Ask HN: Career advice for SWE II 39yo

If I were you, I would apply for positions like the following ones in non-faang companies:

- Director of engineering

- VP of engineering

- Principal engineer

You have 15 years of experience and Microsoft in your CV. That’s all what it takes to impress non-faang companies. Research a bit what it takes to pass interviews for the positions listed above. Prepare yourself for a month or so and start applying. Fake it till you make it, you have all the “raw material” others would die for.

This is the best advice out of all comments. Growth at large companies will be limited at this age. You don't have the luxury to wait few years to climb each rung on the ladder. Move to a smaller company and get a title that reflects your seniority and experience(given you have the knowledge and experience to shine at this level). Many devs & engineers will advice you against this saying Staff or Principal titles, IC7 levels at large companies are the career path but they are brainwashed to believe this. You can have a very successful career at smaller companies that value your talent and skills.

I don’t work at Microsoft, but I’m assuming it works very similarly to other big tech companies I’ve been at. Good news is that at a big company promotions are a well worn path! Tell your manager that you’re interested in a promo and have them help you craft a plan and give you feedback. Check out the career expectations for the next level up and do those things (easy, right?).

Basically at higher levels it generally isn’t about better tech skills, but more about having more responsibilities and a larger impact. Some teams have way more opportunity for growth - so try and find a team that suits you. As an older engineer hopefully you have a lot of those soft skills already!

Sometimes the easiest way to a promo is interviewing. The system design interview in particular is where you can help your case in earning a higher level.

> tech support job 20 years ago to I.T., SysAdmin, DevOps/SRE, and now a SWE II. I am on track to be promoted a "Senior SWE" in the next 3-6 months.

This progression is pretty impressive! Congrats on getting where you are!

Going forward, do you want to continue on a technical path or you could be interested in software management, product management, etc.?

If the technical path sounds more interesting for now, are there any areas that you wish to explore? Is there some software expertise you'd be interested to develop? (could be AI, real time graphics, cloud architecture, databases, etc.). The people I know who are far in their career have clear expertise areas and spend a lot of time communicating about it both internally (mostly by mentoring juniors) and externally (by giving talks and contributing to open source).

Also, you can try asking here for more input: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/

Disclaimer: this won’t have concrete actions to take. Lots of good ideas elsewhere.

> I don't think I'm the smartest guy in the room, but I have a lot of experience, and am a dedicated and driven engineer.

Experience and hunger are more valuable than raw intellect. (An unmotivated, inexperienced super genius honestly sounds like an exhausting employee.)

Additionally, the person claiming to be the smartest in the room usually is not.

> made far fewer mistakes than I did

Mistakes are opportunities to learn, so if you made more mistakes, you had more opportunities to learn.

Focus less on what you perceive as shortcomings when compared to others and focus more on your strengths.

I guarantee you bring value to the company that the 30-something principal engineer does not, and it isn’t a matter of cost.

40 is 39 + 1. Don’t let it be more than that.

"What I'm trying to figure out is, given my current position, age, experience etc, how far can I realistically go, and how do I get there?"

You're already farther than me. I'm in my 30s and only had one promotion my whole career.