I did it! Manager broke the news and shared PCS (though I knew a bit earlier 🤐). My promo to Sr. SDE (L6) went through! I was fortunate to have good opportunities on green field projects and take the lead on certain initiatives. Promoted first year to L5 and two years later to L6. What helped me. 1. Enjoy programming and dive deep. Many of my peers get complacent. They only follow the sprint boards and do the bare minimum like copying a package from the repo and not understanding how the build file was setup or the imports they copied. 2. Increase your scope and help the team. I constantly volunteer for opportunities or even ask (force myself) into them. Many evenings I’ll clean up tech debt to increase the deployment velocity for my team. 3. Be the SME. Know more than the L6 on your product. Be the one who does the cross org efforts for your team. Present to architects, product, support, and everyone in between for learning sessions. 4. Always push the boundaries and twist things up to not get bored. Build an integration in Rust. Use Kotlin over Java. Set up a micro service this time with Spring just to learn the framework. Even use some newer Java features like records. Learn and integrate new cloud offerings. TC 364k 3 YoE, Age 26
If this is real, more power to you. You must be one heck of an engineer. Congratulations
It is real and I had a wonderful skip who did 7 in 7 to guide me.
L7 in 7 years you mean?
Hey don’t let the haters get in the way. Great job OP. Make sure to carve out some time/attention for your health. That really should the priority
How did you start as L4 though? Do you have a PhD
Can u mentor me? We are the same age 🥲 Congrats!
Me too
What was TC before promo?
I think I threw up in my mouth a little tbh. Not to shadow OPs accomplishments at all but having a broad spectrum of experiences ought to be a part of being an L6 as otherwise those curve balls hit hard....
Real senior is when you can find another job externally in equivalent company as a Senior. Great achievement nonetheless
Hey! Can I dm you for some guidance?
LETS FUCKING GO! 🎊🎉
Congrats!
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In today's installment of "26 year old gives life and/or career advice".
A lot of engineers believe that YoE is more important to being a Senior but if you’re passionate you can learn more in three years than the person repeating the same year ten times.
I don't mean to take away from your accomplishment, it's impressive, but to think you've got career advice to give three years in… You gotta take time to at least make some mistakes.