I have never seen a company with leveling guidelines consider a “senior engineer” as someone who dutifully just pulls tickets off the board and doesn’t have to lead major initiatives that involve dealing with other people.
If you are just pulling well defined tickets off the board, you are easily replaced, outsourced and it’s hard to stand out when looking for another job.
Then you shout “use your network”! That required being known, being liked and being remembered - politics.
> I have never seen a company with leveling guidelines consider a “senior engineer” as someone who dutifully just pulls tickets off the board and doesn’t have to lead major initiatives that involve dealing with other people.
In theory sure, but there are plenty of those in practice.
Since we're in HN: plenty of those who are YC startups too.
And due to politics, there is less and less space for engineers to interact with other teams and we need to put up a fight in order to participate on decisions.
I had criticism for Agile as much as anyone but the post-agile world is horrible.
From the recent batch of unimpressive YC startups I’ve seen, you give them way too much credit.
Take this one for instance that’s on the front page.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/liva-ai/jobs/6xM8JYU-f...
It looks like the standard two non technical founders looking to underpay a “founding engineer”.
And they want you to be comfortable working “Be comfortable working 12 hours a day 6 days a week”