I’ve found my biggest differentiator over the last decade was soft skills - writing, dealing with stakeholders, knowing how to talk to normies, being comfortable in the room with decision makers, being able to do effective presentations and project management skills.

And knowing how to “deal with ambiguity” and focus on how to add business value. If you look at the leveling guidelines of any tech company, anything above mid level is focused on “scope”, “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity”.

Knowing AWS really well is just a tool and it doesn’t hurt that I have a stint at AWS ProServe on my resume

Notice “codez real gud” is not a differentiator.

There is no hard skill you can learn that thousands of of others don’t know that will set you apart.

Well except for some vertical market stuff that will leave you pigeonholed.

Sources:

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html

https://dropbox.tech/culture/sharing-our-engineering-career-...