Software Engineering Career Overview

1. Junior Mid Senior
Entry or
Associate
Manager
Tech
Lead
Staff
Manager Senior
Manager
Senior
Staff

2. Senior
Manager
Senior
Staff
Head of
Engineering
Principal
….
….
AVP, VP,
SVP, EVP
Distinguished
Fellow
Architect
CTO CEO

3. Junior
Mid
Senior
Staff+

5. Junior
● 0-2 years of experience
● Now: execute task
● Next: execute project
Interesting tips
● Some of you folks might be top rank and
you never fail. Always rank 1. Whatever.
In software engineering you will fail. Don’t
try to avoid failure. Try to learn, respond,
adapt
● The goal is not to not make mistake.
Sometimes we even want to intentionally
make those mistakes. The goal is to keep
learning
Speedrun to promotion
● Be forward about expectation. Ask
manager for promotion, on day 0
● Optimize dev speed. Hit at least 300 PR
per half (ideally that means 300 releases
as well)
● Ship as many project as possible

6. Mid
● 2-5 years of experience
● Now: execute project
● Next: execute product
Interesting tips
● Build social capital. You’ll need to spend it
on project that matters
● How to build social capital: help projects
outside of your scope. Mid level is the
level where you might need to work the
hardest
Speedrun to promotion
● Find senior scope as soon as possible. Talk with
your manager
● Start learning on team leadership, coaching,
mentoring, influence
● Start reporting result, not action
● Support, mentor, sponsor your team members
(peer, tech lead or junirs)
a. Lead meeting
b. Take note of meeting. Build MoM. Build action items

7. Senior
● 5+ years of experience
● Now: execute product
● Next: execute opportunities
Interesting tips
● Work will pile up. This is where you need
to have a good sense of impact.
● Start shifting your mindset: judge yourself
not how good you are. Judge yourself by
what you choose to do. Your batting ratio
need to be high
Speedrun to promotion
● Find staff area as soon as possible. Talk
with your manager, peer, director,
manager’s manager, VP, other org tech lead
● Learn how to create scope and identify
opportunities
● Focus on team leadership, coaching,
mentoring, influence. Teach people to report
result

8. Staff+
● 10+ years of experience
● Now: execute opportunities
● Next: Bigger opportunities, bigger scope
Interesting tips
● Sometime you need to let your team fail
so they can learn. You need to be there to
catch them
● Typically you won’t need to be hands on
as much (in fact it’s counterproductive)
● Surprisingly one of the reason you still
need to be hands on is because it’s one
tool to build social capital
Speedrun to promotion
● Network well with director, manager’s
manager, VP, other org tech lead, industry
practitioner
● Create bigger scope or aggregate multiple
scopes
● Focus on team leadership, coaching,
mentoring, influence. Teach people to
smell, create and identify scope

9. Staff+ Archetype (1/2)
PM Hybrid Generalist Specialist

10. Staff+ Archetype (2/2)
Coding
Machine
Fixer

11. Staff+ Spots Are Limited

18. Grow your income
https://twitter.com/lwastuargo/status/1695751294907294010

19. Personal opinion
about career in tech

20. Title, Scope, Compensation, and Skill
are not necessarily correlated

21. Promotion is Lagging

22. Promotion != Good Performance

23. OKR != Career Growth Plan
Career Growth Plan != Personal Growth Plan

24. If you’re optimizing for money
● It’s all supply and demand
○ If you’re in the top 10%, you’re can get salary 90% below
○ Be really good, better than everyone else, and show it
○ Be the low-supply for high-paying demand (sometimes this is a gamble tho)
● Trimodal nature of tech salary
○ Multinational company pays better
● Being a manager still pays the most
○ But being an IC (Individual Contributor) provide “safety”
○ Safer from layoff
○ There’s more demand

25. Personal future prediction
● Data Analyst and QA are dead end job
● If you’re ambitious, think about what it takes to become a CTO
○ It’s usually BE or full-stack
○ CTO, in my view, still seen as cost center and not profit center
○ Cost center in tech? Infra, tools and salary
○ Work in area where you can handle them
○ Either in devops, platform team, or engineering manager
● Junior position will get harder as AI get used and replace menial work. But
company will still need senior engineers. This means only big co or unnamed
company want to hire junior
● The most valuable skill later is problem solving, skill to learn new things, and
fundamentals