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I am planning to write a site that helps people understand the career beyond the code. I have five sections planned. 1. Not Yet Engineer 2. Junior Engineer 3.

I am planning to write a site that helps people understand the career beyond the code. I have five sections planned. 1. Not Yet Engineer 2. Junior Engineer 3. Practitioner Engineer 4. Senior Engineer 5. Principal Engineer I intend to index my thoughts as a philosophy guide and playbook for situations since that is what I tend to focus on in my one on ones with the people that I mentor. It's funny that as I have gotten older, I focus less on the 'what' and 'how' and focus on people growth, and now my primary export is enabling people to become effective senior engineers.

cweagans 8y ago
I would be super interested in collaborating on this. Are you thinking that it would be written in the open + allow contributions from others?
- mathgladiator 8y ago
  I honestly don't know, and I am considering inventing a platform so that I can express how I get feedback. I am definitely interested in feedback, but I also want to create an income stream from it.
walshemj 8y ago
You know that most companies don't have such nice technical hierarchies. When I worked for BT back in the day there where effectively two grades for non management "professional staff" going from mpg1 to mpg2 was brutal approximately 20-30 in the SE division (50k FTE) every 18 months or so.
- mathgladiator 8y ago
  True, but that doesn't mean the behaviors are not mutually exclusive. For instance, there is a time in your life before you know how to code and there is a time where you think you know how to code and then have to interview. I call this "Not Yet Engineer". There is then a time when you think you know how to code, but you lack discipline to execute within a team framework and a business context. I call this the "Junior Engineer" phase. After Junior Engineer, you are useful and can build things. Once you have discipline and have knowledge, then are a "Practitioner Engineer". This, for many people, is a terminal state and some companies call this senior engineer. However, I have seen many people go from inflated titles to Software Engineer at Amazon. Beyond Practitioner Engineer, the core aspect of being a "Senior Engineer" is the ability to lead one or two teams to build. Principal Engineers then talk at an organization level and think of things beyond two teams. The focus here is on strategy rather than day to day execution. Sadly, most companies don't understand the need for a parallel power structure to compete with management.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    That's all very well but I was arguably at "Practitioner" level at 23 in my first job (which did have the sort of tracks you suggest) I did look at continuing down that track to CE status (I was / am a junior member of the mechanical engineers) but it wasn't worth it And very few tech employers is going to support its development staff like say a big consultancy will for its civil engineers. BT did have its Msc but that was targeted at the Labs really - that's the Uk version of Bell Labs BTW

cweagans 8y ago

I would be super interested in collaborating on this. Are you thinking that it would be written in the open + allow contributions from others?

mathgladiator 8y ago
I honestly don't know, and I am considering inventing a platform so that I can express how I get feedback. I am definitely interested in feedback, but I also want to create an income stream from it.

walshemj 8y ago

You know that most companies don't have such nice technical hierarchies. When I worked for BT back in the day there where effectively two grades for non management "professional staff" going from mpg1 to mpg2 was brutal approximately 20-30 in the SE division (50k FTE) every 18 months or so.

mathgladiator 8y ago
True, but that doesn't mean the behaviors are not mutually exclusive. For instance, there is a time in your life before you know how to code and there is a time where you think you know how to code and then have to interview. I call this "Not Yet Engineer". There is then a time when you think you know how to code, but you lack discipline to execute within a team framework and a business context. I call this the "Junior Engineer" phase. After Junior Engineer, you are useful and can build things. Once you have discipline and have knowledge, then are a "Practitioner Engineer". This, for many people, is a terminal state and some companies call this senior engineer. However, I have seen many people go from inflated titles to Software Engineer at Amazon. Beyond Practitioner Engineer, the core aspect of being a "Senior Engineer" is the ability to lead one or two teams to build. Principal Engineers then talk at an organization level and think of things beyond two teams. The focus here is on strategy rather than day to day execution. Sadly, most companies don't understand the need for a parallel power structure to compete with management.
- walshemj 8y ago
  That's all very well but I was arguably at "Practitioner" level at 23 in my first job (which did have the sort of tracks you suggest) I did look at continuing down that track to CE status (I was / am a junior member of the mechanical engineers) but it wasn't worth it And very few tech employers is going to support its development staff like say a big consultancy will for its civil engineers. BT did have its Msc but that was targeted at the Labs really - that's the Uk version of Bell Labs BTW