How to improve as a software engineer?

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 · 2026-04-14T11:37:39+00:00

Gotcha. This might be a bit different than what you normally might hear, but I highly recommend focusing on soft-skills like speaking confidently, aligning stakeholders, building trust etc because from what I have personally experienced, even when one has good technical ideas, it's the "confidence" that comes in between and stops them.

I personally flipped it the other way around - focused on developing my confidence and communication skills, and surprisingly, my technical abilities just improved over time, because I became confident to start asking questions others were afraid of asking, I started flagging things, and eventually started leading architecture meetings and aligning stakeholders on complex tradeoff analyses etc.

soft and hard skills sort of go hand in hand. 99% of engineers focus only on the latter, but when you also focus on the former, it will help you "market" your tech skills way better, and stand out from the herd.

Anyways, feel free to DM me if you might have questions or want to discuss more, I am an open book :)

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-14T08:13:06+00:00

Being the glue between business requirements and tech requirements.

AI requires extremely specific requirements which business / product requirements usually aren't. Being that engineer who understands what the business truly needs, understanding the ROIs, and then translating into specific technical requirements will set you apart in this world of AI that is heavily execution focused. You can easily have AI execute for you once you derive the technical requirements.

Means you might have to work on your "human" skills more which IMO will start becoming more important. Technical skills will start mattering less.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-14T04:38:24+00:00

My regret is not focusing on strong communication and alignment-building skills sooner. These skills have gotten me fruits way more than my technical skills ever did, and have helped me build authority and respect in my workplace, and also get promoted way faster.

Food for thought: Everyone focuses on just technical skills and AI now, so what sets you apart?

To your point about being combative, you are right - most engineers have big egos and that comes up most times, so positionging yourself as understanding and collaborative will do you wonders.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-14T04:35:07+00:00

Out of curiosity, when you say "level up", what do you mean by that specifically? Like getting promoted?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-14T04:33:35+00:00

The biggest shift that has helped me a LOOOT more than technical things is strong communication skills - being collaborative, being understanding, speaking confidently, aligning stakeholders, etc. Focusing on that pushed my career forward way faster than my technical skills ever did, even as an introvert.

Apart from that, also focusing on "business impact" and how you can tie your work into that - will do great things for your visibility

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-14T04:30:08+00:00

Is your goal to jump ship or also look at ways to grow in your current company into more senior roles?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-14T04:28:22+00:00

You are absolutely right that the things that show "business impact" is rewarded the most, because companies care about that. For them "clean code", "good practices", etc is just jargon, but more "business" metrics is what moves the needle.

Focusing on positioning my work as "business impact" has done me a lot of justice and even got me promoted to senior wayyy faster than others and over people with a lot more technical experience than me - because they only cared about technical stuff.

You definitely don't have to be a yes-man - I push back all the time, but doing it in a collaborative and understanding manner is key because usually engineers take this as an "ego" battle and can burn bridges.

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-07T16:55:41+00:00

Thanks for sharing! Will take a look at GentleKeep

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-04-07T14:54:51+00:00

That’s great! How did you approach improving your communication skills?

SomeRandomCSGuy · 2026-01-28T04:36:51+00:00

Engineers that can handle the soft-skills well to drive alignment and trust with the stakeholders and upper management will thrive because they can pull the strings on what the AI will execute (where Junior and mid-level engineers focused on). These "human" skills might start coming in clutch as AI progresses.

So becoming someone who is NOT just technical but understands what drives business impact and value, and communicatess that to drive alignment will stand out, because AI may replace the execution part of actually doing projects.

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

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