Presently Senior Architect, previously Engineering Manager, 18+ yoe in software engg. AMA

The feeling is mutual among peers. It does look like we score better than our peers & seniors. But that’s not how career progression is gauged. There are many more factors, some of which aren’t under our control. Keep working hard on things that are in your control. Develop personal interest in coding, take good things to work. Implement a POC and then speak. Build tools for productively that nobody would expect. Solve a problem that nobody else could solve for a very long time. Do this silently beyond your work time. Keep giving pleasant surprises. Career growth will just be a by-product of all these.

Why do you want to fast track your career? If you’re at one of the right places then you’re earning 50+ lpa as sde 2 and should get close to 1cr once you get promoted…. Why the hurry? There’s more to life

I guess you are spoilt for choice & you might be in a state of limbo. Gaining experience on various roles always helps. But that solely depends on how you polish your traits over time justifying the roles & responsibility. It’s between ‘jack of all trades master of none’ vs ‘master of one’. Both carry equal value. At the outset, EM role might look like something exciting, but there’s some chance that you’d realize this is more than what you thought before assuming the role. In my personal experience, I was probably a good EM but I always wanted to get back to coding because that’s what I enjoyed more. But that doesn’t stop me from mentoring people. I still keep mentoring people and love discussing tech, soft skills, gossip, trends & stuff. It’s not a necessity to assume an EM role just to inspire people.

With 18YOE how much is your TC. How about your health ? Eyesight etc ?

What I imagine is this would be analogous to changing from a QA role to Dev role. Changing to SDM role would require you to get acquainted with technologies of software development. Your knowledge about managing Automation suite would carry forward. But you must be well versed with different tech stacks & their application for building different solutions. You must also gain knowledge about dev ops & release.

Right. Yeah i am trying to learn these things on my own(outside of work) but the transition should be possible right? I dont have to go back the sde -> sde2 route to get there

I love to criticize. I love to ask tough questions about software engineering. The reason: I love software engineering. Intending to fight bad within the system to make something good is not a split personality. But unfortunately, the dynamics of society is such that people simply make judgements about someone just based on one single opinion. I don’t give a damn because bad actors exist everywhere.

You said in your previous post that even 12 year olds can make software at high scale. You're either a troll or just trying to seek attention. Constructive criticism and bashing are two different things.

As long as people shower me love ❤️(and comments like these).

Till he gets some atta boys.

Why not? I’d think little differently here. If you want to scale your software application which in your case is a mobile app, try to decouple the functionality that doesn’t use native features. One way to do this is implementing an embedded web view & bringing up a web page to realize your feature offerings.

Here’s my theory about a software engineer. A mediocre engineer focuses on writing code. A good engineer focuses on producing output. A superior engineer focuses on producing the output in a best possible way. A great engineer focuses on over and above producing the output in a best way. I can keep on writing quotes like these but the point I want to insist is cultivate design mindset, ask questions to understand the e2e flow, work on finding holistic solutions rather than point fix, think about scale, load, performance even when you write your first line of code.

Thanks. Insightful. A handful of your personal evaluations/ experiences/ examples would really help us all.

If I understand correctly, either someone is not giving you the work you wish for or you are waiting for someone to give an exciting work. Realistically, what you can do is find out problem statements even within your maintenance / enhancement job. If that job is already a boring one, who’s stopping you to make the same job interesting? Start building smart tools that can perform this maintenance job better. Start building tools for productivity that can assist you in this maintenance job. Make maximum utilization of your free time to carry this out. Don’t wait until someone comes & tells you. Showcase these tools and take them to next level. This way people would see your unique & smart ability to solve problems.

I believe, there’s some inner urge in you that’s telling you to aspire for Engineering Manager role. Ask yourself why you want to become EM from a pure tech IC role. On one hand, I’d say EM might seem like a thankless job. On the other hand, EM job can be best justified if you get a knack of taking tech initiatives. In my opinion, EM job is all about building a sound tech culture, cost optimization, resource utilization, streamlining the flow of requirements, building synergies between cross functional teams and of course project management. An EM must commit to build high performing solutions by building high performing teams. Now with your frontend & backend coding experience, ask yourself if you can venture into all these skillsets & justify your EM role. Take up what your heart says because that’s what will decide your future.

One big thing about EM or any management position is the lack of instant gratification - you don’t really build anything at the end of the day; you manage people/projects and help others build things. Because of this it can end up feeling like a thankless role even though it’s important. It’s not for everyone tbh; only get into it if you’re okay with not achieving anything on a daily basis& instead focusing on the long&broad picture

9 months experience is a little too less to assume a Lead SDE role. But more than getting overwhelmed by the new role, start focusing on adopting best practices, one at a time. You can’t change your working ways overnight just to justify your new role. It still needs time. It’s a process. Start cultivating design mindset. Don’t jump into coding when a requirement is given. Understanding the e2e use cases, deliberation on design, identifying the entities, defining the data flow, sequence of communication between systems, performance considerations are some of the key points to build a complex software application that can scale. Embracing challenges is important. But confront them one at a time.

Aww, that’s a warm compliment to receive on this platform. Thank you. Let me take the liberty to narrate my story that led me to enjoy writing the way I do. - I rarely read books. - I hardly watch English movies. - I did not go to a convent school. I went to an ordinary school where English teachers themselves used to make mistakes & carry vernacular slang. - It was during my college years when I participated in a caption contest that sparked my interest and motivated me to write more. - My contribution was limited to writing articles for college newsletters. - But that’s how I picked up the knack of sentence construction and started working on my English skills. - There was no looking back since then. - I regularly read newspaper articles and that’s the only source of my vocabulary. - I regularly write tech articles / philosophy but keep all of them private. I reveal them only during training sessions or mentoring sessions. - I’m at my creative best when in anonymity. - All my social media accounts lie inactive. - An app like Grapevine is a blessing to me. PS: I feel I’m still not perfect.

@Coolgoose ^

I like your honesty that made you realize your need to polish your tech skills. Read on some other answers in this thread where I have given some insights on becoming better in software engineering, and you’ll know that sense of fulfillment has no match.