TL;DR: You got promoted or you wanted to get promoted. You decide you want to make a bigger project to show ambition, advance your career and whatnot. You embark on making some grand project, disappearing from view. This often leads to you getting stuck with something, falling behind and various negative effects like getting a PIP or becoming depressed.
His prescription to avoid this is to keep checking in and show some progress on something every day so you don't lose touch.
(My analysis: I don't think this is particularly a senior engineer problem, to me it just reads like ADHD-coded problems with time and interests)
I concluded long ago that anyone who writes without capitalizing the first letter of their sentences is not worth paying attention to, due to some combination of hubris, delusion, etc...
Combined with the inner monologue stream of consciousness style, and it is certain that this article is devoid of insight
No, they also capitalize abbreviations like COVID and PIP.
I remember having a phase as a teen where I didn't capitalize the first letter of sentences because it just seemed redundant. Periods are there; why need another signal that another sentence has started? It was like a redundancy = bad phase.
You've do need to worry about TC until it's enough and if it's not enough, you do need to figure out what needs to happen to get more... Whether that's chasing promos or job hopping or whatever.
If you have at least enough for now, you can start by just doing a good job and see what happens and if you're rewarded, not have to specifically chase. Hopefully you'll get to enough for the future without having to focus on promos etc. It's certainly nicer that way.
Then you can take on big projects when they make sense, instead of forcing them. Big projects that benefit your team/company where you're the right person to do it are more likely to work out than ones where you're a bad fit (or the project is a bad fit for the org!) but you think it will get you promoted.
This was never really true at most places, and even where it was sort of true, it's been false since 2023.
The ladder has collapsed. No more juniors to mentor and grow (in some cases no more US hiring period), and all of the carrots have been replaced with sticks. If you're lucky, the reward for doing good work and being nice is 'not being laid off', but the promo budget is gone and it's not like your boss gets a say in who's laid off so may the odds be ever in your favor.
At least we know this wasn't written by an LLM (unless it was GPT-2).
The best advice I can give on moving your career forward is to not try and get a promotion at your current job. Apply for better positions at other companies while you still have your current role. You'll have maximum leverage and unlimited time to choose the best possible option. Trying to claw your way up the ladder in a single company is the least efficient (and more often than not hopeless) strategy.
Interviewing sucks. I know, if you currently have a job then you don't lose anything. Other than precious time and I already feel like I don't have enough free time, I don't want to invest the remaining interviewing.
I have been in a few companies and yes, sometimes getting a promotion is literally impossible. I remember one company that didn't give me a promotion until I threatened to leave.
But if you find the right company, then you shouldn't even need to ask for a promotion.
And lastly, I would hope you are working for a company that you care about. That makes it more complicated to find a replacement
I think you need to be strategic. Leverage your network, don't just go in cold. Smaller startups are also much easier to get a job at than a FAANG.
And lastly, I would hope you are working for a company that you care about. That makes it more complicated to find a replacement
This I absolutely agree with. I quit my last job for ethical reasons and indeed, the same problem I faced is so pervasive in our industry that it limits the pool of places I'd work. That being said, I think the advice holds. Jumping around is a much easier way to move your career forward than staying at a single place.
The scenario laid out is pretty dated. Most scrum shops would not permit this level of backstory anymore. Admittedly I have seen this happen in the old days but it wasnt usually very impactful. It was in places where people had too much time on their hands and not much supervision.
Also there isnt much above senior/lead engineer these days, there is no straight line career progression above that. You can try to get into architecture but thats mostly paperwork, or management which is mostly dealing with people.
If you want to call your own shots as an engineer the world is your oyster, start your own company and build it. There is not much worth "being in charge of" in corporate dev shops that I can see or would want to be a part of. Most of it is retread, make work including FAANG.
After the initial prototype, starting your own company is mostly marketing, people management and more marketing. This “start your own company if you dont want to answer to anyone” is so romanticized that its comical. Its also completely inaccurate.
and what happens is they start disappearing for longer periods of time... they quit their jobs because they think, “you know what, this is not salvageable.”
I've interviewed several great senior engineer candidates over the last few years, and then had to watch do this and walk themselves right out the door inside of 6 months. I've developed a marked preference for promoting internally, because you get longer to head this sort of thing off.
