alt Hacker NewsI caught the car
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When I meet fellow devs, I ask what projects they've shipped. Roles are near-meaningless across companies and convey 0 information about what their work involves in my experience. I appreciate that OP learned something about the job through this article.
I hit principal pretty early on in my career. I keep a detailed work history for anyone interested in what that journey is like: https://www.tyleo.com/professional-work-history
It's both hustle and luck. One reason I left Microsoft was because I wasn't on track there. The organization was good but also top heavy so there wasn't room for growth. When I joined Rec Room the tech I built really clicked and the company scaled rapidly. Our team became critical and helped hundreds of coworkers advance their goals. I've heard another principal engineer describe this as, "being pulled into the white hot burning center of a company".
As far as I can tell there's no "trick" to hitting the role. I'd describe it more as, "repeatedly move mountains". There's some luck identifying the right mountains and luck + hustle moving them at all.
I was senior in about three years. It helps to work for a consultancy company, they can charge a higher rate by calling me a senior.
Personally I don't think you can be a senior before ten years of fulltime work.
Author here. I just started blogging this year. Been really interesting to see a post get some traction and read everyone's responses. Thank you all for reading.
I left out a detail that might be relevant? Maybe not? I couldn't decide. SWE is actually a second career for me. I flunked out of college when I was 19, spent most of my 20s working as a chef, and then graduated college and started this job at 29. So I'm 31 now. So it's been funny to read things like "Congrats to this kid" haha.
If the post was about _how_ I got promoted that fast, I'm pretty sure this ^ would be the #1 reason. I'd already been programming for like 10 years when I started this job. People paid me (almost nothing) to write software that they still use today (much to my chagrin - it wasn't very good). So I felt like I had a "head start" compared to most of my intern cohort (though, to be clear, I still to this day feel very behind, in general).
"what does the dog actually do if it catches it?"
Author achieved the senior role, but is unsure what comes next.
Who cares about titles?
It's a really bad signal when a software developer cares about their title.
All that matters is are you good at the work.
i was "cto" at 26 (lol). point being outside of securing a better pay package and using it for job networking purposes your "title" is largely irrelevant as a measure against yourself. don't rely too much on some company handing you a title to determine how skilled you are.
Do we have thoughts on how important "senior"/"staff" is vs bullet points on resumes and the years of service?
First of all, congratulations. As somebody that also achieved the senior developer title within the first three years of being hired out of University, mostly by luck: Yay money, but I wasn't a senior engineer really for another five years. For me, I needed to see the long term effects of the changes that I'd made and the software I had written to really understand the difference between cargo cult behaviour and what really mattered for the business I was working for.
So many kids on hacker news
- I’d say SWE is an experienced engineer not a senior developer- for Pete’s sake he graduated in 2023 that was 3 freaking years ago
I’ve been developing production software for 20 years now -
What other profession counts someone with 3 years of professional experience out of college as senior?
Maybe competitive sports? Or academic math?
If it means this kid is smart and good at coding sure ill buy that but experiences and wisdom are something else entirely..
Congratulations. It made me remember how proud I was when I became a Senior, and then earned my Super Engineer shortly after. Just recently I've earned my Extreme Engineer title. Good luck on your journey.
> When I had learned that, my first instinct was to be happy for him, proud, impressed, etc (genuinely). My second was to want the same for myself. Badly.
> [...] Think back (addressing you, the reader, now) to the time when you were happiest in your career or academic life. Was it when some sinecurist asshole in a gown handed you your diploma?
Uh, what? This is what this person wanted. Now after the fact they’re an anti-credentialist rebel.
Well, thinking of people who make a lot of money and then insist that money doesn’t matter. It makes sense.
> Going forward, the only person I need to impress is myself.
Thinking of the few things that I take quiet pride in because I only want to impress myself... I keep myself in check by not talking about it. lol.
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> I started my first software job out of college in July of 2023. In January 2026, two and a half years later, I secured my second promotion, earning the title of Senior Software Engineer.
> certainly there are hard lessons that I have yet to learn in my career - but my company does not hand that title out like candy
> had (and still have) an excellent mentor <..> he had just been promoted to Senior SE. He was two years out of school himself.
I'm sure OP is a great engineer, and earned their promotion (genuinely, I am). But it sounds like his company hands out titles like candy.
As others have said titles are meaningless but I've worked with enough recruiters to know that they do have some sway on non-technical people..