It feels like senior engineers gained their skills through hands-on programming, and while these new tools can be powerful for those who learn to use them well, I sometimes struggle to balance keeping up with productivity while feeling like I’m missing out on deeper learning.
Any suggestions on how to balance between these two at this point? Would love to hear both povs!
producing more code is not the same as being more productive
producing more working features that your users actually want and squashing bugs so that they have confidence in the product is productivity
good senior engineers should appreciate that an entry/junior (or even mid) dev may not "produce" as much - and should be helping you to upskill
producing large amounts of trash code that someone has to review and ultimately fix is not productivity - many "ai-first" companies are starting to learn that
so I'd suggest: focus on your craft, on the basic principles, but also the niches and the interesting bits. Find a part of it that you enjoy, that you're good at - preferably even outstandingly good at - and keep going.