!! UNDER CONSTRUCTION !!
About this blog
Career Engineer (commonly “Senior Software Engineer”) : an engineer at the particular software engineering level where no further career promotion is expected
This blog focuses on the sustainability and craftsmanship aspects of the career software engineer in order to build a decades long career in the industry. In the absence of vertical career growth, I focus on building non-technical skills necessary for long-lasting resilience: emotional intelligence, professional productivity, and personal ideology.
The mental and emotional state of a software engineer is rarely discussed. Engineers face meta-career crises with far more impact than their day-to-day technical worries:
- Am I facing career burnout already?
- Do I have imposter syndrome, and what does it even look like?
- Why shouldn’t I use this hot new technology?
- What does being blocked really mean?
This blog is for the software engineer seeking a long term career in the software industry, as opposed to motivators like career ladder promotions or entrepreneurial growth. I hope to centralize a wealth of advice, frameworks, and stories in one place, serving as a general purpose runbook for the career level engineer. This blog captures my personal stories, knowledge, and insights I needed when growing as a software engineer myself.
About me
My name is Andy Nguyen. I’ve always enjoyed computer programming and aspired to be a software engineer since a child.
I have about 6 years of experience, having worked in an academic lab, a FAANG company, and currently a midsize startup.
I started this blog based on my personal experiences and shortcomings in software engineering mentorship. I rarely found meaningful advice on how to build a long-term career in line with my childhood dreams, and I never found a role model that captured this personality. I hope to build a resource to encapsulate this persona and give advice toward building a sustainable software engineering career.
You can contact me at andy@careerengineer.dev. I welcome any questions, feedback, or connections.