Quite recently I've shared my personal interpretation of "seniority" in tech (based on the concept of "leverage" - shamelessly stolen from Andy Grove ...). This term ("seniority") is frequently closely associated (as an enabler) to the role of an "architect" - which is another topic I use to share my thoughts about from time to time. So far I've been depicting an architect as: a navigatora technical product ownera person accountable for 1 of 3 pillars in the concept of "triumvirate of power"But there's one more personal lesson about what does it mean to be an architect that I find…
All posts in career development
Let's talk about "seniority" - but not in the usual way, in a context of career progression. I'm more interested in speaking about the "seniority" itself, regardless of specialty/path chosen, compensation, labels & position names. It's the kind of discussion that revolves around the following questions: what makes senior "senior"?how to measure/compare "seniority"?does seniority have boundaries? (what is the ceiling, how to recognize it and ... what happens when you reach it?)Answering these questions ain't trivial & every organization does it its way (or pretends the problem doesn't exist ...). I have my ways as well: dimensions,…
This blog post is all about: ruling time out of the equation (because it's very deceptive), what happens when Purpose meets Social Contract, what does Autonomy really mean (and why freedom is a minor part of it), whether 50h is better than 40h (or you simply need to go beyond 60h ...), why over-time has nothing in common with seniority and how do all these things correspond to Engineering Culture.Part I of the series can be found here. Where were we? Just about to get into the details of what constitutes a work environment of high achieving where teams truly…
This blog post is all about: what Jack Ma has in common with Elon Musk, whether we always condemn people who sacrifice personal balance to pull over-time (in fact we ... don't), is "up-or-out" culture unfair, how does Cristiano Ronaldo differ from a creator of next-generation Internet start-up ...Some topics seem to be very sensitive in our (Software Engineering) community: female engineers & diversity, crazed job market & salary bubble, hype-train proneness, ... The issue of crunch does belong to this category undoubtedly. Widely condemned, actively opposed by Agile approach to building software (good!), still omni-present in gamedev, but apparently reduced by…
This blog post is all about: "divide & conquer" rule's applicability for compensation considerations :), why getting down to individual skills is a waste of time, what's the point of rewarding loyalty, how to incentivize people so they specialize, what to do with project heroes (& their reward expectations) and why you should read the forthcoming posts in the series :)Part I of the series can be found here. Let's summarize how far did we get until now: one can't always determine directly how much (tangible) value an individual brings, so as human beings are poor in absolute evaluations, it's probably…
This blog post is all about: why salaries are so tricky in software engineering, an evolution in approaching the topic of promoting/compensating people, why market evaluation can't be relied upon, what are 2 best ways to evaluate how much you're worth, are people always comparable?Salaries in Software Engineering have always been a tricky topic. Because of several things: industry evolving so fast, companies being so different & position naming so inconsistent, experience & proficiency not possible to "deduce" directly out of tenure and at last but not least - huge disproportion between demand & supply on the job…
This blog post is all about: that Ninja doesn't differ from Rockstar, why Fullstack != Versatile, is switching tech stacks a failure, what does the tech swap's success depend on, why bother re-specializing if job market is a paradise for any tech, how learning Elixir changed my C#-fu.When browsing programming job offers you're getting attacked by very different position descriptions: nouns that depict position vary: Engineer, Software Engineer, Programmer, Developer, Ninja, Rockstar, ... :)seniority adjectives vary: junior, mid, regular, aspiring, senior, lead, leader, principal, ...the only part that remains the same (& always appears) is the name of the technologyApparently…
This blog post is all about why you don't keep your best code in a drawer :), what does it mean to discount your work, why sometimes you have to be a bit "selfish" (and that it's not against the teamplay), that you're both brand and product, there's no excuse for staying shy (and not doing anything about it) and that even if the job market situation doesn't require it (now), you should think more long-term when it comes to "selling" out yourself.Disclaimer: potentially surprisingly - this IS a blog post for software engineering professionals of all levels & positions,…