Senior skillset

One of my recent tickets involved:

• Digging through Confluence pages only to find that they are outdated or lacked clarity.
• Communicating the problem to different teams to piece together the missing knowledge.
• Tenaciously following new leads after repeatedly running into dead ends.
• Generating ideas to tackle the problem on multiple fronts and keep progress going.
• Updating documentation with what I wish had been there when I started the ticket.
• Adapting to changing requirements – it turned out that the manager who assigned me the ticket wasn’t clear about the goal to begin with. This wasn’t the manager’s fault, but due to ambiguity in what was communicated to them.

If a problem is well-defined and has a clear path towards resolution, it can be handled by junior devs. However, real-world problems usually require a broader skillset than just technical skills. I’m glad that such soft skills have transferred over well from my Physics PhD, and my versatile background is being put to good use as a data engineer.