Senior Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

I recently read an existing question "Do FAANG...ever hire M1 from outside?"

I am aware that M1 is usually filled internally. The part that shocked me is that the questioner stated they are a Sr EM with 10 years of management experience. I would expect they would interview for Tier 1 as a Sr EM with that background.

This relates to my own career strategy as well: I plan to move from Sr IC to EM at my current company, gain 2-5 years of experience, and consider interviewing out for promo if I can't achieve internal promo in that frame.

Am I thinking about this the wrong way? We know promo to senior for engineers by interviewing is often easier than internal promo, but is that a poor mental model for EM?

Hello, I have 3 years of experience and I'm an SDE II at Amazon. The Q1 promotion results are out, and I'm surprised to see many fast-track SDE III promotions. It seems to me that when the time is right and stars align, SDE III promotion can be quick, and if you stay in one team long enough, it wouldn't be hard to get to SDE III.

80% of my team are SDE IIs, and I don't see my possibility of SDE III promotion in the next 2 years unless:

1. I find some big opportunities that bring huge revenue to the organization
2. There's a major reorg, and I'm assigned to a new team, and the new team expands
3. My current team shrinks for some reason, I stay, and my team grows again. Interestingly, my team's senior manager and 2 senior engineers actually fall into the third bucket.

What do you think? Should I just relax, keep pace, and grow my skills, hoping for a promotion by job hopping when the market recovers?

Most people spend a tone of time prepping for FAANG interview but once you have the job, you need a different set of skill to be competitive and exceed the job expectations as a SDE. It would have be nice if we had also took the time to build up the skills to do the job better before joining the company. Any recommendation on material to skill up for FAANG job

WLB also means something different to people and therefore I'm curious what the best way is to discover the "truth" of the team you are interviewing into before both applying and joining a company.

For example, when I worked at Amazon, I did not work beyond 40 hours in either of my teams, but the occasional weekend because I was oncall, and this was fine for me personally. At Google Cloud, I was working longer during the weekdays (self-imposed because this was during COVID and I never worked weekends), but other teams at Google have been more relaxed in general.

I've been told Meta, Amazon and a few others have a poor WLB balance, but then I've also spoken to managers (and experienced it myself in the case of Amazon) that this is team dependant and manager dependant. I also assume it varies by your level.

That said, I'm a DE, so likely the stress level overall is also different to a SWE, hence this post.

I've been a Data Engineer for most of my career and my observation is that scope as a Data Engineer can plateau and therefore I see a lot more L4/5 DE's than L6+. I think it is because you don't impact the bottom line directly and regularly.

At FAANG's I've worked at so far, finding new scope can be difficult even when you are working with stakeholders: it is "easier" to scope/build a product (i.e. SWE work) and show metrics of success to add value vs building a data pipeline which may be limited to them having a reporting need for example which often isn't the case especially in a more established firm.

I moved into a partner facing DE role to help more with scope/stakeholder exposure. The highest impact project I worked on so far is influencing an internal team to change the way we measure a particular metric. This involved mostly stakeholder management and nothing more complex than SQL queries from a technical standpoint. While it was fulfilling, this is also something I 'stumbled' upon and is rare due to challenges like partner scope/vision is limited/slow (their leadership can change and therefore you projects/ideas can), technical challenges of automating things because of larger concerns (e.g. privacy, lack of infra on their side which you have no control over) and so on (you generally have even less control than an internal DE).

In my current role, I am generally able to derive projects, but (in my opinion) they are limited in scope/value: i.e. build a pipeline, deliver an analysis. Therefore, even though the projects 'ticks the boxes' for an L5, it is not really driving a 'transformation' as an L6+ would. I also directly asked my manager what are some of the hardest problems we have, and have been told we have a lot, yet, I'm not hearing or seeing them.

Given the situation, would you:

1. Move to a SWE role internally at FAANG for a more established path 'up' (not sure this resolves the scope problem especially at FAANG as I think SWE-DE's can almost be even harder to get to L6+ on because they generally lack stakeholder visibility and focus on more top down work?).
2. Seek roles outside of FAANG where the scope of the work is already scoped to L6+ e.g. Airbnb so the 'heavy lifting' has been done in terms of scope.
3. Refine your scoping strategy within you own team, and if so, how?

Note: my motivation is to thrive at work, this isn't for a promo, just incase the post comes across as promo-focused. :)

With a background in hardware, firmware development and validation , I was able to get a master in MLE and transition to machine learning position, but my current machine learning role doesn't focus on building and deploying model but mainly on building infrastructure for machine learning which require a tech stack different from my previous experiences and background. Due to that, my code velocity is pretty slow and I'm also worrying that if I continue with that role, my machine learning skill will fade away or I won't able to build technical depth and be very proficient at machine learning. What do you recommend?

As I work remotely from UK, I have some co workers in US who are in some meeting room discussing things together. I feel it’s difficult for me to contribute from Zoom. What can I do better to get more involved?

