Mid-level Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

I feel like we are saying in interviews, resume, and performance review the best practice is to include business impact numbers.

However, for lower levels (junior and mid), if impact doesn't matter, and execution is 100% of your value, shouldn't I just be focusing my resume and behavioral interview on how effective of an engineer I am and include metrics to track how good I am?

For example: I have this story that has a lot of great execution wins:

I reduced testing thrash by 90% by creating a data mapping document, scheduling and leading a sync meeting of the data mapping document with my PM, and using it to craft my unit tests.

For context there are 5 message types that can come from at least 6 different places that need to be translated, correlated, and routed properly.

This was measured by the results of the first test in staging that went through for my project.

My style is to admit mistakes when I do them and provide a list of things of what I should have done and the plan moving forward, I always blame myself and always tell others that I’ve done their mistake before and that it’s confusing and easy to fall for it. I have a teammate who when something fails due to a mistake we’ve both contributed to, they don’t like to admit their share and starts to blame others. This teammate is senior to me and they’re knowledgeable and smart but we’re humans and mistakes do happen! How can I handle this situation? Nothing is coming from my manager so far but I’m not sure how to handle the conversations with this teammate and my manager if they mention any mistakes that happened moving forward.

I'm starting an API migration project due to a licensing issue and am the primary point of contact for stakeholders.

I earned this responsibility by building a relationship with the downstream legacy team and leveraging their solution with ours, using our framework in a novel way. My manager quote said “not that you can you should own the xfn”.

This is my first time doing non-technical work. Here’s what I've done so far:

• Created a step-by-step plan and design document, captured requirements with due dates, and integrated tasks into Agile sprints.
• Maintain a living document for future technical challenges, and note taking for all steps I outlined.
• Outlined the battle plan to the po, my manager, and the senior engineer who all gave sign off.
• Plan to give updates and assist with troubleshooting for client teams.
• Set a goal to thoroughly test the solution, ensuring an adequate test suite is in place, aiming for it to work on the first try.

Questions:

• For cross-functional alignment, what steps should I take for communication and updates? We have a Slack group with all clients. If there’s a communication template that worked well for similar projects, it would be helpful.
• If there was one thing you'd challenge me to do in my execution of this project, what would it be? For context, I’m probably mid-level with an interest in learning how to grow.

I am working with AWS and I was just promoted from L4 to L5 SDE role. I am yet to have the revised compensation discussion with my manager and was thinking if it is possible to negotiate the offer. During the annual PCS conversations, it was mentioned that the managers have more leverage for salary negotiations during the promo review. I want to understand what parts of the compensation I can negotiate upon. Does anyone have experience with this?

Thanks!

So I’m the same person who asked how to compare faang experience to non faang and I’m taking the advice to develop the senior behaviors. Again the idea is let’s work on this and as the lagging indicator I’ll be ready for the e4 offer at faang, a senior promotion or the stretch e5 offer when I interview with faang companies at some point.

So I think I have a plan in mind.

For the 2 projects I’ve effectively got buy in from my manager to own end to end.

One of them is just a large volume of coding that basically gave my manager confidence I can craft lower level requirements and cross check my research on the requirements to deliver independently and hold meetings with the po and work with him to confirm my research on the production data. The other I will explain below.

His advice when I talked to him in my 1:1 after expressing the desire to learn senior skills was to effectively deliver “here’s the problem here’s the xfn, go”. But is that senior or mid level? I’d imagine this is borderline and if I’m doing this I guess execution has to be flawless. But I think the goal is to go further. I hear the key bit is having that multiplicative project under your belt and think about how to make the space better every year.

My proposed path to learn senior behaviors:

Basically I have an api migration project which involved technically complex ways of using the internals of a framework to connect to a mandatory interface for the company. I effectively figured the tech on my own and built the partnership with the senior engineer on the xfn team who I’m connecting to without my manager connecting us. It made me look good to everyone and I plan on trying to grow my scope from mid level to senior by coordinating the url switch for the clients who use it I believe there are 4 teams.

my multiplicative project in mind is to make data translation and data correlation in a streaming environment config driven so our dev work goes down by like a significant percentage. It’s a pain im seeing . I imagine there might be some complexity involved in managing this. My po mentioned that the skip wants something like this and I’m leveraging work that I seen be a huge hit at my previous company to base my execution off of. Again this is super early, so I’m just checking if my idea is good even though I get that it’s 1% of the journey since execution is the 99% that’s gonna count.

I hope this plan is gonna count, any tips to begin this journey will help.

I have a background in making innovative games for mostly entertainment. Like the startup scene of the Game Industry. I made 2 games. There if someone would duplicate someone's idea they'd get roasted by the community.

