Reaching Senior Software Engineer in Big Tech (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, FAANG)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ก.ค. 2024
- Senior software engineer is the best role in big tech for someone who wants to program while keeping design freedom and not having to do too much leading. It's also a necessary step for becoming a principal engineer.
This video talks about the things that are expected of senior software engineers at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and so on. Based on my 30 years of being a software engineer and mentoring other software engineers, this is the best advice I can give.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
00:00 - Introduction
00:51 - Senior band at Google/Amazon/Microsoft
01:14 - Why
02:20 - How long from entry level
03:05 - Reaching senior
04:32 - What seniors do
05:56 - Making the case
07:14 - Steps to take
09:16 - Summary
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In my experience time-boxing team level contributions is even more important once you reach senior. I could easily spend hours reviewing others' code, designs, improving live site etc. Like you say, this does not contribute to my deliverables, yet this work is still part of meeting expectations. It's a delicate balance that I struggled with (and sometimes still do). Having mentors was key for me to try to figure out this balance.
Totally agree, thanks Alex!
In my experience it's been easier to get promoted by switching companies rather than trying to go through the promotion process. Although imo it's contingent on that you are actually able to demonstrate to your employer that you've already been performing at the next level.
It's been the opposite for me, at least in FAANG companies. When I move, the companies aren't willing to risk bringing you in and wasting six months of everyone's time at a level they're not convinced you'll succeed at.
It's been two years since you published this video and I'm benefiting from it in 2024. Thank you! All great advice that reinforces what I've heard from disparate sources, in one concise video.
So I asked for a video about the transition to seniority and this is really helpful for me. It looks like the best thing you can do is to push for it and proactively talk to your manager about it, which makes sense.
Glad it was helpful!
Did you have to annihilate your entire dev team to unlock SSE?!!
@@vitigaymer1053 Yes, it was a threat by the elders.
Thank you so much for this wonderful video Sir! It's really helpful. I have a strong feeling your channel will explode into one of the largest technology channels on TH-cam as your content is very detailed and point to point. Please keep it up :)
Thank you for watching and for the kind words! I will give it at least another couple months. I'll be posting my next video in the first week of January
proudly smash subscribe button. Great to be your early subcribers. Great content and help a lot.
Thanks for watching and subscribing!
Love the content! I learn a lot from all of your videos. Keep it up :D
Thank you for watching and for the encouragement!
Rich content! Thank you, sir.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
Great content.
thanks for watching and commenting!
I hope to see a YT video how a good principal engineer in action. I saw a lot of videos giving advice but what do we do with that if without a good real example?
Thank you
Welcome!
Interesting perspective and insights. Did you ever fail any of these BigTech interviews at Amazon, Google or Microsoft before acing them?
I absolutely fail interviews. I'd say my pass rate is about 50%, even going to a place I've already been.
Found a GEM!
Have you considered charging for 1-on-1 mentoring? I'm at a crossroads in my (early-stage) career and I could use advice from someone with your experience. I'm sure there are others like me.
Hi Noah - it's a great idea, but it's also a big responsibility. I'd like to keep as much freedom of my time as possible, and in the meantime, try to give advice that helps lots of people in a single stroke!
If your first SWE job isn’t in a big company does all of this still apply? When you first join a big company what level do you start at, an entry level or the level you were at in your previous job, or is it based on your specific experiences at the job?
It's a great question, but I don't have a solid answer for you.
Moving from non-faang to faang, you generally get credit for your previous work, but it's not usually 1-to-1 with the years worked. For example, I hired a fellow with 20 years of experience as a senior engineer because he would have trouble making the impact at Microsoft that he did at his previous company, and I felt like he would get slaughtered in annual reviews if hired in as a principal engineer. If he gets slaughtered, it's a big personal blow, and leads to a lot of frustrations and unhappiness for him, as well as problems for the current company.
Again, generally speaking, you'll get hired at a level where, based on what they could learn about you from the interviews, the hiring manager has high confidence you'll be successful and have a good career trajectory. The more senior you are (IMO) the longer the period at a new company before you can be 100% productive again. These days if I move to a new company, I HOPE to be contributing in a month, and I don't expect to be FULLY productive for a year or more.
@@TheDeliberateEngineer ok thanks, yeah that does make sense that experience would not be an apples-to-apples comparison when it comes to faang. As an outsider, maybe I am underestimating the kind of work that goes on in the most influential companies in the world and probably of all time lol
@@xboxer808 It's not that the programming is magically hard or different, it's that everything around that - how you design and have designs reviewed, how your code is reviewed, what tools you have to know, what is appreciated and what isn't - all that varies quite a bit from place to place, and the bigger the place, the more different things - processes etc. - they have that you have to get familiar with.
@@TheDeliberateEngineer so it sounds like you are talking about the things related to “engineering” in the general sense when you say “the things around that(programming)” if I’m not mistaken. If so that’s helpful to hear as a new SWE that studied CS in college, I do see that programming is only part of the job as a software engineer. I was initially drawn to CS to learn to program and just know how the internet works rather than engineering things, which means I currently have more programming experience than engineering experience. But I guess that will change as I get more work experience! And I guess there’s a lot of people that share my experience as well and is probably why junior positions seem to not involve designing things but rather implementing.
@@TheDeliberateEngineer Thank you for this insight ^^^ ++
Its so tough