I have been looking to switch tech stacks for a while now and although i have made progress in upskilling, its quite a slow process. Work responsibilities always take over and leaves me little time for my own learning or side projects. Also i feel like there are tons of things to learn every single time i sit down. Could you help me with some tips to go about learning and deal with overwhelm when it comes to learning in tech?

Also, another reason this is hard is because the reward I get for spending more time on office work is immediate and helps me feel safe in terms of job security, but of course in the longer run it wont keep me happy which is why i need to spend more time on my education outside of work.

Thanks!

I'm an engineer with about 4.5 years of experience. I've had 2 jobs since graduating university. The first was a small startup (<10 people) where I did backend engineering and worked like a dog. The second (and current) is a large (~1500 people) company that's far more chill.

I've heard, read, and generally understand that recruiters (and probably hiring managers as well) like to see career progression when reviewing resumes. Makes sense.

My questions are:

1. rather than calling myself "Backend Engineer" for my first job on my resume, should I say I was a "Junior Backend Engineer"?

2. for my current job, rather than calling myself a "Data Engineer", can I call myself "Senior Data Engineer"? My company isn't technically advanced to the point where they formally use the title "Senior" engineer for anyone (although engineers definitely are paid differently based on tenure, impact, negotiation skills). Hence I feel like I have that lee-way. Heck, it might even be better to arbitrarily take the 3 year block at the company and pick a point around the 2-year mark where I say I became "Senior", so I can have Junior -> Intermediate -> Senior on my resume.

There's irony in down-leveling myself for my first job, although I really was junior and titles are fungible. As for up-levelling myself in my current role, isn't the point of a resume just to get an interview? And are people really going to check with my employer and say "aha, caught you! you said you were a Senior Engineer, but really you were an Engineer!" and even if people do, I would imagine it's a small number, that's offset by the upside of demonstrating that progression, even if it is a little messaged'

Finally, to address a question that will probably be asked, I definitely feel like I have learned a good deal since I started 4.5 years ago, technically, but more importantly knowing what to work on. Prioritization, time management, etc.

Thanks!

Aside from LC questions, what do interviews for senior mobile roles (L5 equivalent), specifically iOS Engineering, look like at FAANG-like companies? If they are system design heavy, are there resources for mobile specific system design questions, since most of content out there is geared towards web system design?

How can I best prepare for these interviews?

Thanks!

I have never contributed to open source but would like to start doing so. I believe this will make a huge difference in landing big tech jobs. Would like some references, steps, directions for beginners to get started in this journey.

I am a 15 year experienced software professional holding H1B. In my last 3 companies, I was a Senior Software Engineer. In my penultimate company, I was due for Staff promotion. Fast Forwarding, I was impacted by layoffs in Jan this year. I had 3 months to find a job in this market. I was applying and passing on my resume through all my network. Most of my applications got rejected quoting they picked another candidate. Some of my applications materialized into interviews , but I ended up not clearing (was in bad form and stress and also didn't get ample time to prepare thoroughly).

Finally, I got my application picked at a company through a referral, but they only considered me for SWE2. I explained them my experience and requested to consider me for SSE level, they said the panel will be open to it. But in the end, they ended up offering me SWE2. I took the offer as I had no choice. I was running out of time and did'nt want to risk rejecting this offer and waiting for a better offer. I took up the offer and joined, but I don't feel happy. I wish I had more time to really choose what I wanted.

I would like your thoughts on how "wise" is it to be SWE2 with 15 years experience. Would my age become a factor for further career progressions as they would prefer younger people? I am confused if I should stick to this, be patient, work smart and work my way up inside, or would it make more sense to keep interviewing and find something that I feel happy about. Look forward to helpful replies or referrals for SSE :)

I have around 15 years experience with background mainly in Java, Restful, Springboot etc. I was impacted by layoffs and I am on a H1B. Hence I have limited time before which I should choose a job. I do not have extensive time for preparing LeetCode in this short time span. I would like to know if there are mid-level companies (not startups, not big tech) that do non-leetcode style interviews. Like, a take home assignment, or some other demo kind of interviews.

What strategies can I employ to excel in my new role as a senior software engineer at a tier 1 tech company, coming as a mid level engineer.

I cleared the programming round for Anthropic. I have a call with the hiring manager next week. I was wondering how I should prepare for this round. I am planning to have the following items ready before the interview.

1. a good self intro
2. a quick summary of what I do at my current job
3. summary of 2-3 high-impact projects from my career
4. try to come up with matching examples (from past experience) for each item listed under the "Responsibilities" section of the job description

I believe I have a good relationship with a coworker. My manager thinks we don’t. Should I ask the coworker to record a formal feedback that we have a good relationship, or are there other standard or recommended data points or actions for making this case?

