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Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#31

Post by seldo »

toast76 wrote: post #17

It's like reading an Ask HN from me. You sound like me about 3.5 years ago. I was in the same situation, dev lead for 10 years. Bored. But I hated shuffling papers more than I hated being a drone...even if I was a senior drone. What you need to do is start your own Startup. What you're lacking in experience is only a problem if you need to actually manage people. You must likely have plenty of experience actually run…

This was absolutely my solution to the same problem.

I'd been a solid dev for 10 years and the closest I'd come was being an unofficial team lead a couple of times. I found it hard, in a big company, to work on raising my profile without feeling like I was taking credit for other people's work. Sadly, it's hard to get recognized as being a "leader" if you are scrupulous about acknowledging the efforts of your team -- even if your team-mates recognize your leadership role, nobody asks them.

I'm also, frankly, an insubordinate bastard -- I always get along really well with my immediate manager and co-workers, but upper management tends not to like me because I poke fun. So it's easy to see why nobody was running to promote me, and I can't say I really blamed them.

So I jumped at the chance to be tech lead and co-founder of awe.sm. Now I have my own team, and I am getting to prove my leadership credentials first-hand. I'll let others decide how well that's going ;-)

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#33

Post by crenelle »

Folks who go beyond Sr. Engineer are very much into putting their ducks in a row -- with extreme prejudice. They become CTO, Consultant, Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Fellow, Startup Partner. That person initiates projects, begins the R&D, writes the proposal, estimates the budget, create slides and do presentations, evangelizes the ideas. You sometimes orchestrate prototype development if you don't get to put one together yourself. If necessary you take the idea and build a company around it.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#34

Post by yesno »

mikeryan wrote: post #11
throwaway_boy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind a manager is not necessarily a leader or the leader. And certainly not a technical leader. Agreed though that a director/CTO is more of a management position, but I've seen coding CTO's, especially in the startup world. I don't know what I want career-wise, vertically speaking, and that would be proprietary to every employer anyway. What I'm getting at is that I feel like I should be able to contribute mor…

I've pretty much only seen coding CTOs in the startup world (or small Go start a company if you want to grow. You sound skilled. Quit your job, start consulting and start a product on the side as a technical founder.

Here, let me give more "less painful" advise:

1) Don't quit your job, start consulting on the side

2) Don't quit your job, start a product on the side

Both options won't cut paycheck. Take calculated risk. OP is no longer a 24 years old super smart developer.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#35

Post by sokoloff »

Musashi wrote: post #26

1. Most HR departments use "Senior Software Engineer" as a catch-all title for techies. Irrespective of the title that work gives you; you should name yourself as an Architect or Technical Lead or Consultant, or all of the above for the various roles that you've done (any other role that you can back up with from your experience and skills). So long as you've been doing that work there is no harm in that. Your skills…

While I agree in theory with #1 & #2, there's a very real element of danger there. Many places will only provide a reference for start date, end date and title/position.

If you self-grant and put "Lead Architect" on your resume and your reference check comes back with "No, that wasn't his title. His title the whole time was Senior SWE.", how's that going to look?

If you want to choose your own title, and you've been doing good work for your current company, propose a new title/role for yourself.

To the OP: if you want to find ways to have a bigger influence, but you don't want any stink of management to get on your hands, you may have a long road ahead. While you don't necessarily need to formally lead (and review, set comp, etc) as a career manager, you're probably going to have to do things that look a lot like management of one form or another: technical, project, career/people, or a mix. It's hard to have a significantly larger impact without doing something beyond individual contributor work.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#36

Post by joshhart »

Some companies have technical positions beyond Senior Engineer.

