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

Like a lot of E5s, I'm working on a piece of my team's overall project roadmap, which is set by an E6 TL. The piece I own is less technically complex than other parts, but it is quite XFN heavy (great for people/direction contribution). I was wondering if this is still enough to get to E6 or do I need the higher technical complexity as well?

Has anyone interviewed there before and can share their experience/tips? I'm interviewing for a full-stack role. There is a code refactoring round which is new to me.

How does it differ from an entry level engineer to the head of engineering level at each of the levels, given the scope grows as well at each level?

• Software Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer
• Tech Lead
• Staff Software Engineer
• Principal Engineer
• Head of Engineering
• Director of Engineering
• Vice President
• CTO

How do each of the levels ensure they are onboarded as quickly as possible to have maximum impact ?

I'm optimizing for compensation over the next 3-5 years.

What makes the most sense to target next?

Context:

Currently a senior software engineer at Big Tech in the US.

I got an interview call from Meta for SDE position. They asked to send over any names of references I have at Meta. Can you please suggest me any names from Meta to put as references?

Thank you.

I joined this new company, and since the beginning things were little off for me. i.e.

• the manager when interviewed me I got a gut feeling that he is not a nice guy, I checked with my friend and got convinced that it's okay
• While onboarding, I talked to couple of my team-mates and they were either disinterested or complete rude to me, I ignored it thinking I might be the most stupid and inefficient one..
• While getting some sessions from senior engineer, the guy always made me feel bad about myself, about how I lacked necessary knowledge and how I should just get things.. I ignored that too thinking it's just me who is not smart enough

Since last couple of days, I talked some of other engineers and found that all my team-mates are pretty toxic and, when he shared some of the past experiences, I got now convinced that it's pretty toxic environment especially for my team. Now my question is that all this time I thought I am the problem.. but it turned out that it was not me.. I am still pretty new here and I am seriously searching for another job now, but what did I miss here..? What could I have done here such that I would have known this earlier? (I know, I could have talked to the other guys earlier but I was not so sure because I had no idea how they would react to that.. I shared my concerns only when it became unavoidable)

I'm wondering what does it takes to go from an average senior software engineer to a top senior engineer making more than 500k. Any recommendations on a step by step guide that I can leverage to reach my goal.

Thanks

Given the current economic volatility and uncertainty as well as the hard-to-measure business value of cost centre teams (like infrastructure or platform), would it be sensible to join such a team?

I have been chasing the SDE-3 promotion from last one year. It was denied in the year end review cycle in December.

In this cycle (Jan - June), I have ticked almost all the checkpoints as per the firm's SDE-3 competency matrix and I have a good amount of documentation around it as well which I have submitted to my manager.

I want to let my manager and skip (Director) know that I will leave if I am not promoted in this cycle as I don't think there are any negative data points against me.

Any suggestions about how should I subtly carry out this conversation?

Joining a new team/vertical with the company, I often feel intimidated with the sheer expanse of domain knowledge to be grasped. Given that it takes time, what are the best ways to approach it, so that you are the most effective.

I'm new to the team, and I want to make an impact quickly. How can I quickly gain respect of people on the team? Are there certain things I should do as I act/react to other people?

Hi

I am thinking that if I also start to show the basics of a staff engineer, it might be helpful to reach a senior engineer status.

I want to build a stronger relationship with my manager, but I'm unsure where the boundary should be when it comes to opening up to them. For example, I have some confidence issues which affect my work performance a bit: Is that something that's okay to share with them or is it possible that they'll hold it against me? I haven't interacted too much with my manager as I'm fairly new to the team, but so far, the signal has been positive.

This half I've been assigned to a new greenfield project and I'm having a tough time believing in the product idea and I think the product team is being overly optimistic.

I'm concerned the problem the product solves isn't important enough, that the solution won't be adopted and that the business value isn't clear. They're also pushing for rushed timelines even before we've decided on what will be delivered.

I'm worried if this thing doesn't get traction and we end up having layoffs that it would make our team a target.

How should I think about this situation? Try to make the best out of it? Try to get out of it?

I'm currently a mid-level engineer, and I've already made a good amount of progress towards senior. However, I'm looking to change teams as I don't like the work too much on my current team, and I want to minimize the progress "loss" as much as possible in my new team by finding one that sets me up well for the mid-level -> senior promotion.

What’s a good team composition for this? Do you just want a good mix of all levels? What other factors besides team composition should I look for when it comes to evaluating a team on this axis?

I am a senior engineer and would like to get in to MAANG, but I'm rusty in DS. I don't want to give interviews to MAANG companies until I figure that out Are there any power patterns to start with? And what would be the good starting point to solve problems? I am looking for a smart way to achieve this.

In reality most of the Fortune 500 companies I worked in the past, they never dig too much in DS problems. Most care about system design and knowledge about code.

I see few people mentioning solving 200+ problems in LeetCode which is a lot of time consuming process. I'm trying to find answers from few people who already went through this.