Advice From a Software Engineer With 8 Years of Experience




My name is Benoit. I have been a software engineer for the past eight and a half years. I stayed at my previous (and first) company for seven and a half years, then I joined a new one in early 2022. This article comes from a recent self-reflection on the things I wish I had started doing earlier in my career and the things I wish I had done differently. What I am sharing here may be useful to any junior to mid-level developer who wishes to improve and progress toward the title of senior and beyond.In the beginning, I was part of the frontend team. The tech organisation was split between backend and frontend developers. At that time, we were no more than 30 engineers. When our new CTO arrived a year later, he introduced an organisation based on feature teams: the Spotify Model. Although there was some friction at the start (people don’t like change), this reorganisation definitely turned out to be for the better. I stayed for more than five years in the same feature team. I was there at its inception, so throughout the years, I became the tech referent of the project. Eventually, I joined another team, where I worked until I left for a whole new adventure a year later. All right, enough with the context. I hope you’ll enjoy reading the rest, and that the following advice will be actionable for your career progression!A work log is a document that contains the list of tasks you accomplished. The granularity and the type of tasks don’t matter, as long as you keep track of what you did. You can fill in this document at the frequency you want. I would advise doing that on a weekly basis. Tasks done during the week are still fresh on Friday, so you won’t struggle writing them down.