LinkedIn goes up the technical chain like so: 1. Software Engineer 2. Senior Software Engineer 3. Principal Software Engineer 4. Software Architect

All of our architects still code, I believe. Some quite a bit. There are also Engineering Managers, Directors, and Senior Directors, but this is going the management route. Most engineering managers here code a bit, and a few directors still code (or at least script useful queries for helping diagnose issues when working cross team)

I think it all relies on stepping up to the plate, either technically or managerially.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#37

Post by Goladus »

mikeryan wrote: post #5

So there's a slight cognitive dissonance here. Outside of an architect role - the only real way up is taking on more management tasks. A lot of larger companies are seeing this as an issue so they are adding gradients to what a SSE is (SSE 1, SSE 2 etc) but really the answer is you're going to have to move up via a team leadership role and this means more management and less engineering.

A think it depends on what you mean by "management task." If you take the initiative to drive a really valuable project, can assume a leadership role while ignoring a lot of the tasks the company typically assigns to a manager, like performance reviews and meetings and ticket/bug metrics and timesheets and project plans and timelines and deadlines and fielding every request that comes your group's way.

Meanwhile a good leader will drive and inspire the team by making and pushing excellent design decisions, obtaining needed resources, doing the oxen's share of grunt work to get the project off the ground, and energetic mentoring of other developers.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#38

Post by brc »

throwaway_boy wrote: post #14
apike wrote: post #4

In an organization that doesn't have a defined career path for engineers (which is to say, most organizations), you need to take responsibility for yourself if you want it. If you're on a team of engineers and nobody is leading, then step up. Help newer engineers learn skills, help interview people, help run meetings, and instigate new projects. Cook up a new product or feature, and champion it. If it goes well, you'…

You're right that more initiative will be required of me. In hindsight there were times when there was a vacuum and I could have done something (ultimately the vacuum always stayed there; noone stepped up as it would happen.) Lesson learned. Right now my company is extremely small and utterly flat (it's basically C O's and non-C O's), so there's no room to lead anything. This is really more about whatever I do next.

That terminology sounds almost military. Is that in your past? Because you'll have to throw out the services mindset where there is both a structured path upwards and a structured chain of command. Those things are great for organising massive amounts of people towards difficult goals, but that's not necessarily the right fit for software development.

To me most of the boxing in is done in your own mind. In my last corporate job I was a team lead who never touched the code. I was supposed to go though my manager for stuff, but he was the problem. I learnt to go straight to the CEO - most of the time the 'open door policy' isn't just lip service.

Many people face the problem in their careers that they think there is a stuctured hierarchy where you can't jump levels for problem solving, initiative or anything like that. So do stuff like that. Your job is really to make the company run as well as possible, whether that is coding or leading changes that need to be made. Staying in your box really means staying in a box that someone else has designed for you, and being successful means spreading your influence by whatever means. Just don't be an a-hole and treat everyone with respect, even those who disagree with you.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#39

Post by lubujackson »

First of all, forget titles. There's really a mush of random titles near the top now, and they can mean COMPLETELY different things depending on the company. Think about your job on a personal level. What skills do you want to refine? What skills do you want to learn? What skill do you want to flex every day?

I don't think that minimal experience managing will completely ground you, but if you want to be a CTO, start to think like one and learn the things that CTOs have to know. You can always start at a young company and grow into a role if you pursue it. Good, young companies like to hire hungry people who want to grow into their roles. You might also get advice from some good headhunters, who see people in your position all the time.

Re: Ask HN: How do I crawl out of the "Senior Engineer" hole?

#40

Post by mikeryan »

yesno wrote: post #34
mikeryan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've pretty much only seen coding CTOs in the startup world (or small Go start a company if you want to grow. You sound skilled. Quit your job, start consulting and start a product on the side as a technical founder.

Here, let me give more "less painful" advise: 1) Don't quit your job, start consulting on the side 2) Don't quit your job, start a product on the side Both options won't cut paycheck. Take calculated risk. OP is no longer a 24 years old super smart developer.

So I can't speak to his particular situation. But in general I disagree with this. I think quitting the job is the most important part. Consulting is the safety.

"Leap and the net will appear" - John Burroughs

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