Incidentally, this sort of thing is why software engineering desperately needs some sort of formal levelling criteria and/or mentorship programs. It's really hard for senior folks to calibrate themselves against their rapidly shrinking peer group.
It is hard to take almost any mentorship program seriously that is not a formal university education, and even then, at most universities they do not teach skills that are directly applicable at companies given they are not intended to directly be job training programs. Not that I am on any hiring committee currently, but if I was, I would rather see a candidate with a degree and open source project contributions than App Academy dreck, for example.
If you don't truly enjoy what you do, you'll get crushed by the pressure. Don't try to impress people. If you feel pressure, take a step back, reflect, and think about what's important to you. Then communicate this clearly to people around you, including yourself.
I am having a hard time believing that anyone who uses the word "bro" this much is capable of advising anyone with seniority, because I don't see how they themselves would have the necessary seniority to give such advise.
But I suppose the message, hard to read as it is, is something that some people need to hear. I've seen this first hand a few times, mostly in people who got promoted by working really hard and the more they got promoted the harder they felt like they must work to keep proving themselves. This often led into burnout.
I don't know; I don't really want to blame the people themselves or say that they're the ones responsible of their own condition. People, and I want to say technically minded people in particular, are each rather fallible when it comes to our own humanity and the psychology underneath. And so, I'd much rather see this same advise be targeted to managers and senior teammates: when you notice a colleague who seems to have gone in too deep, have a friendly chat. They might very well be blind to it, or trying to ignore it to push through just that one more time.
I didn’t understand this because of the stream-of-consciousness delivery.
TL;DR: You got promoted or you wanted to get promoted. You decide you want to make a bigger project to show ambition, advance your career and whatnot. You embark on making some grand project, disappearing from view. This often leads to you getting stuck with something, falling behind and various negative effects like getting a PIP or becoming depressed.
His prescription to avoid this is to keep checking in and show some progress on something every day so you don't lose touch.
(My analysis: I don't think this is particularly a senior engineer problem, to me it just reads like ADHD-coded problems with time and interests)
I concluded long ago that anyone who writes without capitalizing the first letter of their sentences is not worth paying attention to, due to some combination of hubris, delusion, etc...
Combined with the inner monologue stream of consciousness style, and it is certain that this article is devoid of insight
I don't mind as long as the author follow the other rules, and this author does: he capitalizes the word "I" and proper nouns, e.g., "Sunil".
it's kind of rude not to capitalise people's names, regardless of ones' stylistic preferences
I also consider it rude to not capitalize the start of sentences.
The only letter capitalized is "I"... Telling
No, they also capitalize abbreviations like COVID and PIP.
I remember having a phase as a teen where I didn't capitalize the first letter of sentences because it just seemed redundant. Periods are there; why need another signal that another sentence has started? It was like a redundancy = bad phase.
Indeed, it’s generally not worth the annoyance.
Yeah should have put it through an LLM to clean it up.
I'm a staff engineer and I haven't thought about trying to get promoted a single day in my life. Do good work and be nice the rest follows
This, I dont do worry about TC or promos. If youre executing and people are happy then rewards and status usually follow. If not,you move along.
You've do need to worry about TC until it's enough and if it's not enough, you do need to figure out what needs to happen to get more... Whether that's chasing promos or job hopping or whatever.
If you have at least enough for now, you can start by just doing a good job and see what happens and if you're rewarded, not have to specifically chase. Hopefully you'll get to enough for the future without having to focus on promos etc. It's certainly nicer that way.
Then you can take on big projects when they make sense, instead of forcing them. Big projects that benefit your team/company where you're the right person to do it are more likely to work out than ones where you're a bad fit (or the project is a bad fit for the org!) but you think it will get you promoted.
This was never really true at most places, and even where it was sort of true, it's been false since 2023.
The ladder has collapsed. No more juniors to mentor and grow (in some cases no more US hiring period), and all of the carrots have been replaced with sticks. If you're lucky, the reward for doing good work and being nice is 'not being laid off', but the promo budget is gone and it's not like your boss gets a say in who's laid off so may the odds be ever in your favor.
Find a new job because this is absolutely not the case at any company where I know ppl in tech
Maybe it's your fancy name, which gets you those promotions.
In my experience, this only works at some companies. At others you have to play the promotion game (or have your manager play it for you).
