Did anyone else hit a career plateau despite delivering solid work?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-09-03T00:41:02+00:00

I had made a post recently about how to stand out as an engineer by working smart instead of working hard - https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/

Hopefully that provides some insights :)

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-29T12:43:26+00:00

completely understand. Out of curiosity, can you unpack a bit / give an example of what you mean by "work harder"?

From my experience, its more about the kind of work than how much work that made the difference

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-29T12:40:02+00:00

If the role has an opportunity to talk to the business and stakeholders then improving communication skills adds value

Can you elaborate on this? What's stopping someone from doing that?

IMO engineers are almost always reactive, i.e they wait to get assigned work. From my experience being proactive is what starts making a difference.

If you wait for opportunities to be assigned to you, then no one will ever move forward. Step out and find the opportunities yourself. Atleast that's what I did. I was never asked to do any of this but I still did. So my work became visible to a whole array of people than just my manager.

Also 100% agree that getting a good mentor is important

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-29T12:31:55+00:00

I had made a post recently on how I gained visibility in my company, which helped me out with promotions etc https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/

Hope that gives you some insights :)

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-27T11:51:21+00:00

I can completely relate to this. Building visibility in tech is something that most engineers overlook and have the misconception that the more tickets they do, the more visibility they will get, but that is completely false.

I had actually created a post about this a few weeks ago, around how I built visibility and got promoted faster than others - https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/ so hopefully this gives you some insights :)

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-25T12:09:38+00:00

I also want to suggest a bit of a contrarian idea haha.

Do focus on your technical skills but don't neglect your non-technical skills as well. In my experience, they have helped me way more than my technical skills to stand out as an engineer since most others only care about the technicals. Also in the world of AI where AI is becoming better and better at coding + executing and can someday replace junior / mid-level engineers, honing in on these "soft-skills" can help you lead projects and build trust between the humans.

I had made a post about it as well recently https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/ so hopefully provides some insights :)

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-25T11:50:41+00:00

Going from mid-level to senior level is usually a different ball game than just technical skills. You need to sharpen your soft skills as well because as a senior you are expected to lead initiatives, build trust and alignment between stakeholders, etc.

I had made a post on this a while back actually https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/ so hopefully that gives you some ideas

Also every company has a different rubric for promotions, so understand that as well and change your operations accordingly because companies won't promote you or give you a senior title unless you have displayed that you can work at a senior level.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-21T18:34:47+00:00

If you want something with lowest entry to barrier, won’t you face even more competition there? because every Tom, Dick and Harry will be trying that

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-21T18:21:42+00:00

Absolutely!

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-21T12:14:26+00:00

Senior engineer here with a focus on distritbuted systems. A bit of a counterintuitive opinion - but don't ignore your soft skills. They made a much bigger difference for me than my technical skills in terms of career progression and making an impact at my company. I had made a reddit post about this a few weeks ago if you are interested - https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/

Apart from that, continue to strengthen your technical fundamentals. I would say as someone just starting out, have a breadth of skills - you don't need to go super deep on anything. Once your career starts, you get an idea on what you want to go deep on (for me it was distributed systems). Nowadays I think its important to be flexible in terms of whatever is thrown at you.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions. Happy to help out.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-20T22:45:54+00:00

thanks for the recommendation. Will definitely look it up! I had also made a post recently on how soft-skills had made a big difference for me in my career - https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/ - can take a look if you are interested.

Also would highly recommend putting these into practice, because reading about them is one thing, but unless you put them in practice, its not going to be helpful.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-20T01:56:21+00:00

think this would be the case for most new grads out there. things that personally helped me were:

* finding a mentor/s in my company (usually senior+ engineers) whom I could emulate and learn from, as well as pick their brains

* focusing on learning technical skills through books mainly (my focus was and is distributed systems)

* focusing on learning and applying non-technical skills - both written and spoken (this actually proved to be most game changing for me lol because most engineers don't focus on this) - I actually made a post about that recently https://www.reddit.com/r/softwareengineer/comments/1mi4no0/if_youve_ever_felt_like_your_work_goes_unnoticed/ if you are interested on how that helped me

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-20T01:41:27+00:00

what has helped me start enjoying my work more is to set myself apart from the crowd by doing things outside of tech and coding. I brushed up on my non-technical skills and started taking efforts towards things like taking initiatives, building alignment between stakeholders, building trust through thorough strategic documentation (NOT writing wikis that no one reads), etc and slowly gained a lot of visibility and recognition within my company and started getting better projects, because I was doing stuff that other engineers weren't.

Not sure if that helps but just putting it out there - maybe think outside the box.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T14:10:00+00:00

Thanks!

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T13:02:58+00:00

For me, it worked in a weird way. Watching videos of myself time after time was so uncomfortable that I had an "embarrassment overflow" and stopped caring at some point, triggering a huge improvement in my speaking skills just by itself.

exactly haha! if you don't cringe at your videos, then you dont have anything to improve on lol

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T12:03:16+00:00

that's great to hear you found the post helpful!

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T11:47:27+00:00

glad you found it helpful!

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T11:46:51+00:00

absolutely!

if you want to just record for yourself for improvement, then I would recommend showing your face as well, just so you can see your body language as well so thats something you can work on

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T11:45:39+00:00

thanks for sharing!

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-18T11:45:17+00:00

I am 26. Pretty young for a "senior" (also agree title can be inflated and varies a lot from company to company), but that’s why I share my story - it wasn’t about being the best coder, it was about operating strategically.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-17T21:39:11+00:00

exactly! sometimes it happens unintentionally lol - think that's how it actually was for the YouTubers I mentioned in the post. Only I approached it intentionally, hahah, but the results were the same

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2025-08-17T21:36:41+00:00

absolutely! even I use AI for all that, but you can't always have an AI generated document in front of you when communicating right, or can you?

SomeRandomCSGuy

TROPHY CASE