7 Levels Of Engineers Describe Software’s Most Important Skill

Summary

The video features interviews with engineers at various career levels, from new grads to distinguished engineers. They share insights on important skills at each level - for entry-levels, following coding patterns; for mid-levels, debugging and root causing issues; for senior staffs, impacting the broader team; and for distinguished engineers, understanding the business and earning trust across the organization. The video also notes that reaching the most senior levels requires long tenures, company growth providing opportunities, and combining talent with business context and scope.

Takeaways

• 😀 New grads should focus on following established patterns in the codebase to complete tasks
• 👩‍💻 Mid-level engineers need efficient log analysis skills to debug issues
• 🙌 Senior engineers should align projects to business goals and stakeholder needs
• 💡 Staff engineers should focus on upleveling their teams for multiplicative impact
• 🔍 Principal engineers need great technical communication to delegate effectively
• 📈 Spending many years at a fast growing company enables promotions
• 🤝 Distinguished engineers combine business knowledge, people skills and technology
• 😊 Pursue impactful projects to advance to senior levels
• 🤔 Constant job hopping limits career growth
• ⌛ Growth opportunities come from solving business problems over time

Q & A

What are some key technologies used by iOS engineers at Slack?

Uriel mentions primarily working in Swift and some Bazel for the build systems.

What advice does Uriel give to junior engineers at big tech companies like Slack?

Uriel advises taking time to build connections not just on your team but also with other teams since they have deeper knowledge in different areas that you can learn from.

What does Dipa at Qualcomm work on and what languages does she use?

Dipa works on the camera processing chip that goes in phones, using mainly C++ and Python.

What does Richard at Meta say is the most important skill for a senior engineer?

Richard says aligning project outcome expectations and risks with stakeholders, and making sure the projects are important for the company and your own growth.

What advice does Richard have for new senior engineers at big tech companies?

His advice is to focus on bringing people along and building long-term collaborations across teams.

What team is Sammy on at Gusto and what technologies do they use?

Sammy is on the communications platform team at Gusto, using Ruby on Rails on the backend and Typescript and React on the frontend.

What does Sammy say is the most important skill at the staff engineer level?

He says it's leveling up your teammates through feedback and mentoring so they can work independently and have multiplicative impact.

What does Kaik at Instacart work on?

Kaik works on the smart carts team that builds carts running the Android OS after Instacart acquired Caper.

What three things does Kaik say contribute to having impact as a senior engineer?

He says identifying opportunities, executing work to deliver impact, and measuring the impact.

What communication skill does Pong say is critical for principal engineers?

He emphasizes the importance of technical communication - being able to effectively delegate tasks and extract the right information from teammates.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Introductions from entry level to senior engineers

The first paragraph has introductions from several engineers at different levels. An entry level iOS engineer at Slack talks about learning from existing code patterns. A mid-level engineer at Qualcomm emphasizes efficient log analysis for debugging. A Meta senior engineer highlights aligning projects with stakeholder expectations.

05:01

😉 Transitioning from individual contributor to enabling teams

The second paragraph covers advice from more senior ICs. A Gusto staff engineer stresses the importance of upleveling teammates to have multiplicative impact. A senior staff engineer at Instacart advises identifying high impact opportunities and measuring that impact. A Pinterest principal engineer highlights efficient technical communication to delegate tasks.

10:02

🤔 Observations on growth, scope and time spent at companies

The third paragraph shares observations from the interviewer. They note that the most senior engineers had been at their companies for 8+ years, combining talent with business understanding. The engineers' companies also experienced tremendous growth during their tenures, providing opportunities to drive impact.

Keywords

💡engineer

The video focuses on interviewing engineers at different seniority levels. It defines and compares the roles, skills, and advice across entry level engineers, mid-level engineers, senior engineers, staff engineers, and distinguished engineers.

💡skill

A key theme across the interviews is identifying the most important skills required at each level of seniority. For example, following code patterns and building new features efficiently is critical for entry level, while managing projects end-to-end and minimizing roadblocks becomes important at senior levels.

