Eric Roby

What’s the one concept that took you way too long to finally understand as an engineer?

What’s more dangerous: poor documentation or poor naming?

How much of your coding today is influenced by AI tools vs your own experience?

The best backend engineering feels invisible.

And that’s the point.

No one praises the API that works.
Or the system that scales under pressure.
Or the database that returns queries in milliseconds.

But behind that simplicity?

• Careful tradeoffs.
• Thoughtful architecture.

How do you know you’ve “leveled up” as an engineer?

If LLMs become perfect at writing code, what part of engineering can’t be replaced?

You won’t always know why something broke.

But as a backend engineer, you better know how to find out.

Because something will break:
• A deployment fails.
• An API suddenly returns 500s.
• A background job uses too much memory.

Great ones will know how to debug anything.

Do you still manually write SQL queries or rely entirely on ORMs?

What’s one “best practice” you’ve seen backfire in real projects?

How does your company track if a software engineer is good or not?

What’s a popular software engineering best practice you disagree with?

What’s the most important quality of a senior engineer (that isn’t technical)?

Great backend engineers aren’t built overnight.

They’re built through repetition, patience, and consistency.

Everyone wants results.

But few are consistent enough to earn them.

Because in backend engineering, consistency is the cheat code.

If coding becomes 10x faster thanks to AI, what becomes the new bottleneck?

What’s one thing AI still can’t do that makes you valuable as a developer?

Good backend engineers build features.

Great ones build confidence.

Confidence that the system will scale.
Confidence that edge cases are handled.
Confidence that if something breaks, it won’t take the app down.

Because backend engineering isn’t just about building what works.

Do you think daily standups actually help engineers get more done?

Do you think pair programming is actually helpful?

Most people don’t fail to learn backend engineering.

They just never start.

They wait for:
• The “perfect” tutorial.
• The “right” course.
• More free time.

But the engineers who grow?

They start messy. Start small. But they start.

What’s the most underrated skill for a senior engineer?

If AI keeps improving, what will backend engineers focus on 5 years from now?

Do you think a 10x engineer is a myth or anyone can achieve this?

When I hire entry-level developers, I look for just 3 things:

1. Do you have strong backend fundamentals?
2. What past projects can you share?
3. Are you someone I’d want to work with every day?

If you can demonstrate these, you’ll move on to the next round.

It’s not about a perfect resume.

How do you balance deep work with meetings as an engineer?

Do you think remote work makes software engineers more productive, or more distracted?

Are microservices just another way of saying "over-engineering"? lol

If you had to build an MVP in 48 hours, what stack would you choose?

and now Grok 4 is the "smartest model in the world". The AI hype cycle continues. I'm sticking with Claude Code.

honestly, that is crazy

What is your best advice to a junior engineer trying to break into the industry?