How to become a Sr/Staff SWE?
I’m 5 years into my career. Most recently SDE II at amazon. I still have worst imposter and Stockholm syndrome. Legit feel like a dumbass who doesn’t belong. At all. I see some of y’all here at E7 level at Meta, etc and I respect you so much. How do I get there from here? I’ve lost interest in work due to covid and fact that everything is just another CRUD app these days. Where do I rediscover the passion and drive needed for that level? Is it too late for me? I just dream of feeling competent and confident. The TC is a bonus, anything 250k+ is fine for me. I want to feel needed and capable at work.
Not true. Levels have always existed. Orgs love ranking to create hierarchies. I guess the influence of the military will never cease to exist.
F**k that. Sure if you're a corporate drone. My personal goals are to solve cool problems and write beautiful code. If I can make money doing it, even better. My mgrs can worry about the revenue and costs.
then your personal goals are not aligned with being a great employee 🤷♀️
I mean it’s a corporate job, not a place to feed your passion. The work environment sucks that out of you over time. Also those so called experts just have more experience, most of them aren’t any more capable than the rest of us. If you want to do creative work that you get to own and is appreciated, you would have to do your own thing. You are just a cog in a big company, project to project and it never stops. At least we get paid well.
You’re so right. I just wish interviews and HR would stop the broadway production. Dude, I want this job because I want the pay. I’m competent. I’ll do great work. I’ll make your life easier. Why do I need to pretend to actually care for my team or our mission etc. nah bro don’t get it twisted. I’m here for my coin. If I wanted to play politics I’d be in DC
I don’t think it’s that black and white. You could still work on interesting things and grow your career while prioritizing making money. Don’t blame the game just cuz you don’t understand the mechanics
Stockholm syndrome? Do you feel abducted at Amazon
And you like it?
Trapped in banana cage
OP: "The TC is a bonus, anything 250k+ is fine for me. I want to feel needed and capable at work." Also OP: "Why do I need to pretend to actually care for my team or our mission etc. nah bro don’t get it twisted. I’m here for my coin." How confused are you?
🤣
10+ of experience and L4 at Google :(. Unhappy but also i have a job
Switch org or companies. If you are not making any meaningful progression your org, chances are it won't happen. It is likely the leadership have already formed an entrenched opinion of you and once that happens it is extremely hard to change that, if not impossible. Get a fresh start and learn from the mistakes you made in your past org/company.
Bro how the the hell — did you recently join and got down leveled?
Senior 10, staff 20. At just five years it's way too early to be considered senior.
Me senior at 3 years 👀
Well, Synopsys
I have Amsterdam syndrome, anyone wanna switch?
I'm at six years and feel the same.
It doesn’t go away when you become sr staff. There will always be someone “smarter” than you. What I do is have a specialization. When I join a new team I pick an area with lots of problems and no one willing to work on them. People are always surprised by how little I know/care outside of this area. So I just deliver in one area for the first year or so. When I’m more comfortable I add to my plate. Keep doing that until you’re well rounded. You’ll get a promo quicker too, because you’ll drive impact more
Be strategic about what you specialize in. I followed similar advice and it set back my career by many years. I was hired on to a team primarily composed of backend engineers who were learning front end. The team produced mediocre user experiences and an abundance of tech debt. I took ownership of that space, established standards, cleaned up tech debt, and developed infrastructure that greatly improved efficiency and equality of our products. The problem is that I invested my career in becoming an expert in front end infrastructure. While that was an important part of my team, it wasn't our core mission. So a lot of my work didn't have as much visibility as feature launches. If I could go back in time, I would focus more on product launches then improving our infrastructure. Perf driven development is real. Build a s*** product, launch it into the abyss, grab your promo, and move on to the next one before that fiery ball falls back down, obliterating whatever mid-level engineers get stuck with it.
The exact similar thing happened to me and now I'm around 3-4 years behind the schedule. I guess the front end should be avoided at all costs. It's time consuming, irritating and no one finds it complex while awarding you a good rating or promo, but while doing the dirty job, everyone needs you. It killed my career at Google. I've moved elsewhere for the time being.