💡advice

All interviewees are asked to provide one key piece of advice they would give to someone joining their level. The advice ranges from building connections early on, to focusing on delivering impact and value.

💡technology

The engineers highlight the core technologies and programming languages used in their roles, including Swift, Ruby, C++, and Python. This provides context on the type of work performed by mobile, backend, and infrastructure engineers.

💡team

Understanding the specific teams and products that engineers work on, such as mobile apps, APIs, cameras, ads, or recommendations, gives insight into specialization areas and how roles map to products.

💡company

The video interviews engineers from a range of top technology companies including Slack, Meta, Qualcomm, Gusto, Instacart and Pinterest. This diversity of companies illustrates common practices across the industry.

💡level

The video structures the interviews by level of seniority, covering entry/new grad, mid-level, senior, staff, and distinguished engineers. The increasing levels indicate higher expectations and impact.

💡skill

The most important skills evolve from learning coding patterns early on to communication, stakeholder alignment, and maximizing impact in later stages of one's career.

💡growth

A key observation is that the most senior interviewees worked at fast growing companies, indicating opportunities for impact arise in such environments.

💡time

Another observation is that distinguished engineers had often spent 8-9 years or longer at their company, emphasizing the importance of time and tenure for promotions at senior levels.

Highlights

Uriel talks about following existing patterns in the codebase to build out features

Dipa talks about efficient log analysis and figuring out what is the important part of a log file as the most important skill

Richard talks about the most important skill being avoiding roadblocks during project execution

Sammy talks about the importance of upleveling the whole team rather than just solo carrying everyone

Kek talks about identifying opportunities for impact, executing on impactful work, and measuring impact

Pong talks about the importance of technical communication and being able to delegate tasks effectively

Andrew talks about needing a deep understanding of both people and business as well as technology

Senior engineers emphasized being at their companies for 8+ years to reach senior levels

The companies experienced massive growth during the employees' tenures, providing opportunities

