. While a Staff Engineer may hear a lot of noise that he has to filter and analyze, sometimes as a Senior Engineer I haven’t been in the conversations where that noise is heard… whether it’s because I’m not in the appropriate Slack channel, I’m not needed in that meeting, or it’s simply out of my role to be there; or I may be doing something else.

So that’s why having a great communication channel established with:

is a great way to be in the loop on what is going on in the organization or vertical that I’m in. Why? Because that communication channel helps me get already-digested information from people who have more access to information than I do, have the ability to process it to understand the business needs, and pretty much all the time have enough vision of the big picture of where we are and where we should be. Sometimes, I’ve been lucky enough for them to tell me where we are and let me figure out where we should be. Those have been the opportunities where I have truly grown as a Senior Engineer.

What I tell Junior Engineers is that they must ask questions, no matter the scenario or the type of question. That is what helps me measure their growth, because in time they start asking better and better questions to implement a solution. Semi-Senior Engineers ask great questions most of the time and have already thought about what might be a way to implement the solution.

As a Senior Engineer, there are multiple scenarios for implementing a solution. There is the scenario where the solution is really simple, so simple that some recently promoted Senior Engineers ask for a more complicated task, without realizing that there are way more problems than one can foresee to solve just to implement that tiny task. This scenario has happened so many times that when I see the solution is just a couple of lines of code, I know I’m in for a treat of bug/context/legacy code/“don’t touch this because it works” hunting.

There is the scenario where the solution is also apparent. Really obvious to me, my peers, and other technical people, but since the solution looks over-engineered or too complicated, the problem is to simplify it. You know, KISS!

Another great scenario is when I have paired with Staff Engineers to implement what they have designed. In this very rewarding scenario, the challenge is finding a Staff Engineer with enough time to let me tag along and help.

My favorite scenario is when I hear people talking about issues they’re having. That’s why I mentioned communication at the beginning of the post. You know, those conversations that a is having with in line at the fast-food place, and since we’ve seen each other during the last All Hands they recognize me and tell me once I approach them: “Hey, we were just talking about an issue that you or your team may help us with…” That is a lost-and-found treasure, for me. That scenario is the one that has pushed me to cross-team collaboration and deeper engagement in the organization’s goals and at least the current quarter’s to-do list.

So if you notice in this brief post, I didn’t dive into the typical workflow or where a Senior Engineer may find problems, but rather how talking to others and being proactive in talking with other members of the organization can help you find problems to solve and ultimately, grow.

I believe that is what has kept me right on track to the Staff Engineer level.

I encourage you to do a writing yourself about this topic and share your thoughts with me on my LinkedIn or by email. Thanks for reading!

This text was proofread with assistance from Meta AI.