Advice From a Software Engineer With 8 Years of Experience
Hello, and welcome!
My name is Benoit. I have been a software engineer for the past eight and a half years. I stayed at my previous (and first) company for seven and a half years, then I joined a new one in early 2022.
This article comes from a recent self-reflection on the things I wish I had started doing earlier in my career and the things I wish I had done differently.
What I am sharing here may be useful to any junior to mid-level developer who wishes to improve and progress toward the title of senior and beyond.
Table of Contents
My Career Evolution
Things I Wish I Had Started Doing Earlier:
Write a Work Log
Leave the Comfort Zone
Be Curious About Other Teams and Projects
Join the On-call Team
Change Teams
Write Blog Posts
Things I Wish I Had Done Differently:
Be Careful When Introducing New Things to the Team
Do Not Let Your Emotions Take Over in Front of the Team
Dip a Foot Into the Hiring Market
End Thoughts
My Career Evolution
Before diving into the main subject, here is my career evolution:
I interned for three months at a startup (which quickly became a scale- up) company.
After that, I did a full year of work-study, spending three months at school and nine months at work.
Then, I got hired as a full-time software engineer and kept this title for three and a half years.
Quickly after the introduction of the tech career ladder, I got promoted to senior software engineer. I kept this title for three years until I left the company, at which point the tech teams accounted for approximately 200 people.
I joined as a software engineer 2 at a company with thousands of tech employees. Despite the title downgrade at the second company (see Big Tech Hiring is Conservative - But Why?), I have been trying to keep the same responsibilities (and more) as before.
In the beginning, I was part of the frontend team. The tech organisation was split between backend and frontend developers. At that time, we were no more than 30 engineers. When our new CTO arrived a year later, he introduced an organisation based on feature teams: the Spotify Model. Although there was some friction at the start (people don't like change), this reorganisation definitely turned out to be for the better.
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I stayed for more than five years in the same feature team. I was there at its inception, so throughout the years, I became the tech referent of the project. Eventually, I joined another team, where I worked until I left for a whole new adventure a year later.
All right, enough with the context. I hope you'll enjoy reading the rest, and that the following advice will be actionable for your career progression!
Things I Wish I Had Started Doing Earlier
A work log is a document that contains the list of tasks you accomplished. The granularity and the type of tasks don't matter, as long as you keep track of what you did.
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You can fill in this document at the frequency you want. I would advise doing that on a weekly basis. Tasks done during the week are still fresh on Friday, so you won't struggle writing them down.
Why is this work log important? For the following two reasons:
• To remind yourself of all the things you have done over the past 6 to 12 months. This is very valuable during performance reviews, so you can show your manager what you have accomplished and why you deserve that raise or promotion.
To keep track of projects, notable responsibilities, and critical numbers (e.g., decreased latency by X% for a critical service) that you had over your career. This is great for completing your resume, whenever you want to venture into the waters of the hiring market.
I started writing a work log roughly two years before leaving my first company. So, over the past eight and a half years, my work log contains only three years of data (with some gaps here and there). When I had to write my resume in late 2021, I had to rely on my memory to remember what I did during the first five years of my career. To say the least, it took me some time to remember everything valuable, and I'm sure I forgot some of them.
You can use a work log template if you want to (here is an example). Personally, I have been using Microsoft Notes for the first two years, then I switched to a Google Doc with bullet points (one list for each month of the year).
We will see in the next lesson.