Answered from The Visibility Habit That Got Me To Principal Engineer · A Life Engineered · 2026-10-30
Steve Huynh says he spent 8 years at the senior level and it was not because of his technical depth. Above senior, he argues, the person who gets promoted is not the deepest engineer on the team; it comes down to which projects you are on, who knows about your work, and how your story lands in rooms you are not in. He says nobody told him that, and the field now moves too fast for anyone to spend eight years figuring it out.
Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on A Life Engineered (2026-10-30). Read the whole episode summary →