Advice to a beginning software engineer

In general, you should be suspicious of engineers who are trying to give you advice. Even during ordinary times, this industry is so wide and changes so quickly that nobody really knows anything for sure. And we are not in ordinary times. The advent of LLMs and AI agents is the largest change to software engineering in my professional lifetime, and possibly the largest change ever. That said, here’s my advice: Don’t trust senior engineers who are telling you to pick political fights Don’t play games. Keep your head down and be helpful Be conscientious and try hard to actually understand what you’re working on Don’t panic about AI, and don’t delegate your judgement to it Don’t avoid AI — keep thinking! Don’t lose hope Don’t trust ZIRP-era advice Most experienced software engineers today have spent the bulk of their career in the ZIRP era. This was a time when investment money flooded the industry, driving up engineer bargaining power. Big tech companies spent a lot of money and effort…

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