Field guide · 15 moves to senior
Be the senior
in the room.
Tip of the day ↻
Right now I'm…
Browsing
In a meeting
Disagreeing / challenged
Unsure of the answer
Designing a feature
Helping a junior
Working with experts
Explaining to others
Weekly reflection
01
Decide
Decide without full certainty
Confidence isn't having all the answers. It's being comfortable recommending with incomplete information.
02
Communicate
Don't answer immediately
Fast isn't the same as competent. The strongest engineers pause to understand what's actually being asked.
03
Systems
Think in systems
Your implementation exists inside a larger environment. Ask what happens when things go wrong.
04
Communicate
Assertive, not stubborn
Assertiveness is clearly communicating your position — not dominating the discussion.
05
People
Disagree professionally
Challenge the idea, not the person. Then commit to the decision.
06
People
Mentor with questions
Don't be the team's human Stack Overflow. Teach the problem-solving process.
07
Ownership & growth
Own outcomes, not tickets
Stop waiting for someone to define every task. Own a technical outcome.
08
People
Work with experts
Nobody expects you to know what they know. They expect you to work effectively with them.
09
Communicate
Speak to your audience
Same problem, three audiences. Translate complexity into information others can act on.
10
Systems
Know when to stop
You can understand sophisticated systems and still choose simple implementations.
11
Ownership & growth
90-day plan
Don't try to improve everything at once. Work in phases.
12
Ownership & growth
Signs you're improving
Don't measure technologies learned or lines written. Look at how you operate.
13
Decide
Have an opinion
Develop a recommendation before asking everyone else what they think.
14
Communicate
Explain your thinking
Don't just tell people what to do. Show the reasoning.
15
Ownership & growth
Value beyond code
Coding still matters. But your impact increasingly comes from elsewhere.
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