The Career Stage Bullseye
Ever wondered what it’ll take to get you to the next level in your career? I’ve written several posts analyzing different facets of this question (links below), but today I want to talk about a diagram a manager at Microsoft drew for me at our first 1:1. I’ve used this diagram since, and it had never led me astray.
Notes:
- for brevity’s sake I will omit modifiers like “typically, generally, usually”: take those as given. As with anything else there are exceptions. My purpose here is to show a trend most engineers follow, so that you can apply this trend to your own career.
- All of these apply to the individual contributor track; management track is evaluated somewhat differently.
Junior Engineer
A junior’s focus is on mastering the technology they’re using. Their scope of impact is limited to the specific feature they’re working on, with few forays into the wider product.
As the junior becomes more comfortable with the tech and begins cranking out features, they will begin looking outwards, with promotions to…
SDE 2
An SDE 2 is expected to have product-wide scope. That means they’re working cross-discipline with PM, potentially with Support and Marketing. They’re involved in product architecture discussions…
