TL; DR:

• It's not about more complexity.
• It's about scaling your impact beyond the team.
• Check out the livestream (or watch the recording) on Monday, July 7th at 7:00 PM Pacific!

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Why You're STUCK at Senior Software Engineer

Let’s be honest -- lots of engineers are chasing the next title. I noticed this when moving into Big Tech after spending years at a startup.

But sometimes the real pursuit isn’t the title at all. It’s the type of work, the impact, and the sense that what you do actually matters beyond your Jira board.

On Code Commute, I was discussing a topic from a LinkedIn message where an engineer was effectively saying:

“I’m doing repetitive work. I’m not growing. I want to have broader impact -- not just crank out the same features. I want to operate like a principal engineer.”

While we can't control if someone gives us the title or not, we can control if we start operating at that next level. And we'll dig into what that looks like in terms of differentiating senior and principal (or staff, depending who or where you are).