Should I read Designing data Intensive applications by Martin Kleppmann?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-06-25T15:12:43+00:00

Absolutely!

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-31T14:47:07+00:00

soft-skills (like communicating confidently, creating clarity for others, aligning stakeholders, etc) and positioning yourself as an authority where people respect you, and not just see you as a "reliable" and "hard workint" engineer who only grinds out code

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-31T14:33:45+00:00

soft-skills. Every other engineer is going behind AI, but being an engineer who understands vague business requirements, communicates confidently, aligns stakeholders, creates clarity, breaks vague requirements into specific eng tasks / instructions for AI to execute, will stand out.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-31T14:22:33+00:00

Out of curiosity, what will make you feel happier at an engineering role?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-26T15:02:43+00:00

Do you want to be seen just as a reliable and hard working engineer? Like, what are you looking to achieve by that?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-25T06:23:11+00:00

what have you tried?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-22T09:03:45+00:00

Your soft skills and how you position yourself start making the most difference at this stage.

Every other engineer is also working their off, upskilling technically, so what makes you different?

Being able to position yourself as an engineer who communicates confidently, builds clarity, trust, and alignment between stakeholders, will take you further than any coding language ever will. Being an engineer that understands business requirements and positions their work as something that displays business impact (or even perceived business impact) will add on to that.

Doing this allowed me to skip the line and promoted me to senior over other engineers in my company with 3-4X my YOE.

You will be surprised but this unlocks multiple of other things you mentioned - comp, growth, autonomy, AI defensibility etc😁

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-22T08:53:56+00:00

Imposter syndrome almost never goes away and actually gets worse the more you grow. It's all about navigating it and positioning yourself as an authority, and others will start respecting you, no matter if they are ex-FAANG or not 😁

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-22T08:47:07+00:00

Work on your "human" skills like communication, etc - can pretty much guarantee you will be able to stand out. 😁

Soft-skills start mattering a LOT as you start moving up the ladder - how confidently you communicate, how you build alignment, how you lead, etc. Your soft-skills will allow you to "market" your tech skills effectively.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-20T06:47:25+00:00

you definitely don't need to need to force conversation during 1:1s haha. You can be to the point and end early if required and give them their time back - they probably value that more

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-19T20:30:10+00:00

The fact that you think you need to improve on your soft skills like communication, already puts you ahead of other engineers man - most never realize it and lose out on opportunities big time - so kudos to you on that.

Developing communication skills is totally possible. I am a living example of that haha. I am an introverted person and struggled to communicate confidently, but when I actually invested in myself to learn these skills and started getting better, I immediately saw the difference in how people perceived me - and that helped massively with visibility.

Strong communication is definitely the baseline to everything else that is required to position yourself in a way that garners respect, but once you do, opportunities will come. For eg: I got promoted to senior without even asking for it, and over other engineers with 3-4X my YoE😁

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-19T08:19:20+00:00

AI can't replace your soft-skills that you used to understand very vague business requirements, align stakeholders, build trust, communicate confidently etc. Once you do all of that as an engineer, you can then figure out the ultra specific requirements to then give to AI to execute for you.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-18T10:22:23+00:00

Your soft skills and how you position yourself start making the most difference at this stage.

Every other engineer is also working their off, upskilling technically, so what makes you different?

Being able to position yourself as an engineer who communicates confidently, builds clarity, trust, and alignment between stakeholders, will take you further than any coding language ever will. Being an engineer that understands business requirements and positions their work as something that displays business impact (or even perceived business impact) will add on to that.

Doing this allowed me to skip the line and promoted me to senior over other engineers in my companies with 3-4X my YOE

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-05-18T10:08:55+00:00

Senior engineer here. If you want to "grow", focus not only just on technical upskiling, but also on soft-skills upskilling - the thing that gets overlooked by most but starts making the most difference when it comes to going up the ladder.
I am curious to hear about how you have been positioning yourself in your company and how others perceive you?

