The Senior Engineer Death Spiral: Why Working Harder Makes It Worse
A senior engineer's advice to a friend battling imposter syndrome: trying to cosplay a higher level by disappearing into ambitious designs leads to a death spiral of isolation, burnout, and firing. Instead, drop a level, become the best teammate, and build momentum through small daily work. The real lesson: big projects are marathons, not big efforts, and your reputation is the foundation.
big projects are not done with big efforts. it’s a big marathon, just slow, steady, incremental work.
- sajithdilshan
The senior you get the more you realise that the only reward for hard work is more work. Then, you learn to say no more often and set boundaries and negotiate like if you want me to work on project A, then I won’t have capacity to work on project B.
Unfortunately, this is something you have to learn through experience and cannot be taught by someone else.
- swiftcoder
> and what happens is they start disappearing for longer periods of time... they quit their jobs because they think, “you know what, this is not salvageable.”
I've interviewed several great senior engineer candidates over the last few years, and then had to watch do this and walk themselves right out the door inside of 6 months. I've developed a marked preference for promoting internally, because you get longer to head this sort of thing off.
Incidentally, this sort of thing is why software engineering desperately needs some sort of formal levelling criteria and/or mentorship programs. It's really hard for senior folks to calibrate themselves against their rapidly shrinking peer group.
- slowin
At least we know this wasn't written by an LLM (unless it was GPT-2).
The best advice I can give on moving your career forward is to not try and get a promotion at your current job. Apply for better positions at other companies while you still have your current role. You'll have maximum leverage and unlimited time to choose the best possible option. Trying to claw your way up the ladder in a single company is the least efficient (and more often than not hopeless) strategy.
- Dizcorded
I’m in this exact position and I don’t know the next steps forward. I’m on a sabbatical because I burnt out after a massive project but the expectation is that I come back and lead another massive project.
I’ve yet to decide if that’s what I actually want or if there is another solution out there. Is leaving the only real solution?
- hsbalanxvxjsmab
I'm a staff engineer and I haven't thought about trying to get promoted a single day in my life. Do good work and be nice the rest follows
- ab_io
AI coding tools can really make the "in the next week, I’ll do a whole month’s work. and no one will know" feel especially tempting, particularly if you're deep in the execution phase of a project. Truth is that can end up like Brooks's law on steroids.
Instead, just communicate with your stakeholders asap. Chances are they already know the project is at risk, and they'll be amendable to either descoping or pushing back the deadline.
- derf_
This is fine advice up to a certain point, but you do not accomplish bigger and grander things by working harder, nor even, as this implies, by working more diligently. You accomplish them through leverage.
It is not just about what you are working on. You need to understand what everyone else is working on, and more importantly, what they could be working on (their capabilities) and what they should be working on (the org's priorities). When you find yourself being dragged in to meetings to write roadmaps, estimate schedules, and contribute paragraphs to the annual budgeting process, you know you're on the right track.
He does have one thing right, that this is about reputation, because you cannot just go out and unilaterally take this authority. It has to be earned. Having a large number of lines of code written, commits landed, and tickets closed can be a means to that end, but it is not in and of itself the goal.
- b0rtb0rt
i’m very happy in the “terminal” senior position at my company, there are higher levels but it’s fine to stay at the level that i’m at forever. i don’t need to pick up extra work because im not trying to get promoted and i can usually get by just by having smart sounding ideas in meetings, helping figuring out the more ambiguous tasks and just doing enough to meet expectations. the expectations of the higher levels seem
pretty unpleasant , and the guys at lower levels than me are happy to pick up extra work because they want to get promoted lol