Alex Chiou

"Senior Software Engineer" is a title with a beautiful ring to it, and it's one that every software engineer aspires to. Top-notch senior engineers are incredibly coveted by tech companies, especially Big Tech, as there's simply not enough of them. With the massive rush of people into tech during the pandemic, the median software engineer is now Mid-Level. If you are Senior, you are special.

However, the Senior Engineer promotion is brutally difficult, especially at FAANG. There are so many engineers struggling with Meta E4 -&gt; E5 and Google L4 -&gt; L5. Amazon SDE 2 -&gt; SDE 3 is notorious for being the hardest senior promotion in the industry with engineers taking up to 10 years to make the jump.

So why is this level up so frustrating, being the first promotion 95%+ of engineers really struggle with? It's because Mid-Level to Senior is the first promotion that requires a fundamental dynamic shift, which this course thoroughly breaks down. By the end of the course, you will:

- 💡 Truly understand the **difference** between a mid-level engineer and a senior engineer

- 🧠 Have the right **mindset** to behave as a senior engineer

- 🛠️ Identify your **technical gaps** to senior engineer

- 📃 Figure out your **fundamental gaps** to senior engineer

- ✅ Define a clear **roadmap** to senior engineer

After going through all the lessons here, you will have the necessary tools to become a high-performing senior engineer at a top tech company like FAANG. This promotion is particularly exciting as senior is when doors start seriously opening up for your career, with the primary one being the option to become an engineering manager!

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer: L4 To L5

Overview

Impact

Engineering Excellence

Direction

People

Senior Project Case Studies

Conclusion

Go Deeper: Follow Through

How This Course Works

Why Is The Senior Promotion So Hard?

At A Glance: Mid-Level Vs. Senior

Structuring Your Growth

Finding The Right Team

The Goggles

Take Greater Ownership

Fill In The Gaps

Code Quality

Code Review

Debugging

System Design

Just 1 Sentence Is Enough

 Work Towards The Team Goal

 What's The Plan?

Project Management

Meetings

Build A Strong Internal Network

Onboarding

Mentorship

Instagram Ads Testing Tool

Instagram Ads Survey Cleanup Workstream

Plot Your Growth Journey

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 24] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Start a career discussion in Taro: <https://www.jointaro.com/questions/create/>

Join Taro events: <https://www.jointaro.com/events/>

Come to Alex's Group Office Hours: <https://www.jointaro.com/p/alex-chiou/>

Related courses:

- [Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Managing Up: Build Effective Relationships With Your Boss](https://www.jointaro.com/course/managing-up-build-effective-relationships-with-your-boss/)
- [Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)
- [Frontend System Design Masterclass - Building Playlists](https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 1] - How This Course Works

Meta E4 -&gt; E5. Google L4 -&gt; L5. Amazon SDE 2 -&gt; SDE 3 (the final boss). These are some of the most notorious senior promotions in the tech industry and for good reason: They're hard! The Senior Software Engineer promotion is the first promotion 95%+ of engineers seriously struggle with. So why is that? Well, in this course, we'll break that down in-depth and teach you how to navigate the Senior level up with far less struggle. Here are the core parts of the lesson:

- Your instructor [Alex Chiou](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) walks you through his extensive 10+ year Silicon Valley background with rapid career advancement, ending up as a high-performing tech lead making $750k at Robinhood. More importantly, he goes through how he was able to grow his mentees to lightning fast promotions, particularly at Meta where he grew 5+ mid-level engineers (E4) to senior engineers (E5) in just 1 year!
- You'll understand what it means to be a mid-level engineer vs. a senior engineer in the market, including the interview space.
- We walk you through the course objectives. By the end of the course, you will understand:
  - 💡 Truly understand the **difference** between a mid-level engineer and a senior engineer

  - 🧠 Have the right **mindset** to behave as a senior engineer

  - 🛠️ Identify your **technical gaps** to senior engineer

  - 📃 Figure out your **fundamental gaps** to senior engineer

  - ✅ Define a clear **roadmap** to senior engineer

If you want to learn how Alex found a multi-million dollar bug as part of his E4 -&gt; E5 senior promotion packet, check out his case study here: [\[Case Study\] Solving A Multi-Million $$ Instagram Bug](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/WYk4J05iBqOuPtD0CYKX/case-study-solving-a-multi-million-dollardollar-instagram-bug/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 2] - Why Is The Senior Promotion So Hard?