As a software engineer, I feel like I always have a lot of things to learn but never enough time. I have 100s of articles, newsletters, documents, videos bookmarked to go through later. Some of these are work related - business domain, design documents, best practices, new technology etc. Others are more general - system design, career advice, clean code, new AI tools etc. It's a constant struggle. How do you deal with it? Is there a system that you follow to manage your time and prioritize your learning?

I've raised this concern to manager in almost every 1-1 once even in front of Director of Eng that I'm interested in more roles and responsibilities. Cuz I was not a fresher even when I joined the current company at entry level and now that I've done decent work too at current company.

But manager fails to give me a path/timeline of when will I be entrusted with some impactful work.

He criticises in public, and has a favourite too who uses this to influence the manager against others.

Manager also wants every small thing to be done his way and he presents the whole thing as learning opportunity for me.

If junior engineers are not supposed to do anything on their own then why are they even hired as engineers?

Should I look for new opportunities? Or how can I take away most from the current situation?

In my previous company, I joined as a junior (L3) and rose to L5 level. People around me listened to my ideas sort help for any new patterns. But now after moving to the new company, I am feeling insecure about proposing any new ideas or suggest any new stuff. Going over some videos at Taro, I realised I need to gain respect by improving my code quality and be communicative about my work.

In a few scenarios I try to put my ideas in a meeting or a group. But If I feel like I cannot fight/convince with my ideas. In such scenarios, I let someone in the team/meeting take over their idea. When we go for the implementation, I feel I should have pushed more on my idea over theirs.

I would like to understand how to become a better influencer.

I work with a team of 5 engineers amongst whom two are in my timezone. They always work overtime, work over weekends. They dont necessarily create a bigger impact but they are constantly posting on team chat groups about minor issues that they have seen and resolve it over the weekends. And stay late evenings and very late nights talking to the other team members. They spend a great deal of time obsessing over minor details like naming convention, doing repeated tasks.

I cannot keep up with this culture. I would actually like to have a personal life and spend some free time during the week working on side projects or learning something. At some point the opportunities do go to the people who have the most visibility right, no matter how mundane the work they do is? How do I navigate this? I would like to maintain a good reputation and work on interesting things. But I feel like I may be overlooked for promotions due to this. Any advice for me?

I work on a new product within a larger company. Our new product has grown to 600k ARR organically (without marketing and only a little sales) and now we’re being asked to get to 3 million ARR this year. We’re hoping to get more support from marketing and sales but I’m wondering what more on the product side can we do?

1. As an engineer, how can I break this “revenue” goal down to help figure out the team’s strategy and what we should be building?
2. Are there sub metrics I should be setting sub goals for?
3. How do I estimate how much ARR a feature will get us? (Or is that just a waste of time because they’re just educated guesses?)
4. How do I know if features on our user feedback boards will help get us new customers (and therefore more ARR) vs just making existing customers happier? Our churn has been very low so as nice as it’d be to just build what our existing users want, I want to prioritize new customers to avoid the project being shut down prematurely.

Appreciate any advice on this! This is a big unknown unknown for me so even just giving me some topics/words to research will be very helpful

I have Staff interviews lined up with FAANG companies and would like to learn from the best resources out there. What has helped you the most in your journey/experience?

Hello!

I used to work for a large fin tech company but recently got a job at a client-based company. They flew me into the office for an onboarding week and the culture and people are fantastic. I even made a decision to move from DC into the Houston office just cause of the people and weirdly I realized that my personality is a bigger asset than I realized. I enjoy chatting with people, and a Director of Product even told me "I don't usually hold 1:1s with the new folks but your personality was shining so bright!"

I only give this info cause I'm not very confident in my technical skills. While I got a great performance review in my last company, it was because of my determination, my willingness to go full stack when no one wanted to, and cause I was very close with the Product and Design team. Tbh that's also cause I don't really nerd out about state management or the newest framework or whatever like everyone else seems to. I enjoy frontend cause I like making pretty things and that's it. I'm not the person who is constantly thinking about how to make our testing process or pipelines better. I can learn those things if I need to but it doesn't come naturally to me.

I have admitted some of this to folks at my new company and they've been super cool about it. They even suggested I dabble into a Technical PM role. That's still something I'm chewing on cause while it's silly, I love typing things on my pretty little IDE and I like fewer meetings. But I don't imagine coding forever. In my company, a senior engineer gets to lead a project, manage people, and talk to clients. I'm aiming for a senior role cause I think it aligns more with my natural skill sets as I believe my soft skills are stronger than my technical skills.

My manager became a senior recently and told me it was because he was willing to do whatever client project came in whatever language that was required. He's the same age as me and only started coding 3 years ago after a BootCamp. This is his only company but I'll admit, I feel like he's a stronger engineer than I am. I've been in the company for a few weeks, and I've been getting my stories done quickly even though their tech stack is new (but everyone is fast) but I'm not sure how to even become a Senior since I don't know if I will be able to become the rockstar engineer that my manager is. I will move earliest in September so I'm remote until then. Projects also come and go so fast. Any ideas on how to standout?