from Gergely Orosz | by Gergely Orosz

Observation: it's a lot easier to get promoted beyond the senior engineering level (staff/principal engineer etc) if you've been at a high-growth company for long enough, and built systems that "blew up" in impact as the company also "blew up". Two takeaways from this:

1. The obvious one: try to join high-growth companies that will "blow up" early enough. Just by being here and building systems, there's a high chance those systems will "blow up". You'll both learn, and have a higher chance of growing to beyond the senior engineering level.

2. The non-obvious one: get really good at understanding *why* certain parts of a company "blow up" in impact. Grow your business understanding, not just your engineering one. Find the teams/systems to work on at *any* company to have the impact staff/principal engineers do.