How to level up to Senior Engineer

Scott Persinger — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 04:10:01 +0000

Charity Majors had a great thread today with tips for leveling up to Senior Engineer.

Here is her #1 tip in my view: Focus on impact.

What does this mean exactly? "Impact" is a measure of how your technical work demonstrably impacted the business. Did you ship a feature that was adopted by large N number of users? Did you fix performance so that ALL users felt the improvement? Did you improve a system so that it does the same work for a fraction of the $$? Did you solve a hard problem impacting a high value customer?

All of these things share the quality of solving a difficult engineering challenge that lead directly to an improvement in the business. These factors multiply, so the highest impact projects are often ones that balance some level of technical difficulty with high customer value.

So if you are trying to level up to senior engineer, ask yourself these questions:

Am I solving hard problems, or just knocking out a lot of tickets?
What is the obvious customer value of the problems I am solving? Have I talked to my manager or PM to understand that value?
Am I curating my time and effort to focus on 1 and 2? Or am I spending lots of time on other (generally important, but probably not AS important) activities?

More tips

After you focus on impact, there are lots of other still-important factors in getting to senior. Some just off the top of my head:

Work to understand most of the key technical parts of the system you are working on, even those outside your immediate area.
Work to earn the respect of other senior engineers, by writing quality code, learning from PR comments, and engaging in design discussions.
Help your manager do her job by helping with task estimation, prioritization, and project tracking.

How to make your resume stand-out in the crowd

Scott Persinger — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 14:48:03 +0000

A big part of my job is recruiting and evaluating great software engineers. Besides just having "worked at Google!" on your resume, there are some key ways to help you stand out:

1. Add plenty of job details

It's amazing to me how many LinkedIn profiles show nothing but a list of jobs and job titles. The best job descriptions tell me a) why you joined the company, b) what you shipped when you were there, c) what technologies you used, and d) what metrics you moved.

2. Tell me what gets you up in the morning

The cover letter or LinkedIn bio is a great place to describe what really motivates you in your work. Are you engaged by certain hard technical problems? Do you like solving problems for people? Are you motivated by the system scale at large companies or by the individual impact you can have at smaller ones?

3. Highlight your side projects

If you have worked on open source or side projects, make sure to highlight those. Helping me understand what kind of thing you will work on for free is a great way to help me understand what you're really interested in.

4. Tell a story

What I am really looking for as I read your resume is to understand your journey as a developer. Did you get started in school or learning on your own? Has each job demonstrated increasing technical complexity and responsibility? Have you focused on shipping products to real users (internal or external), not just worked with the latest flashy tech? The more I understand your story the better I can tell if you fit for the job I am filling.

If anyone is interested in a quick "resume review" please feel free to reach out. I'll be more than happy to take a look.