Uriel focuses on following patterns for entry-level tasks

Dipa focuses on debugging and root causing issues at a mid-level

Richard focuses on stakeholder alignment and project risk at a senior level

Sammy focuses on team upleveling as a staff-level engineer

Kek focuses on impact at the senior staff level

Constant job hopping hampers growth beyond senior levels

Transcripts

can you share your name your company and

what level you are my name is euriel I'm

a ugrad iOS engineer at slack can you

talk about what team you're on and what

technology or language you're using you

know given that I'm iOS engineer

primarily work in Swift and there's also

some basil for the build systems I'm on

the mobile Enterprise team and working

on features for the largest slack

customers what would you say is the most

important skill the most important skill

as a newr would be just you know

learning from the existing Solutions in

the code base to problems like you know

how to create a label how to create a

button how to connect some two screens

as um these are very common things and

these simple things are what you know

you'll mainly be doing I guess at you

know the new grad level a company like

slack or Facebook or Google they're

probably fairly well- defined ways to do

all these things if you were working

with another Junior engineer what would

be one piece of advice you would give

them take time to build out those

connections you know not just your team

the other teams you know different teams

are working on different things and they

have access to deeper knowledge in some

other areas I love that I mean just

don't only rely on your manager or your

onboarding buddy there's so many other

smart people at these companies that you

can really learn a lot from what's your

name where do you work and and what

level are you uh my name is Dipa I work

at Qualcomm and I'm a midlevel what do

you work on at Qualcomm and what

programming language do you primarily

use uh I work on the camera processing

chip so that goes in the phone um and

mostly I work in C++ and python what

would you say is the most important

skill at that level most important skill

would probably be efficient log analysis

trying to root cause where the issue is

and pull in the correct people when you

have a bunch of information in log file

how do you parse it get information out

of it and then use that to debug or

figure out what went wrong what would

you say as like one really important

piece of advice I would probably say

keep notes on like anything that you

found helpful in like ramp up or any of

the issues you're working on uh more

likely it's going to be useful later on

to you can you share your name where you

work and what level you are yeah my name

is Richard I work at meta and I am a

senior engineer ic5 can you talk about

what team you're on I work on the

company's mobile UI platform and we work

on different projects to help accelerate

mobile development within the company

yeah what would you say is the most

important skill for a senior engineer E5

level I would I would recommend really

aligning the outcome expectation and

risks of a project with the relevant

stakeholders and also making sure that

the projects you work on are important

for both the company but also your own

growth and interests so someone coming

in as a senior engineer in big Tech what

would be your top piece of advice I

think the first thing is bringing people

along with you a lot of collaborations

span across multiple halves and you you

kind of build this recurring

relationship with people being sure to

bring them along and build long-term

relationships someone once told me that

you can go fast or you can go far really

putting importance on treating the

people you work with while making sure

they feel appreciated and making sure

that you always help people back when

they help you for an entry level or new

grad engineer the job is more task

oriented so Uriel talks about following

existing patterns in the codebase to

build out features as a mid-level you

get to the point where you are

responsible not only for writing the

code but also maintaining and debugging

the code so Dipa talks about efficient

log analysis and figuring out what is

the important part of a log file as the

most important skill a senior engineer

delivers a project end to end so Richard

talks about the most important skill

being avoiding roadblocks during project

execution I put the full interview with

each engineer in the Taro app and I also

included Engineers who I interviewed but

didn't have time to include in this

video so I'll leave a link for that in

the description check it out at joint

taro.com can you tell us your name where

you work and what level you are yeah my

name is Sammy W um I'm a Staff engineer

at Gusto I've been there for about six

and a half years at this point what team

are you on and what technologies are you

using um I'm on the coms platform team

at Gusto we basically uh build apis for

teams to send messages to our C our

customers and then also you know make

sure that the messages get shown to the

customers whether in app through email

things like that primarily use Ruby un

rails on the back end and then on the

front end typescript and react what

would you say is the most important

skill for someone at your level yeah I

think it's been a lot of like trying to

level up my teammates and making sure

they're you know able to learn and like

make sure they really internalize the

feedback and are able to become

self-sufficient very independent for

most people you can't really build

everything yourself um so it's important

to be able to like Leverage your

teammates um you know the entire

engineering or to like push forward on

various initiatives yeah yeah I feel

like at that level it's really about

upleveling the whole team it's

multiplicative impact rather than just

like you know solo carrying everyone you

have to make sure everyone's getting

better someone was coming in as a staff

engineer at a company like Gusto or

another kind of medium large company

what would be one piece of advice you

would have for them I would say try to

meet a lot of different people learn

about like the problems you know as a

new person you can really only learn

that from other people yeah can you

share your name where you work and what

level you are for sure um my name is

kaik gopal I work at instacart and I

work as a senior staff engineer I wonder

if you can talk about what you do at

instacart instacart is a grocery

technology comp company we acquired a

startup called Caper which builds smart

carts the smart carts like run aosb so

like the Android operating system and