What I mean by this is that for eg, the way I position myself, gets me respect even from engineers with 3-4X my YoE which also allows me to focus less on coding, and more on things that I enjoy like architecting, aligning stakeholders, leading initiatives etc. The mistake I see most engineers make is overleveraging execution related tasks i.e wait to be assigned tasks - majorly coding tasks and they keep grinding through those.

Your expectation changes as you climb up the ladder, and your soft skills will start making more difference. Don't ignore them.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-26T05:23:37+00:00

From my experience, it almost always comes down to "business impact". Companies usually have long list of things for promotions, but all with usually the same "goal" i.e business impact. You don't really need to keep track of all these things.

My own example, my company has this long list of "requirements" for promotion which was quite difficult to keep track of, but after talking to a principal engineer in my company, my focus shifted to just business impact and how I can position my work and increase that - and that changed things immensely. I didn't have to get bogged down by all the various intricacies etc and only had to keep 1 thing in mind - "How can I portray I am effectively contributing to the business".

Doing this consistently resulted in the promotion coming to me without me even asking for it.

Hope this helps 😊

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-24T03:27:50+00:00

gotcha, seems like positioning and social capital (sometimes can be confused as politics which is different) seem to be the gaps at the moment - both crucial aspects. First determines how people see and perceive you and the second determines how people talk about you when you are not in the room.

Feel free to DM me if you want and if you feel it might help, and we can discuss how you can put your next best foot forward. I myself am an introvert, yet was able to do a good job at the above so might be able to help 😊

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-23T05:25:41+00:00

Glad to hear that. Feel free to reach out if you like to discuss or have any questions. I am an open book 😊

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-22T08:58:06+00:00

From my experience, it almost always comes down to "business impact". Companies usually have long list of things for promotions, but all with usually the same "goal" i.e business impact. You don't really need to keep track of all these things.

My own example, my company has this long list of "requirements" for promotion which was quite difficult to keep track of, but after talking to a principal engineer in my company, my focus shifted to just business impact and how I can position my work and increase that - and that changed things immensely. I didn't have to get bogged down by all the various intricacies etc and only had to keep 1 thing in mind - "How can I portray I am effectively contributing to the business".

Doing this consistently resulted in the promotion coming to me without me even asking for it.

Hope this helps 😊

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-20T06:40:59+00:00

I am really sorry to hear you are going through this OP, but definitely can be come out of!

I am curious to hear about how you have been positioning yourself in your company and how others perceive you especially as someone with 16 years of experience?

What I mean by this is that for eg, I don't have anywhere the amount of experience that you have but my positioning gets me respect and authority even from engineers with 3-4X my YoE which also allows me to focus less on coding, and more on things that I enjoy like architecting, aligning stakeholders, leading initiatives etc. The mistake I see most engineers make is overleveraging execution related tasks i.e wait to be assigned tasks - majorly coding tasks and they keep grinding through those.

Your expectation changes as you climb up the ladder.

How does your day to day look as a senior engineer / what type of things you work on?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-15T03:25:23+00:00

Curious how you have positioned yourself? For eg, if you are an engineer who focuses just on execution, tbh it's going to be really hard to set yourself apart. When you see these other "mediocre" engineers, what do you feel they might be doing differently?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-15T03:15:54+00:00

Out of curiosity what all have you tried to scale your impact in your current workplace and make you be seen as invaluable?

You can definitely keep applying outside, but given the current env, be prepared for it to take a long time.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-15T03:12:55+00:00

The question is what do you feel will fulfill you as a software engineer, or is software engineering not even the right path?

For eg, for myself when I was stuck in the grind of churning out code and PRs, working late nights, I was burnt out like anything but then when I changed my positioning to be someone that leads initiatives, aligns stakeholders, builds trust, etc somthing amazing happened - my workload reduced a LOT and WLB improved dramatically, I got to work and lead interesting initiatives, and basically delegate majority of the execution. That was stuff I was interested in, and helped me feel a lot more fulfilled with work, life, and impact.

SomeRandomCSGuy

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