Hey ,

Last year, I interviewed at a San Francisco based startup. They needed a Founding Full stack Engineer.

After I applied, I had 4 meetings with the team. They completely skipped the coding interview because of my Github.

They loved me. They offered me $120k/yr and some equity. I told them it's too small.

They raised the offer to $160k/yr. But because I wasn't too happy with their culture and attempt to pay me less, I declined the offer.

The next month after that I accepted a $130k/yr offer from another company.

I didn't share this to brag.

I want to show you that even in a down economy with no jobs, some people are still in high demand and can afford to be picky.

How did I get here ? It was intentional and took a lot of hard work.

When you're junior or mid level, this tech industry does not respect you too much. When you become senior, they start asking you how much you want to make.

Your goal in tech should be to become senior as soon as possible.

Becoming a senior engineer comes in two ways: either you get promoted to senior, or land a job as a senior.

Today, I'm going to show you 4 practical steps to speed up your career and become a senior engineer.

1. Adopt big picture thinking

As a junior developer, all you care about is submitting your task for review and having it approved.

You wait until a senior or product manager tells you what to do next.

This is nice, and even very comfortable. But that's why you're paid the small bucks, because you take on much less responsibility.

As a senior, you need to understand three things:

1. Where the business you work for is going
2. How the business plans to get there
3. How the engineering team will help in achieving that goal

This means you'll have to seek this knowledge, by asking important questions.

Guess what. You can start doing this today, irrespective of your level.

Ask your team lead or CTO what's next on the agenda. Ask them to explain to you why they made certain architectural decisions.

Seek understanding of the entire picture. You can't create big impact if you don't understand how everything works together.

Worry about much more than the task you're working on.

Think about your team. What can I contribute, no matter how small to make this team better?

It could be as little as adding prettier, or as big as recommending a migration to Vercel for performance.

This takes time and being intentional. Those who seek will find. If you're looking for ways to improve your team and company, you'll find them.

2. Become a technical wizard

During my first 2 years as a developer, I created a Udemy course. At one time, it was the most popular Laravel course on the platform.

This is because I had a great understanding of the concepts I learned.

I wasn't only interested in doing my job. I needed to be a subject matter expert of everything I ever learned.

I would spend hours researching specific topics. Sometimes, I get lost on my phone reading documentation.

I also began to care about the four pillars of healthy code. This was the subject of a previous growth letter, so you can check it out here.

Invest in the best training material. No more introduction courses. More courses about advanced testing, design patterns, and architectures.

The types of projects you build too should improve. Start by creating your own version of your favourite NPM package.

I remember in 2018 when I built a Redux clone and showed every one of my coworkers.

I had an extreme and unconventional passion to be better.

Today, I still take courses and learn impactful things every day.

You command respect as a senior when you code like a wizard.

3. Master communication

When you're a junior or mid level, someone will message you asking for the progress on your task.

As a senior engineer, anyone messaging you is already disappointed.

Remember the fastest way to being a senior is to act like a senior.

LinkedIn has free and great online courses on how to upgrade your communication game. Take them.

Be proactive about following up, sharing feedback and asking for what you need.

Show up to meetings on time, communicate when you can't make it.

The little things matter. Give an update every 24 hours on what you're working on, whether you're asked or not.

Communication is the most important skill you can gain for your career. Start practicing great communication and see how it takes you to the next level.

4. Market yourself as a senior

Someone asked me what my strongest skill is as a developer. Even though I'm a coding wizard, you don't need to have as much technical knowledge as I do to succeed.

My biggest skill by far is my ability to communicate, and use that ability to market myself.

First of all, I DO and BUILD a lot. This gives me a ton of technical experience, and a lot of senior evidence too.

Here are some things that I do every week:

• I write articles that talk about senior level topics like growth, testing, security.
• I create online courses that train developers on senior topics
• I join and take part in communities like Auth0 ambassadors.
• I run a weekly newsletter.
• I mentor junior developers
• I contribute to open source

To market, you need to build your products. And the list above is a list of some of my products.

Next, I sell these wherever I am.

During an interview, I mention the numbers I got from doing all these like how many views my videos got.

I talk about the impact I had. I explain how I demonstrated big picture thinking and technical wizardry.

This is capitalism. You are in extremely high competition, and you have to learn the art of selling yourself to stand out.

Here's what I hear other developers say: I used React and Vercel.

Here's what I say:

I performed a performance evaluation using Lighthouse and noticed some bottlenecks. I recommended a migration to Vercel and we saw a 70% increase in performance. This led to a 30% increase in average time on site, and more customers.

That's how you sell yourself. Do senior stuff, sell yourself as a senior.

I leave you with these parting words:

If you want to become a senior, start being a senior. Be a senior everyday, and soon someone will pay you for being a senior.