4 Subreddits All Engineering Leaders Should Join
“How do you keep up with industry trends?” uhhh…Reddit? :
“How do you keep up with industry trends?” uhhh…Reddit? 😅
For managers and engineering leaders, this is a tough question to answer outside of “reading books” or “subscribing to newsletters.”
We can learn from all sorts of situations that are happening in companies outside of our own, using each as a situational question. Reddit happens to be a goldmine in this area, so I’ve outlined four subreddits that I’ve found helpful over the last few years.
You can look at each topic as a problem that you have to solve and can begin to harden or soften your opinions based on responses. It’s all about getting different perspectives and seeing things that make you challenge or question what you view to be as correct.
/r/cscareerquestions
Wondering what’s on the mind of software engineers in general? The CS Career Questions subreddit /r/cscareerquestions can give you a good jumping-off point. Full of the good, the bad, and the sometimes ridiculous, this subreddit gives you a glimpse into how others in the computer science industry are looking at their roles, their future, and their current/past frustrations.
With a good mix of venting and advice, /r/cscareerquestions gives you a chance to think about what may go undiscussed day-to-day in your field.
Some threads that were interesting:
Please don’t neglect your communication skills in favor of improving your leetcode skills
Manager told me it’s “not a good look” that i’m taking PTO 🤦♂
/r/ExperiencedDevs
Keeping a pulse on what those with more experience are thinking about can be critical to your software organization running smoothly. This is the subreddit where folks have made mistakes, avoided obstacles, and learned through doing, all to pass it along to those with less experience.
Threads like “Drunk Post: Things I’ve learned as a Sr Engineer” have over fifty tips and nuggets of wisdom from folks with 10+ years of experience in the industry. While this thread is far from the greyhairs talking about COBOL or Netscape, it tends to be a more mature subreddit in terms of subject matter, advice, and stances on current topics. There’s even an “Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread,” where you can ask specific questions of your more experienced peers.
As a leader, /r/ExperiencedDevs can be used as a roadmap, especially in software organizations earlier on in their formation.
What are opportunities that you can start creating for your engineers? What are the things your developers will become frustrated by in the future and what can you do now to prevent those future frustrations?
r/careerguidance
The top post of all time in this 458k-member subreddit says it all. “How do you guys deal with working a 9–5 and coming home and once you eat you go to sleep from the exhaustion?” It’s a question that touches on several interesting points; new to the career world, looking for work-life balance, but no energy left to do anything. What guidance could you give here?
While /r/careerguidance is about career guidance in general (and not specifically engineering), the topics are likely relevant to you and all of the folks you manage day-to-day. Think about some of the other questions and see if you’ve heard them before:
Anyone noticed when you resign immediately no one gives a crap about you?
Why do people brag about being overworked and neglecting their health for their job?
Each question should be met with either a change in thought or a cemented belief on your side. This subreddit is a great testing ground for anyone more interested in the organizational or management side of companies. Try to determine how you would respond if each question were directed at you. How would you respond, and why?
/r/recruitinghell/
Another indirectly related subreddit, r/recruitinghell is great for engineering leaders that are involved in the interviewing or onboarding process. It’s basically a guide on how not to treat candidates during your interview process and how you can assist in the frustration of interviewing.
As is a common theme, there are many posts about gaps in resumes, along with putting the salary in the job description (you should definitely be giving a range if you’re not), getting interviewed by folks that didn’t know what they were doing, and much more.
Look for the patterns in /r/recruitinghell, ensure your company is not making the same mistakes, and put process in place to ensure those mistakes never happen.
Final Thoughts
As with any outlet on the Internet, you will find things in the above subreddits that you do and don’t like. The point is not to see only good things though. Far too often we self-select into echo chambers that validate what we are currently doing, or how we’re thinking about things.
The subreddits listed can help break you out of the echo chamber, but it’s not for the faint of heart. That said, any good engineering leader should constantly be challenging their assumptions, and what easier way to do so than to see the opinions of millions of folks in and around the industry in which you work.