The review happened yesterday. I’m a senior engineer now.
Four and a half years in. I know title bands at a giant are their own weather system: “senior” here and “senior” at a five-person startup are different data types that happen to share a name. But my manager walked through the case: led three projects, unblocked more people than I blocked, and (his words) “your incidents got boring, which is the point.” I’ll take it. The raise is real; the RSU refresh vests on a schedule taped inside my cupboard; the imposter syndrome has been promoted with me and now has direct reports.
What changed, honestly, isn’t the title. It’s what I get judged on. Nobody’s grading my for-loops anymore. They’re grading whether the junior engineers’ for-loops get better because I exist. That’s a different job wearing the same badge.
World patch notes: the US Powerball hit $1.6 billion and the parent office’s pool over there bought forty tickets (net: won $12, reinvested, lost it all — a complete startup lifecycle in one week, observed from Hyderabad with popcorn). And Leicester City are still top of the table after winning at Spurs, making my last-entry awe look conservative.
TIL, senior edition: the promotion packet was just this blog with the jokes removed. Write things down as they happen. Evidence compounds. That’s the whole trick, and I’m telling you now because someone should have told me in 2013.