Why Reducing Complexity Is A Sign of Seniority
Developer Tea

Why Reducing Complexity Is A Sign of Seniority

B2Upper-intermediateAugust 21, 202615 min

As you grow as an engineer, something counterintuitive happens: the systems you build get simpler, not more complex. In this episode, I explore why senior engineers tend to collapse abstractions, accept certain risks, and reduce the surface area they're responsible for — and what drives that shift underneath the surface. Understanding the reasons behind the trend is what lets you get there on purpose instead of waiting a decade to arrive there accidentally. Early in your career, output goes up fast. You're building more than ever, especially with AI in the mix, and a lot of what you bu...

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And we have this enormous amount that we output, especially early in our careers.

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And what you'll notice from people who have been doing this for a long time, and in

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0:00

As a software engineer, your craft is going to grow over the course of your career and it's going to grow usually in these big spurts, leaps and bounds. And early on especially, we see that rate go super fast, right? We learn a lot very quickly.

0:28

And so we start building, and if you're using AI, you're building even more than many people who came before you built, and you see things are working. And we have this enormous amount that we output, especially early in our careers. And there's a lot of complexity associated with this work.

0:52

And what you'll notice from people who have been doing this for a long time, and in your own progression in your career is as you become more skilled in the craft, as you become a better coder, as you become a better architect, as you become a better tech designer overall, a better systems thinker, your systems and your

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