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.
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.
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
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.
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 goes both ways, and I would argue the spiral happens because the other side expects something above an beyond the possible.
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.
ungreased0675•2h ago
Pannoniae•40m ago
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)
nchmy•40m ago
Combined with the inner monologue stream of consciousness style, and it is certain that this article is devoid of insight
hollerith•35m ago
swiftcoder•17m ago
it's kind of rude not to capitalise people's names, regardless of ones' stylistic preferences
gradus_ad•33m ago
jolmg•26m ago
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.
layer8•26m ago
saulpw•19m ago