Jason Gorman’s Post

I was watching a video that talked about what software developers focus on at different stages of their careers, and one notable take was that "Distinguished Engineers" are focused on the *industry*, and not just their company. This is typically because they've engaged with communities outside of where they're working for many years. They say travel "broadens the mind", and learning from and sharing with developers in a wide range of situations tends to give people a much broader sense of software development. Not everything is Big Tech or Fintech or Medtech or Gametech. Not every product is a smartphone app or a website. Not every product has millions or billions of users. (Proportionally, very few do, in fact; so it's interesting how much we obsess over scale.) Not every code base is 100 million lines. Not every code base is 100,000 lines. Not every system has contemporary hardware to run on. Not every platform can accept updates easily (many embedded systems are ship-once). Not every bug or outage is merely an inconvenience (just ask an airline pilot!) Not every product is about profit. And so on, and so on. Learning about what other people, in other roles, in other organisations, in other industries, in other countries, do will tend to make you a much more well-rounded software professional. It will expand your horizons, as well as create opportunities for the wider developer community to have their horizons expanded from your experiences. In particular, there seems to be fairly wide agreement that a "Distinguished Engineer" has made a notable and lasting contribution to the field and the profession of software development. This seems to be encouraged in organisations who pay it forward; who are happy for their most experienced engineers to "share the love" outside of the walls of their business. When a dev, say, creates a testing framework or writes a book or organises a meet-up on their employer's dime, the employer recognises the long-term value of paying it forward. When employers insist developers engage outside of the business entirely in their own time, and entirely at their own expense, those people will usually end up distinguising some other company. And, of course, if that dev-all-the-way-to-the-top career track isn't on offer, then ditto :-)

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