it references a The Staff Engineers Path, i think staff is a new senior and it's easy to get to it and hard to jump over when joining a new company. I don't really care abount one more level raise from being engineer X3 to X4, I want to get to X7 or be self employed, getting raise at a job is super easy you just kinda work there

Enough, but for what? Enough implies some satisfied state on which this advice intends to be on the trajectory of.

these are the types who made the toxic hiring processes

This is true. It's complicated. Also, if you're too good, some people above you may feel threatened and they can absolutely destroy your career. It's total bullshit that people at the top want to pay it forward. They don't necessarily. They want to help people who remind them of themselves or a lesser version. They often don't want to help someone who might be better than them in any way.

Loved this piece, it resonates with my desire for "professional development" that puts technical skill at its core and moves on from there.

Think of bands, that are together for like 40 or 50 years. 40-50 years of studios, tour buses, airports, soundcheks, press etc. together. It is not enough to be an excellent musician for this to be possible.

On another hand, I'm observing that most goods purchased and sold are of lesser quality compared to 15-20 years ago. Even on comparable price tags.

It's become easier to make "good enough" products that are of subpar quality. Just an example that's relevant for me recently: faucet heads. My local supermarket sells one that is identical—but 3 times the price—of one sold on AliExpress. The faucet head breaks after a few months.

If I start looking for them, I could make a whole post on goods and services like that.

So, while I agree that you must be excellent to stand out among your peers, that is certainly not what companies are recruiting or fostering. I didn't want to talk about LLMs, but one can easily imagine how that will impact product quality.

It's getting easier to be "good enough". Or at least fake it.

> Or maybe it’s that “good advice” itself is fuzzy. It depends entirely on the person receiving it.

Slate Star Codex agrees https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any...

> The biggest gains come from combining disciplines.

Someone else said it's a good trick to be good at two things, because there are N things but there are N-squared pairs of things, so it allows you to specialize in a smaller niche without spending a lot of effort on gaining new skills. Can't remember who.

Honestly, being medium-good + personable and easy to work with is more than enough for most jobs in most fields.

Only a certain tiny subset of SV engineers have this hypercompetitive mindset. If you think you're LeBron, good luck to you.

I would have agreed to that but I'm corporate it's just bullshit fuckery. Politics and Sycophancy triumphs over everything. It's just too much bullshit fuckery.