For most engineers, going from junior to mid-level isn't too hard with many of them achieving it unintentionally. This leads to them being surprised when the next promotion of mid-level to senior is so painfully difficult. This lesson teaches you:

- The fundamental dynamic shift in skill development going from mid-level to senior
- Why team selection is very important for growing to senior
- The ambiguity of the senior promotion and the 2 broad paths you can take to get there
- The large lagging nature of the senior promotion

Dig deeper into the overall phenomena covered here with the overall promotion course: [\[Course\] Nail Your Promotion As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 3] - At A Glance: Mid-Level Vs. Senior

What exactly does it mean to be a mid-level engineer vs. a senior engineer? What's the gap? This lesson teaches you:

- What it means at a high-level to be a mid-level engineer vs. a senior engineer
- The types of projects mid-level engineers work on vs. a senior engineer
- The ownership and scope difference between a mid-level engineer vs. a senior engineer
- The difference in organizational complexity between mid-level engineers and senior engineers

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 4] - Structuring Your Growth

There are a **lot** of new skills you need to develop to go from mid-level engineer to senior engineer, far more than most people realize. So how does one process of all this? This lesson teaches you:

- The 4 Meta engineering axes and what they mean (we'll be using these to organize the teachings from the course).
- How to view the overall learning from this course
- Why the senior promotion is different when it comes to these 4 engineering axes
- The strategy you should follow to structure your growth journey, using this course's material as the basis

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 5] - Finding The Right Team

Not every engineering team can support an additional senior engineer. This lesson teaches you:

- What to look for in terms of product scope when choosing an engineering team to grow to senior
- The people ingredients of a team that's good for senior promotion
- Exactly what a great team for senior promotion looks like

To dive deeper into how to find a great team for senior promotion, check out the discussion here: ["What questions can I ask a potential new team?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/dLS6KcDwKNdMDlJwYdBw/what-questions-can-i-ask-a-potential-new-team/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 6] - The Goggles

Here's the harsh truth: The *vast* majority of mid-level engineers who are stuck at that level and unable to reach senior are holding themselves back (at least to some extent). This lesson teaches you:

- The classic unhealthy mindset that mid-level engineers have that keeps them from ever reaching senior
- How to correct the novice mid-level engineer mindset and evolve towards a senior engineer one by putting on **The Goggles**
- How to think about The Goggles after you are aware of them (which you will be after going through this lesson)
- The general way high-performing senior engineers (and beyond) view the world

Learn how to create scope with our playlist: [\[Taro Top 10\] How To Create Scope As An Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/playlist/EWIo3USNcsgXbCs5PS0h/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 7] - Take Greater Ownership

As a senior engineer, you need to show strong ownership. Many mid-level engineers are told this by their manager but are unsure as to what that means. This lesson teaches you:

- Why the "points" you get for impact aren't just correlated to the impact of the projects you work on
- How to get more credit for each project you work on
- What it means to show stronger, more holistic project ownership with a real-life example from Alex's past at Instagram

Learn more about project credit here: <https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/its-not-just-about-impact/>

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 8] - Fill In The Gaps

Senior engineers solve fundamentally different problems compared to mid-level engineers. This lesson teaches you:

- The expectation for senior engineer mindset and behavior when problems arise in a project they're working on
- The types of problems that mid-level engineers tend to avoid
- The types of problems that senior engineers uniquely solve compared to more junior engineers

