Huge props to all the engineers here for sharing their insights. It's so easy to stay in your corporate bubble, but hearing perspectives from top engineers can be so insightful. If you ever get to work with these folks, please thank them!

Apart from a junior developer, which is worries about acquiring the proper skills, ALL others mentioned teamwork. It's all about TEAMWORK. You won't get far without building relationships.

When you said "solo carry" a lightbulb went off in my head and the more I think about it, the more broadly it seems to apply.

I like the progression how going from lower levels leans technical changes to higher levels emphasizing soft skills.

Very informative interview format and idea. Pretty cool to see how the thought process and objectives change at each level. Thanks for sharing this!

This video is really valuable. I’m not a software engineer but the themes mentioned highly apply to marketing as well - high-impact value, critical analysis, and effective collaboration.

Appreciate the summaries at the end of the interviews. Really helps wrap what the interviewers are trying to say in a concise and meaningful way

I really like the way you structured this video, and in particular, I liked the insights that you gave as the narrator. Usually when the narrator puts the camera back on themselves, they just give fluff, but your insights condensed the knowledge others gave and took it to the next level.

Saved the video. Best content I've seen in the past month by FAR!!! Before someone laughs at my comment here, take a look at the observations that Rahul pointed out about the principal and staff engineers -- they've been there for a long time contributing on the business side also. In a hyper-growth period in their respective companies... I would never have guessed that. I thought that job hopping was the solution to get there (many people suggest it), but I was obviously **wrong**...

Absolutely profound. This video points a classic mistake I've been making all these years i.e job hopping. I had always been terrified of staying in the same company for a long time but you showed me the value of it. Thank you.

Spot on advice. Everything said here really resonates with me. As you move up, understanding the business, making impact, and leveling up others and setting good practices and culture are what really separates the staff and above to all other engineers.

I'm grateful, Rahul! Hearing from so many seasoned engineers was really informative. Hoping to see more of it.

I’m not an engineer but a lot of these skills are relatable even for me as a staff ux trying too push forward. Great content!

Great format! It'd be great to see a similar video with engineers just promoted to L+1, telling us what are the main things that contributed to that promotion and things they would have done differently (eg, what things delayed their promotions, etc.)

This was a really great video for me as an engineer, seeing different senior engineers talk about the work and impact they have had boost my spirits and is really grounding. Thanks for this, great content.

Very good analysis at the end. There were good nuggets in there…my summary is that scope of impact is broader, skill set is more comprehensive and thinking is more strategic the higher you go

Great interviews! Thank you for putting them together

You and Pong worked with Jure in the startup? Thats very cool! the Stanford Graph ML group's work is one of my biggest inspirations and Pong's respect for his work and his role is amazing.

This video is amazing. One of the best I have ever seen. Please make more.

Awesome video! Really great idea. Listening to all the senior folks was super interesting.

This was a very good video. Please do more of these. I loved the recap at the end. Very well done

From my experience the most prominent junior engineers are the ones diving deep into technical details, and the less prominent are the ones focusing on “building connections”.

This is gold mine for me, thanks for the content!

Extremely informative video, the last part of concluding important points were really really helpful. Thank you for such great insights!

Loved the format! Great content!

I love these types of real world discussions where people share specific aspects of their experiences.. it's informative and inspiring and very clear

I love this. Because not so many emphasize on understanding of business strategy coupled with years of technical skills, say you start from L1-4 level perhaps . Then you are assigned to assemble, lead, manage and drive impact which is way different than one would acquire from certifications which does not have those skills. Which also means, tenure is important for you to pay attention what the business needs. I think, L2 or L3 was the initial target, but principle to distinguished were what these people have made themselves of. Great insight!

this is Gold! thank you for posting!

Pinterest notifications popping up while watching this is just wild ❤ Good insights. Glad to find I’m doing something right.

Love it ❤ Please create some more insightful videos like this.

Loved it! Thank you for this!

Would also love to see these kinda interviews and career advice for growing in product design and product management.

Awesome observations and insights!

Really good video. Keep up the good work!!

I really enjoyed watching this mini interviews. It’s refreshing to hear the experiences of top engineers from different sectors Would like to see a video where they also share info about their career progression

Great content, extremely valuable advice

thats why code review, sharing, and accepting some suggestion will help you grow much more

Awesome video, thank you for doing this.

