We are all Senior Engineers now
We learn a lot of theory in school: what are the different types of databases, SQL, what are ORMs, their syntax, benefits of using ORMs etc. This helps us build a general understanding of the tools we are going to use in our job.
As we start building software, this theoretical learning gets replaced with learning through experience. Our experience keeps tweaking this understanding we built in school, and we grow as engineers: design better systems, catch bugs in code reviews, foresee incidents before they happen and account for them.
Ideally, your experience would teach you everything you need to grow. You will learn enough from your daily job, colleagues etc. that you don’t need to do anything else to get better. But:
The ideal rarely happens.
So this understanding we built in school, many times, isn’t challenged enough, doesn’t improve enough. It becomes necessary to supplement your experience with more theory. You can do so by reading books, papers, blog posts, tech design documents etc.
Additionally, rapid advancements in AI have shifted the baseline for competency: faster growth is more important than before. As we adopt copilot like agents to build software faster, use IDEs like Cursor or Windsurf, more of our time will be spent reviewing code than writing it.
In a way, everyone is going to be a Senior Engineer now. You now have to be able to guide agents to make changes you want and catch subtle bugs in the code that AI writes.
If you were suddenly made a Senior Engineer, will you be a good one?
Hi,
I am Ketan.
I started my career as a Software Engineering Intern in 2014 in India, tasked with building the backend for a tiny edtech startup, with a handsome stipend of Biryanis and Butter Chicken. I loved it. This is where I actually developed an interest in product engineering and databases.
I spent the next 4 years working at Squadstack where I learnt much of what I know now, honing my skills. By virtue of being a small team, everyone was responsible for everything. I got a lot of hands on experience designing and building products from scratch, scaling them, nursing databases. More importantly, I made lifelong friends here. I had joined Squad as an intern, their third engineer. When I left, Squad was 200 people strong. That growth taught me a lot.
I moved to Dublin, Ireland to work with Intercom in 2019. My next S curve and I am still enjoying the ride 🏄🏼♂️
I work as a Staff Product Engineer in the AI group at Intercom. Here I am responsible for building the platform that runs our AI products.
If you work in Tech: you are a PM/TPM, Software Engineer or a Manager, my posts will supplement your experience and help you grow. I don’t post regularly, and I am not a LinkedIn influencer, so you don’t have to worry about noise. I only write when I have something substantial to share.
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