Is there something like this in the Tech Software Industry as well? Not just with Big Tech, but Tech startups in general
The adage from the Indie Game Industry that I was thought was to be as public with your idea as possible most people don't care. And I've always been.

But with the Tech Industry it seems to me like people can just copy every company and there's no rules at all. Like in the Game Industry the Big "Game" companies can't just copy your innovative game, since it's usually a thing of it's own, not necessarily solving business problems smarter/ better. And also they usually have this big triple A title that they just make new iterations of like Call of Duty 1, 2, 3 etc. Not being able to take too much risks.

But in the Tech Industry the Big "Tech" companies can copy your things and it seems like they intend to "Eat" most startups to protect their own market share. There doesn't to be much honor involved or rules that prevent this.

@Alex, @Rahul

Is there some sort of Code of Honor among Innovative Tech Software Engineers?

In my 1:1 my manager praised me for not getting upset or defensive when a senior engineer managed to convince me and my manager to change which interfaces we are to read from for the project I am working on. To be clear this is a 2 month project on a microservice with a lot of data translation requirements.

He liked that I just kept a unfazed appearance and refactored the code in 2 hours. I even shared that as a win to him :). But I’m confused why I’m getting praised. It feels like I’m getting praised for breathing. I’m a mid level engineer by self assessment so lmk if I’m not realizing some nuance here. To be clear the technical proficiency is not what I’m concerned about. I’m just more confused about what’s so important about that behavior I got praised for.

My team is a fairly distributed team, so I've setup monthly 1-on-1s with everyone to help build up relationships.

For 1-on-1s like this, what strategies do you use to build strong relationships quickly?

Most resources on 1-on-1s focus on ones with your manager. But I feel like there's a difference here.

I've been an SDE 2 at Amazon for the past 4 years, consistently exceeding expectations. However, I'm feeling burnt out, and it seems like support for my growth is lacking. I'm contemplating taking a career break, but uncertain about the current state of the industry and whether I'll find equivalent-paying jobs upon my return. What advice can you offer?

I have joined Google as L4 Full stack engineer - Frontend heavy (70% Frontend, 30% Backend). I have joined the GCP Org. I have 6+ Years of Experience and I have worked in Uber for 3.5 years as SDE 2 Frontend Engineer in past.

I am working on google primarily on Angularjs, typescript, Graphql on frontend side and java, sql on backend side. I want to make sure that i perform well and able to reach L5 within next 1-1.5 years. i.e next December cycle.

I have a fair idea from Uber point of view.

But someone who has deeper insights about what to do right and how things work at google it will be great.

Rejected for promotion based on one missing metric. Due to some conflicts, I didn't get to work on a project which would have helped me bridge the gap.

1. My manager has insisted on proposing my promotion this quarter as well. Even after not bridging the gap specified in last promotion cycle.
2. What happens if I am rejected second time? Would it affect future promotion cycles?

When I first joined the workplace, I used to push back on lots of nitpicky suggestions, just like how my suggestions were pushed back by peers who joined with me. I then switched teams and learned my lesson: to shut up and follow orders. Things were going well. Today, there's a small nitpicky suggestion that makes me feel unhappy once again. The suggestion is about a diagram. I think it's clear enough to have one diagram where newly proposed components are colored and existing components are uncolored. He thinks having separate diagrams for the existing state and the new state is clearer.

That guy looks like he's moving to a senior level, so I'm better off having a good relationship with him. He sometimes seems to be a nice guy and listens to ideas. I feel he is not that smart when it comes to coding and has difficulties understanding templates. His coding is not stellar. He is not a coding role model, but I actually learn soft skills from him.

Do I just need to accept that people are not equal in the workplace, right? It's a power struggle. Sometimes nitpicky suggestions feel like microaggressions and asserting dominance. I rarely see him make nitpicky suggestions to leadership. What's your approach to nitpicky suggestions?

Maybe the question could be split into 3 parts

1. What's the best way to deal with nit suggestions from people above you?
2. What's the best way to deal with nit suggestions from your peers?
3. What's the best way to deal with nit suggestions from people lower than you?

I've gotten some feedback from peers on my team that I should "manage up" more. So:

• What do you think "managing up" is?
• What are examples of things you do to "manage up"?

P.S. I have clarified this with the people I've gotten feedback from. But asking here to get the "taro perspective" since y'all tend to have great insights.

I passed the mid-level SWE interview at another big tech company and now in the talking to a few prospective teams and salary negotiation.

What kinds of questions can I ask to make sure I'm joining the right team. For me that would be growing into a senior engineer in the team. I also want to join an org that would be most likely to avoid a layoff.