Really like approach in this video! Seeing how engineers of different seniority think about problems is very helpful. Much more helpful than just asking what's your total compensation. (Though I do to watch those types of videos as well 😅)

really good stuff, thanks for sharing!

Great video, thank you! As an aspiring Junior, this is very eye-opening! :)

Nice content! it’s helpful for everyone 👍🏾

I LOVE THIS!! can you do a similar video but for data scientist? appreciate your work!!

I had to leave a comment, Great video. Hope more devs see it!

valuable interviews.

Really great video Rahul .Looking forward to more such videos

Straight to the point 👍

Rahul, I noticed the senior end of these interviews talked indirectly about leadership, growing the team, delegating, trust, etc What is the difference between leadership in an IC role and leadership in management

Great conversation

Richard's advice was spot on

Valuable information

This is highly consolidated and informative. Good stuff. I love to see content like this. Hot take: I believe that one underrated skill that all of them missed is just getting good at using your tools. No matter what level you are, if you know things like Vim, git, TDD really well, then you can accelerate your work 10 fold

Great interview!

Great video mate.

Amazing value

I like the L7 perspective of networking to learn how to help and gain impact. Also he brings up specialists in a technology isn't as important as versatility in whatever the company needs at this time, which I find mind blowing! But at the same time makes sense. Inspires me to not be so tech focused but more focus on general foundations

He's back from the dead! Great video!

As a distinguished html engineer, I agree with everything they've shared in this vid.

Very informative discussion. Can you please also interview product managers & how they can be better partners to the engineering teams for product delivery?

Very nice video. Very nice.

Great video!

great interview

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🚀 *New Grad Engineer's Perspective* - Learning from existing solutions in the code base is crucial. - Common tasks like creating labels and buttons are fundamental. - Building connections beyond your team is valuable for learning. 01:10 🧠 *Mid-Level Engineer's Insights* - Efficient log analysis is a key skill for mid-level engineers. - Keeping detailed notes during work helps in problem-solving later. - Emphasizes the importance of collaboration and leveraging teammates. 02:05 🌐 *Senior Engineer's Focus* - Aligning project outcomes with stakeholder expectations is crucial. - Building long-term relationships and collaboration are emphasized. - Balancing personal growth and project importance is essential. 03:41 🚀 *Staff Engineer's Team Building* - Staff engineers focus on leveling up teammates. - Emphasizes the importance of leveraging the entire team's skills. - Multiplicative impact by upleveling the whole team. 04:55 📈 *Senior Staff Engineer's Impactful Work* - Impactful work involves identifying, executing, and measuring impact. - Success at higher levels is more than technical prowess. - Emphasis on identifying opportunities for impact in the company. 06:30 🚗 *Principal Engineer's Technical Communication* - Technical communication becomes crucial at the principal engineer level. - Efficient communication and delegation are vital skills. - Setting the right engineering culture is a significant responsibility. 08:06 🏆 *Distinguished Engineer's Business Understanding* - A distinguished engineer requires a deep understanding of both business and technology. - Trust, collaboration, and understanding various perspectives are crucial. - Pursuit of impact and the ability to navigate a large organization are key. 09:46 🕰️ *Observations on Senior Engineers* - Time and experience within a company are essential for reaching senior levels. - Hyper-growth periods in companies present both challenges and opportunities. - Combining talent, hard work, and business understanding is the path to promotion.

Hey, how do you recommend people learn SWE skills? I already got my degree and work in tech (not in swe role) but lately I’ve been wanting to switch. Not sure whether I can dedicate more time to get another 4 year degree.

Awesome content.

We get it. Stakeholder care about a weighted average of short to long term profit and each engineering level gets more agency in making decisions to facilitate that. This is what being successful means. Are we sure that we're playing the right game collectively as humans?

What are other people’s opinions on job hopping? I see a lot of people talk about it in reference to pay, but I never thought about it beyond that.

I know it's difficult but what's the best way to select the best company which would grow, is it just luck?

