7 Levels Of Engineers Describe Software’s Most Important Skill
I asked 7 levels of engineers to share the most important skillset for success for their level. These engineers work at companies like Meta, Pinterest, Instacart, and Slack.
Intuitively, we understand that the scope of our work should increase as we climb the career ladder. Here's the approximate scope for each level:
These interviews are enlightening because they concretely translate each level into behaviors and advice. Many thanks to these engineers for sharing how engineering expectations evolve at each level!
L3 New Grad at Slack
🏋♀️ Skill: Learn from existing patterns to solve common problems.
🦉 Advice: Leverage engineers on other teams who may help unblock you.
L4 Mid-Level Engineer at Qualcomm
🏋♀️ Skill: Efficient log analysis to identify and debug issues.
🦉 Advice: Keep notes on your work so you become increasingly self-sufficient.
L5 Senior Engineer at Meta (Facebook)
🏋♀️ Skill: Align project expectations and ensure projects benefit both the company and your growth.
🦉 Advice: Build strong relationships with people you work with, helping them where possible.
Reflections (part 1)
The job is more task-oriented for an entry-level or new-grad engineer, so the L3 engineer (Uriel) talks about following existing patterns in the codebase to build out features.
As a mid-level, you become responsible for writing, maintaining, and debugging code. The L4 engineer (Dipika) shares that her ability to analyze logs is the most important skill.
Senior engineers own projects end-to-end, so the L5 engineer (Richard) shares the importance of avoiding roadblocks during project execution.
L6 Staff Engineer at Gusto
🏋♀️ Skill: Level up your team and ensure they internalize feedback to become independent.
🦉 Advice: Learn the problems in the org by talking to many people.
L7 Senior Staff Engineer at Instacart
🏋♀️ Skill: Instead of just doing eng work, spend time identifying, executing, and measuring impact.
🦉 Advice: Talk to different stakeholders (business, customer support, PM) to identify areas where the company struggles.
L8 Principal Engineer at Pinterest
🏋♀️ Skill: Effective technical communication to delegate tasks effectively and collaborate with others.
🦉 Advice: Principal engineers are role models for an entire org and therefore determine the culture.
L9 Distinguished Engineer at Pinterest
🏋♀️ Skill: Combine strong business acumen with technical expertise to lead large, impactful projects.
🦉 Advice: Pursue the most impactful projects and navigate the company to make them happen.
Watch the full video here:
This video was the "highlight reel" to capture the most important information. You can watch the extended interview with each engineer here.
Reflections (part 2)
A few interesting observations:
Each of the senior-most engineers spent a long time at their company. The Senior Staff Engineer, L7, Kaushik was at Instacart for 8 years. The Distinguished Engineer, L9, Andrew worked at Pinterest for more than 9 years 🤯
You need time to build up relationships and context within the company. That's how you build up trust, which is the core currency on which promotion is earned. Constant job hopping is a recipe to stay stuck at L5 (senior) or lower levels forever.
Many companies on the list above (Gusto, Instacart, and Pinterest) all experienced hypergrowth while the employees earned promotions. The number of customers, revenue, and employees all increased by orders of magnitude. These increases led to lots of change, and change (aka chaos) results in growth opportunities for talented engineers.
Most of the people who grew their career rapidly were working in a company or organization which also grew rapidly.
Everyone at the senior levels is obviously talented, but you need to combine that with understanding the business and earning enough scope to get the promotion.
Thanks for reading!
Rahul
Rahul Pandey
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