I've built my career around like mobile

development but what would you say is

the most important skill it all boils

down to impactful work you know you

might think like oh if you get really

good at a technology like that helps for

sure but I think an important aspect of

like you know being successful at like

you know the higher senior levels is one

identifying the opportunities for impact

second is about obviously executing on

that work and Landing that impact and

the third important piece is measuring

the impact right I think all of those

three have to come together and that's a

very valuable skill I'd say more so than

you being like you know like the best

cotland developer out there advice you

would have for someone coming in at

senior staff or principal engineer a

large part of it is just like learning

from other folks it's about talking to

different like stakeholders right like

you know talk to your product people

talk to your support people talk to your

business folks obviously you will keep

talking to the engineering like talk to

each of them find out some of the areas

that the company as a whole is either

like struggling that's immediately an

you know opportunity for like having

that impact or even like with your other

Engineers if you find like constantly

people are like blocked or like you know

there's a common problem again like you

know you should have like those alarm

signals flashing because those are those

opportunities for impact can you share

your name where you work and what level

you are my name is pong exai I'm a

princi engineer at Pinterest how long

have you been at Pinterest uh I've been

at Pinterest for uh almost 9 years now

I'm wearing the Pinterest shirt in your

honor we actually worked together at a

startup and we joined Pinterest through

this acquisition so it's cool to kind of

see you grow through the company can you

talk about what team are you on and what

technologies you're using yeah sure uh

so I'm on the atg team at Pinterest so

it's the Advanced Technology Group uh so

the idea of the team is that we work on

cutting HDML to improve the product in

one way or the other as a principal

engineer L8 very senior level what would

you say is the most important skill I

would say the most important skill for a

principal engineer is uh the technical

communication once you get to a certain

level you can't really do it by yourself

so the ability to let's say work through

someone else delegate tasks and so on is

pretty important when you need to work

through someone else having really

efficient communication between you know

you and them is actually really

important you need to be able to ask

like the right right questions so that

you can

uh extract information that you need

from them to make the technical guidance

another principal engineer what advice

would you have to share with them you

have a lot more eyes on you than than

what you think you're actually like a

really big part in setting the right uh

engineering culture you want people to

be you know really technical you want

people to write code the first thing

they would do is look uh at the

principal engineer right see what kind

of example that he he or she set can you

share your name company and level yeah

my name is Andrew z i was at Pinterest

six months ago I was a distinguished

engineer uh now I'm starting a company

uh in the AI space right awesome how

long were you at Pinterest for I was at

Pinterest for nine years what team were

you on for that duration but overall the

area that I've always focused on was

around deep learning um starting with

like computer vision really applying

computer vision to the different models

within the company for our

recommendation systems I spent my entire

career at Pinterest essentially working

on different parts of that do you know

how many distinguished Engineers were

there at Pinterest there is nothing

higher for IC there were four

distinguished Engineers out of 1200

Engineers what would you say as the most

important skill at that level when I was

a distinguished engineer the skill set

that I felt like I had was a really good

understanding of both the business cuz I

was at Pinterest for for 9 years had a

really good understanding of what can

impact the business and then having the

experience to to know that like you

can't do this alone you have to have

trust from all the different parts of

the company and you have to have trust

in your team really help them succeed in

in their own careers if I were to

summarize like one skill that really

helped it really was uh understanding of

both people in business as well as

technology what advice would you have

for an engineer to succeed as a

distinguished engineer I think it's the

pursuit of impact you become a

distinguished engineer because the

business finds you valuable to the point

they trust you to lead these large

functions find out what is the most

impactful thing that you can do and then

figure out how you can get there like

who do you need to convince for what do

you have the team needed to make that

change and it's really hard to be able

to navigate an organization of that

scale but that's part of the job huge

thank you to everyone who participated I

wanted to share a few observations which

might be helpful to reflect first each

of the most senior Engineers I talked to

were at their company for a very long

time kek was the L7 senior staff

engineer instacart and he had been there

for more than eight years and then the

distinguished engineer L9 Andrew at

Pinterest he was there for more than 9

years to get to a very senior level you

need experience you need time in the

organization in the company

constant job hopping is a recipe to stay

stuck at the L5 senior level or below

forever the second observation I had is

that each of the last few companies that

we heard about Gusto instacart and

Pinterest they all experienced hyper

growth during the time that the employee

was there the number of customers

revenue and employees all grew by orders

of magnitude and that growth led to not

only problems but also opportunities for

engineers everyone at the senior levels

of engineering is obviously talented and

hardworking but you need to combine that

with the Deep understanding of the

business and earning enough scope to

actually land a promotion let me know

what you thought of the video or if you

want to see more content in this format

which is relatively new for me I put the

full interview with every engineer I

talk to in the Taro app joint tar.com

thanks for watching and I will see you

in the next

[Music]

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