Senior Mindset

Are you the engineer who scoffs at high salary numbers?

Engineering compensation falls into groups so different that neither group even realizes the others exist. And they fight about it.

Why experts charge more

Ever noticed how an expert's job isn't that different from an apprentice's? Yet they can charge way more 🤔

How to give and receive feedback

Feedback can save an airplane from crashing, or upset everyone around you. But for you personally, honest feedback is the fastest way to become a better engineer. Fixing what you're bad at is where the gains hide.

Be their shit umbrella

because if you go to bat for the team, the team goes to bat for you

Quick tip for system design interviews

What are system design interviews for anyway?

What is the goal of engineering?

How can you know you're succeeding if you don't know where you're going?

Try to work for a brand

Brand helps your career in subtle ways.

The quickest way to fail a tech interview

No it's not a wrong answer or floundering with algorithms. Not even being nervous or shy or having a language barrier. Culture fit is the least of your worries if you make this mistake.

What to do when bugs are whack-a-mole

What do you do when every bug you fix creates 5 new bugs? You could laugh and move on, or realize it's a sign of bigger issues

A mental framework that helps you code faster

What slows you down the most when you're coding or doing software engineering? I think it's how fast you make decisions

When it’s okay to work overtime

Not all overtime is bad overtime

Small choices can wreck your codebase

wanna see the strangest looping construct I've found in production code?

What to expect in senior level interviews

Interviews are terrible. Stressful, time-intensive, loosely correlated with on the job performance. They're the least terrible way we have to hire.

Getting from junior to senior

The difference in salary between a junior and senior engineer can be orders of magnitude. Many multiples at least. But what's the difference in mindset that gets you there?

How defensive coding leads to bloat

Defensive coding is an important lesson and over time and engineers it leads to massive bloat, if you're not careful.

Your job as an engineer is to make yourself unnecessary

What's more productive, a team or a talented soloist?

Engineers *hate it* when you say it doesn't matter how good they are because a team will outcode them any day. But it's true, you can't build something big on your own.

Meetings – a senior engineer's secret weapon

Boo meetings, yay code, right? There comes a time in your career when coding is no longer your highest impact contribution. Might even be holding you back. 🙊

How to rewrite your app while growing to a $100,000,000 series B

When you're in a company desperately trying to meet demand, *ship*. You'll have money, time, and professionals to fix code later. Even if you start with jQuery.

A great engineer knows their tools

Earlier in my career when I thought I was god's gift to engineering but wasn't, I failed one of those stupid interview questions that "have nothing to do with the work". It was a great question.

How to ask for help

what makes a senior engineer stand out in an interview? No it's not the amount of side projects or their leetcoding speed. It's knowing how and when to ask for help.

Reader question: "When do you fix tech debt?"

Long time reader Phil asks when do you fix the tech debt you used to ship faster. Heroic efforts don't work. The real answer is "always" – a mindset of gardening.

Tech debt is a tool

If your house was on fire, would you mow the lawn first?

Pay yourself first

Profit is not what's left after expenses, expenses are what's left after profit.

What I learned from Software Engineering at Google

When I first picked up Software Engineering at Google I thought it was another one of those FAANG books full of lessons that make no sense at human scale. I was surprised, lessons apply to teams as small as 5.

Your career needs a vision

In his book, The Art of Science and Engineering, Richard Hamming says the key to a great career is vision. What does that really look like?

Why a coding AI like Github Copilot won't take your job

It might. What's your job? If you're in the *"write code to exact specifications"* business ... now's a good time to start leveling up. The AI's not ready yet.

How to own projects like a senior engineer

The best skill you can learn is ownership. The second best is to let go.

Do important work

Next time you finish a project, ask yourself: *"Might this work be important?"*. Add the polish.

Why you need a positioning statement

High value experts use positioning statements to say what they do for whom. Most engineers don't have one. 🤨