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 9] - Code Quality

Mid-level engineers are usually very solid at coding, but what most don't realize is how high the ceiling truly is when it comes to code quality. This lesson teaches you:

- The difference in code quality between junior, mid-level, and senior engineers
- What a senior engineer level pull request looks like

Become a code quality master by taking our course here: [\[Course\] Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 10] - Code Review

Writing code is great, but so is reviewing code. In fact, being great at reviewing code is more impactful than being great at writing code 90%+ of the time! This lesson teaches you:

- How the writing code vs. reviewing code dynamic changes as you get to senior
- Why senior engineers tend to review more code than they write
- How senior engineers expand their code review scope while mid-level engineer code review scope tends to be more constrained with a real-life example
- The difference between a senior engineer code review comment vs. a mid-level engineer code review comment

Get better at code review with our masterclass: [\[Masterclass\] How To Do Amazing Code Review](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/rhRFh49oouaUDhWUvkQb/masterclass-how-to-do-amazing-code-review/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 11] - Debugging

Debugging is one of the most important skills every software engineer needs to develop. Despite this, many software engineers see bugs as a source of frustration instead of opportunity. This lesson teaches you:

- The mindset shift that has to happen when a mid-level engineer grows to senior engineer when it comes to bugs, particularly large production outages
- How senior engineers solve different types of bugs of a broader scope compared to mid-level engineers

To get better at debugging, check out: [\[Masterclass\] How To Become A Debugging Master And Fix Issues Faster](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/ioR6WzamAIUTpySLAr7o/masterclass-how-to-become-a-debugging-master-and-fix-issues-faster/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 12] - System Design

System design is a topic engineers are becoming more and more familiar with, largely due to their emerging prevalence in interviews. It's also critical for the mid-level to senior promotion. This lesson teaches you:

- Why system design is the most important technical skill that mid-level engineers need to develop to grow to senior
- The ingredients of a high-quality system design document
- How to get feedback on your system design document
- Tactics to run an effective technical review meeting

Here's the system design course: [\[Course\] Frontend System Design Masterclass - Building Playlists](https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 13] - Just 1 Sentence Is Enough

As a software engineer, you will often get tasks and projects that aren't fully defined. How you react and are able to perform in these scenarios is a huge factor when it comes to determining your seniority. This lesson teaches you:

- A simple framework to understand the expectations of a senior engineer when it comes to handling ambiguity
- The different components that go into converting a single sentence to a full-blown project

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 14] - Work Towards The Team Goal

Software engineers aren't paid to write code; they're paid to solve problems. However, this mindset often takes years for engineers to truly internalize, often at the senior level. This lesson teaches you:

- How mid-level engineers and senior engineers react different when given a project
- The questions every senior engineer needs to ask when given a project
- What needs to be done in order to understand the true impact of a project

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 15] - What's The Plan?

The best engineers act proactively instead of reactively, and this is critical for successful project execution. This lesson teaches you:

- The evolution in ownership of a project when it comes to a mid-level engineer vs. a senior engineer
- What a good project plan looks like

Check out the system design course for an excellent example of a master spec document: [\[Course\] Frontend System Design Masterclass - Building Playlists](https://www.jointaro.com/course/frontend-system-design-masterclass-building-playlists/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 16] - Project Management

Planning a project is just the first step: Execution is when things really matter. The problem is that every software engineer leading a project should expect the unexpected, especially at a top tech company. This lesson teaches you:

- How senior engineers set themselves apart when leading projects
- The core ingredients for successfully managing a project, both during and after execution

Related resources:

- ["What are some thoughts on maintaining good meeting hygiene?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/CModSkZ4LWzw9bdaiakt/what-are-some-thoughts-on-maintaining-good-meeting-hygiene/)
- ["How to get more visibility on work?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/XA0X51AypDLCeVeleJv4/how-to-get-more-visibility-on-work/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 17] - Meetings

Every tech company needs a ton of meetings in order to function. The tricky thing is that a lot of software engineers are introverts, so they have trouble participating in meetings, especially when they're more junior. This lesson teaches you:

- The differences between junior, mid-level, and senior engineers when it comes to meeting presence
- The difference in types of meetings mid-level engineers participate in vs. those of senior engineers
- How meeting ownership shifts as engineers grow from mid-level to senior
- Tips to run an effective meeting which is an efficient use of time

To dive deeper into how to run a good meeting: ["What are some thoughts on maintaining good meeting hygiene?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/CModSkZ4LWzw9bdaiakt/what-are-some-thoughts-on-maintaining-good-meeting-hygiene/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 18] - Build A Strong Internal Network

If you have a meaningful bench of people who are willing to fight for your success, you will succeed as a software engineer. One of the simplest ways to understand seniority is that this bench grows larger and larger over time. This lesson teaches you:

- How an engineer's internal network at a company evolves as they grow from mid-level to senior, both in terms of breadth and depth
- How to expand your internal network
- The difference in peer feedback that mid-level engineers get compared to senior engineers, especially with XFN (cross-functional) partners

To dive deeper into earning trust quickly and building relationships: [\[Masterclass\] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/tyaPFMXPoz2pmzB7OVzt/masterclass-how-to-build-deep-relationships-quickly-in-tech/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 19] - Onboarding

Onboarding is one of the most important processes for any healthy engineering team. Helping the newbies is both critical and rewarding. This lesson teaches you:

- How a senior engineer levels up the team more when helping with onboarding compared to a mid-level engineer
- Different ways to achieve multiplicative impact with onboarding instead of singular, even when you are the one onboarding!

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 20] - Mentorship

Mentorship is one of the most skills to master as a software engineer, especially at senior levels. It is both a way for you to do some good and scale yourself. This lesson teaches you: 

- The difference between passive and active mentorship
- Ways to provide passive mentorship to teammates
- Why you should consider taking on an intern as a mid-level engineer growing to senior
- The jump in quality when it comes to mentorship advice given by a mid-level engineer vs. a senior engineer
- The key thing to remember when being an effective mentor

To learn how Alex was such an effective mentor: [\[Case Study\] Mentoring Junior SWEs \[E3\] to Senior \[E5\] In Just 2.5 Years At Meta](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/EX9563YnxcJb62cCmetg/case-study-mentoring-junior-swes-e3-to-senior-e5-in-just-25-years-at-meta/)

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 21] - Instagram Ads Testing Tool

Sometimes being a little selfish can help you tremendously when finding senior scope as it did in this case study. This lesson goes through:

- The problem Alex was solving with Instagram ads internal testing, particularly with mobile engineers
- How Alex came up with a very simple solution to the testing problem (far simpler than senior engineer technical complexity)
- How Alex scaled both himself and his basic Instagram ads testing tool
- The learnings from this case study that you can apply to your own day-to-day at work to find senior scope

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 22] - Instagram Ads Survey Cleanup Workstream

See something, say something: You'll be surprised at how much opportunity you can find by championing this mentality, including to senior levels. This lesson goes through:

- The weird organizational dynamic that led to a bunch of senior scope existing "for free" but easy to ignore as a junior or mid-level engineer
- The simple but powerful trick Alex used to turn several smaller issues into a senior-level project
- How Alex continued to deepen the impact of this survey cleanup workstream by digging deeper and doing the right thing
- The learnings from this case study that you can apply to your day-to-day to find senior scope

Grow From Mid-Level To Senior Engineer [Part 23] - Plot Your Growth Journey

The mid-level engineer to senior engineer promotion takes years for a very simple reason: You need to develop a *ton* of new skills to make it. This lesson teaches you:

- How to prevent yourself from becoming overwhelmed on your journey from mid-level to senior
- The standard growth path from L4 (mid-level) to L5 (senior) and what it means to be L4.5
- Why the L4.5 growth path that initially focuses on increasing your engineering excellence is generally the smoothest path to senior engineer