I've seen people who don't follow this become emotional wrecks, which as a manager makes me feel like Dr. Phil.
You're pretty lucky. Most people I know who've gotten to this point have had to think about it a lot.
You are confusing your rating in the profession, with your rating within your company...
At least we know this wasn't written by an LLM (unless it was GPT-2).
The best advice I can give on moving your career forward is to not try and get a promotion at your current job. Apply for better positions at other companies while you still have your current role. You'll have maximum leverage and unlimited time to choose the best possible option. Trying to claw your way up the ladder in a single company is the least efficient (and more often than not hopeless) strategy.
I don't agree with that advice.
Interviewing sucks. I know, if you currently have a job then you don't lose anything. Other than precious time and I already feel like I don't have enough free time, I don't want to invest the remaining interviewing.
I have been in a few companies and yes, sometimes getting a promotion is literally impossible. I remember one company that didn't give me a promotion until I threatened to leave.
But if you find the right company, then you shouldn't even need to ask for a promotion.
And lastly, I would hope you are working for a company that you care about. That makes it more complicated to find a replacement
I think you need to be strategic. Leverage your network, don't just go in cold. Smaller startups are also much easier to get a job at than a FAANG.
This I absolutely agree with. I quit my last job for ethical reasons and indeed, the same problem I faced is so pervasive in our industry that it limits the pool of places I'd work. That being said, I think the advice holds. Jumping around is a much easier way to move your career forward than staying at a single place.
The scenario laid out is pretty dated. Most scrum shops would not permit this level of backstory anymore. Admittedly I have seen this happen in the old days but it wasnt usually very impactful. It was in places where people had too much time on their hands and not much supervision.
Also there isnt much above senior/lead engineer these days, there is no straight line career progression above that. You can try to get into architecture but thats mostly paperwork, or management which is mostly dealing with people.
If you want to call your own shots as an engineer the world is your oyster, start your own company and build it. There is not much worth "being in charge of" in corporate dev shops that I can see or would want to be a part of. Most of it is retread, make work including FAANG.
After the initial prototype, starting your own company is mostly marketing, people management and more marketing. This “start your own company if you dont want to answer to anyone” is so romanticized that its comical. Its also completely inaccurate.
I've interviewed several great senior engineer candidates over the last few years, and then had to watch do this and walk themselves right out the door inside of 6 months. I've developed a marked preference for promoting internally, because you get longer to head this sort of thing off.
Incidentally, this sort of thing is why software engineering desperately needs some sort of formal levelling criteria and/or mentorship programs. It's really hard for senior folks to calibrate themselves against their rapidly shrinking peer group.
It is hard to take almost any mentorship program seriously that is not a formal university education, and even then, at most universities they do not teach skills that are directly applicable at companies given they are not intended to directly be job training programs. Not that I am on any hiring committee currently, but if I was, I would rather see a candidate with a degree and open source project contributions than App Academy dreck, for example.
I've interviewed for several senior jobs lately. And found that the more pragmatic and honest I was, the quicker I was dropped from the pipeline.
It goes both ways, and I would argue the spiral happens because the other side expects something above an beyond the possible.
This hits home. Had the _exact_ scenario play out last year at my last role
My plan was to always "retire" to a comfy university job but I no longer feel that way - I still really enjoy what I do.
Walter White said the lab was still magic. It's the same being in the trenches.
If you don't truly enjoy what you do, you'll get crushed by the pressure. Don't try to impress people. If you feel pressure, take a step back, reflect, and think about what's important to you. Then communicate this clearly to people around you, including yourself.
I am having a hard time believing that anyone who uses the word "bro" this much is capable of advising anyone with seniority, because I don't see how they themselves would have the necessary seniority to give such advise.
But I suppose the message, hard to read as it is, is something that some people need to hear. I've seen this first hand a few times, mostly in people who got promoted by working really hard and the more they got promoted the harder they felt like they must work to keep proving themselves. This often led into burnout.
I don't know; I don't really want to blame the people themselves or say that they're the ones responsible of their own condition. People, and I want to say technically minded people in particular, are each rather fallible when it comes to our own humanity and the psychology underneath. And so, I'd much rather see this same advise be targeted to managers and senior teammates: when you notice a colleague who seems to have gone in too deep, have a friendly chat. They might very well be blind to it, or trying to ignore it to push through just that one more time.