Great video.

good video, thank you

thanks a lot

Yea idk. I agree with everything except the last part about job hopping being negative to your rise to seniority. It’s true that business and technology context over years helps but it’s not the only formula to follow. I’ve hopped and moved up in my career just fine. I have not had the chance to work at a large tech company which may have impacted my decisions but anyone that worked at startups will tell you that working for an org long term sounds horrible. I ven those inside that taste the fresh air outside. If you are strategic and demonstrate to yourself your capabilities and find employers and projects that help you level up then I see no reason you can’t be a senior and even CTO sooner and just as successful. For anyone questioning this, think about this. At a large engineering team progress is slow and limited to usually a handful of these so called seniors or architects, and other outside forces. Choosing a new tool is a monumental task. Ideas, even good ones are often dismissed in favor of whatever the seniors say. Makes sense right? Yes and no. If you want to keep going with what you have, good and bad, then thats a good idea to stay. But if you want your ideas to matter, innovate and not be treated like a cog and play the game just to earn that respect then move on and keep pushing it. It does not mean waste time and burn bridges but don’t let this mentality hold you back. Here’s another example. Leveling up to that next level of seniority requires massive experience with scaling and enterprise systems. Problem is these are often slow to innovate, boring and full of requirements that makes gaining this experience very hard unless you indeed stay in one org and move up the ranks. Alternatively, you can seek this experience in other ways. Some may include taking on consulting, leveling up strategically to then apply above other engineers. Other ways include finding ways to impact the org in such a way that moves you into a seniority level. It’s a game you have to play. Other options include joining startups as a means to push you fast and you could end up becoming an architect within a fraction of the time as some of these engineers in the video and also learn way more, and maybe even become an entrepreneur! If you happen to join a startup with one of these staff engineers and you can work directly without middle management and playing the org game you literally jumped over who know how many peers and now you are gaining senior level experience super fast. There is no one way to succeed. You may think you want to be like this one guy and become a staff someday. But if you keep your mind open and do what you enjoy you may learn that you are amazing with product work and analytics. Engineering becomes just a stepping stone not the end.

Great video

GREAT video

I feel job hopping is not bad if you are not aligned with the team or company's vision. I think once you find the right team (Pure luck) where you learn and grow, the urge to change companies will naturally subside

I work in a startup that is growing quite quickly here in germany and got hired as as a senior engineer. Essentially I would compare my job right now mostly with the senior staff engineer (officially i got the title "lead developer"). The todo list that we have is multiple times longer than what we could achieve within a year of work, so I concentrate mostly on trying to find the todos which will have the biggest impact. Just recently for example we finally introduced automated code styling because some of our engineers would spend a lot of their code reviews on code styling suggestions. It took me about a day to integrate it into the project, IDE and automated pipeline but it has already shown to increase reviewing speed immensely. Especially at the beginning of a project, it is usually small things like this, which will have a huge impact short term and also long term.

great content rahul

Does the "leveling" shown here apply across all companies? I get that there's a distinction of scope between the conceptual "levels", and that it depends based on the size and scope of the company (and the idea of hypergrowth), but I'm finding it hard to calibrate this video against the "universal" tech ladder.

if I join a good startup and do all tasks on that, I would have grown much more than staying in a company for 10 years, if by any chance the startup blows up, I will also grow financially and mentally

Interesting narratives

This is a really good video

I would love to know why a lot of engineers stay at a certain senior level and not want to got for Principal engineer or beyond. Does more money = more stress?

nice one

5:27 u open my eyes and my mind

This folks are living the dream I'm too complacent to chase. Damn

Hi rahul, do you think a cs degree is really necessary ?? Love from portugal !!!

Andrew 👍

very good vid

So every senior emphasizes the soft skills. Is there any line of work for people that only want to focus on technical skills?

0:30 dude doing just buttons kekw xD

- Learn from existing codebase solutions (0:20) - Build connections outside your team (0:43) - Keep notes on helpful findings (1:35) - Align project expectations with stakeholders (2:05) - Foster long-term collaborations (2:26) - Level up teammates for multiplicative impact (3:59) - Learn about company problems from different teams (4:37) - Technical communication is key at higher levels (7:01) - Pursue impactful projects for advancement (9:08)

How to get a remote job as a fresher?

Lucky employees.

I had to playback this whole video in 0.75x speed. It was too fast cut. I understand our attention spans may be short, but if it's good content, I'll watch 15+ minutes

You won't find that at Abbott Laboratories

of these companies, Qualcomm is the only one doing anything important

Skill #1 be pretentious to be liked by coworkers.

All of these are basic skills I had as a 70k engineer. FML, I should have so much more money

90% Indian in my org, even you have all the skills those advisors suggested, you won't be having any chances.

All of them will never have a family. Keep learning