This set of blog posts chronicles my career journey as a high-level individual contributor.
One of the most common questions I get in my role is “what do I need to do to get a high level individual contributor (IC) role?”. It’s a question I’ve generally struggled to answer, partly because the folks that I have worked with in these roles often have very different responsibilities. Some are more hands on, some are on the edge of being people leaders. To me these roles are always a bit more nebulous than traditional developer roles, and that can be part of the challenge of being in one.
Earlier this year I started writing about the different experiences and lessons that have shaped my career journey. This post is Part 2 of the series and I’ll walk through some of the things I learned at my first job.
In Part 3 of this series I’ll discuss lessons from my second job. I was now a Senior Software Engineer, working on a whole new set of problems and building full applications from scratch for the first time.
Part 4 of this series explores my third job — working as an engineer, architect, and a few other roles at a small fintech startup.
Part 5 brings the series to a close. I’ll share what I’ve learned since my startup was acquired by American Express — adapting to a bigger company and a broader role.