This includes scouting for red flags too like micro-manager behavior etc.

I've identified a few project ideas and even proposed to my managers in a semi-formal context. My managers don't seem to be very interested in those projects. In general, how to get my project ideas funded?

Some of my ideas are big, some of my ideas are small. Big ones can start from a minimal bare-bone product. I guess my best bet is to propose formally and work on the side?

Hi,

I just completed Meta interview last week, no results yet.

I got a request from my recruiter now asking if anyone at Meta would give feedback on working with me. What are the expectations here? Also, why post interviews?

I'm currently drafting a design document for a high TPS service in a big tech. I'm surprised to find that this service doesn't have a framework for gradually releasing features from 0% to 100%. Instead, they solely rely on binary switches. The recommendation is that if gradual feature rollout is necessary, it should be implemented using these binary switches. Then I think, why don't I propose to implement a gradual rollout framework for the service?

After looking into the existing binary switch configuration, I am surprised to find numerous switches already in place. Features are launched without gradual rollout, yet the service runs fine. Most features try to reduce blast ratio by going through stages like a few customers, a group of customers, regional customers, worldwide customers. Is gradual dial up framework a required feature of a good production system?

What sort of documentations should we have for our 1 on 1s? Is there a video on having a 1 on 1 doc?

My previous manager at Workday told me to discuss
Wins, What I am focusing on, Blockers, Personal Development, Action steps

and created a shared google doc for us, but it seemed kind of status-reporty. Is there another recommended format for our 1 on 1?

I've two engineers who report to me, and both are average and one is towards PiP. The problem is they don't listen easily get influenced by other engineers and frequently change what I've asked them to do.
I'm now angry because the pile of feature requests are piling on me, I tend to do some work for them but this really not at all productive for my career, like managing, I rather behave like an IC altogether, because I want to learn and do my own stuff instead of getting caught in these bad situations that makes me angry.

What is the right way to handle these stuff from leadership point of view? How much involvement should I have?

I'm currently equivalent of Google L4 in my org but I want to move towards L5

My first team didn't work out for me. I was there for less than a year and got the poorest rating, was set up for a PIP. Somehow I made a transfer at the last moment and survived. Certainly, it was the most difficult phase of my life & I am quite grateful to my new team. Now, I'm already in the new team for less than a year and got an average rating last time. The rating was partially influenced by previous manager as I spent almost half of my time there.

Currently working on multiple projects at the same time and grabbing almost whatever task is offered and somewhat gained trust I believe. But the quality of those tasks are not too much complex rather modular & takes more time. I can keep on doing this way but not sure what is the right thing to do. The team is relatively new. Recently started a promo discussion humbly and not pushing it. Manager's review is I'm operating at L3.6 now.

Now,

• What might be the mental model to forget the past?
• Sticking around for almost two years now, what might be the correct time & way to reach Next Level?

I am currently learning Machine Learning and AI as they are essential for my ongoing project.

I've found these topics particularly challenging to master on my own due to their heavy reliance on mathematics—or at least that's how it seems to me with machine learning.

Moreover, I tend to study thoroughly, aiming to understand everything from the basics to advanced concepts before I attempt to develop practical software applications.

Could you share any strategies or advice on how to effectively learn and apply new technical knowledge in project settings?

It might be a very broad question, but how can I be better at writing design docs? At my current stage, I can get parachuted into a new package, implement a feature and fix some random things on my way out, but I struggle to write design docs. For context, people in my org really drill into the design docs and most of the questions are not really relevant. ~40 people would leave comments on a doc on average, which seems on the higher end across the industry, right?

My struggles with design docs are mostly,

1. Difficult to start working on it because I don't really like writing essays
2. Analysis paralysis that I want to have it perfect, but it's just not possible due to all kinds of observability issues (e.g. missing log fields)
3. It's unclear what the project is about so it requires lots of discussion, which takes initiation / social energy
4. Maybe some PTSD for just working with people and trying not to lose my patience

The solution to my struggles might be easy - like just get started and don't try to be perfect. Treat the design doc as a discussion instead of a one-shot event. What's your approach to design docs?

On a higher level, I can utilize my strength in coding and try avoid design docs, or I can improve on writing design docs. Which option do you think is best?

Hi Alex/Rahul!

I know y'all have mentioned DSA is somewhat of a parasitic activity, so do you recommend creating side projects to level-up after work / studying system design instead of DSA? I am asking in case I get let go again or if I am looking for a new position after this one. I basically want to future-proof myself.

Also, how do I excel in my current position as a mid-level web developer, while having these things in mind? Thanks in advance!