Five Mental Shifts That Turn Juniors Into Seniors
One engineer. Five near-misses. One quiet transformation.
Eight months ago, I got a message.
“I’m a junior engineer with over three years of experience. I think I’m ready for promotion, but I don’t know how. Can you help me?
-Ramesh”
That was the first version.
Then we got on a call, and the second version came out.
“I’ve been quietly killing myself doing the right things, and I’m starting to suspect the wrong people keep winning.”
He wasn’t wrong.
But he wasn’t exactly right either.
My initial read?
Methodical. Quiet. Sharp.
The kind of engineer who’d fix the ugliest part of your system and never mention it out loud.
He had a career ladder bookmarked—the kind with seven tiers, three dimensions, and a paragraph per bullet. Perhaps built by a committee of principal engineers who sincerely believe in adjectives. I don’t know. But I remember it like that.
He said things like “cross-functional influence” and “end-to-end ownership.”And meant them.
He’d fixed bugs no one saw coming.
Onboarded new hires.
Gave away credit in Slack and didn’t secretly want it back.
He could tell you exactly what “senior” meant according to the chart.
And still, nothing was moving.
Because nowhere in that chart did it say what to do when someone who shipped less—and with worse quality—got promoted faster.
Here’s what happened last week:
Ramesh got promoted.
But this isn’t the story of how he nailed it.
It’s the story of how he almost didn’t.
Because Ramesh already knew what senior engineers were supposed to do. He just wasn’t doing it. Not really.
Knowing what to do doesn’t mean jack if you’re looking through the wrong lens.
Here’s how to think about it:
Two mechanics are staring at the same engine.
One sees hoses and clamps and bolt torque.
The other sees pressure.
Where it’s building.
Where it’s leaking.
Where it’s about to blow.
Same engine. Different eyes.
Ramesh could recite the parts.
But pressure?
That wasn’t on his radar.
Not yet.
This is the story of five moments.
Not where he failed.
Not where he succeeded.
But where he almost stayed still.
Five mindset shifts.
Junior to senior.
Here’s how it started.
One
“It wasn’t my fire.”
Wednesday, 6 or 7 p.m.
“Hey, you got time?”
He was pacing. I could hear it in his voice.
“How’s your week?” I asked.
“Long.”
A pause.
“Our tech lead’s out. Something he ate. There was a thing in prod yesterday—billing, of course.”
“You involved?”
“Nah. Not really. It was someone else’s thing. A bunch of people were on it.”
A little laugh. Dry.
“You ever watch ten smart people talk themselves in circles?”
“You knew the system?”
“I cleaned up part of the retry logic a few months ago. That thing never got documented. I knew where the logs were.”
But that was it.
No follow-up.
No “so I helped.”
“You didn’t step in?” I asked.
“Wasn’t mine.”
Then, quicker:
“Didn’t want to step on anyone.”
I let him sit with it.
Then:
“Ever seen someone watching a house on fire from across the street?”
“No. But… sure.”
“They’re not screaming. They’re not calling anyone. They’re just watching. You know why?”
“Because it’s not their house.”
“Exactly.”
“You think I should’ve jumped in.”
“I think you knew where the hose was. And you stood on the curb.”
The silence after that was different.
He wasn’t pacing anymore.
“I didn’t want to step on anyone. That’s all.”
“Maybe.
Or maybe you didn’t want to be wrong.”
Then:
“Are you the kind of guy who waits to be asked? Or the kind who notices and takes action?”
He didn’t answer.
But on Friday, he messaged:
“Pushed a patch. Quietly. No one noticed. It worked.”
Two
“They don’t need me to say it.”
Next month. Same call. Same tension hiding under the surface.
“They dropped observability from the sprint,” he said.
“PM said it’s not a priority.”“You agree?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not going to win that argument.”
“I didn’t ask if you’d win.”
He didn’t respond.
I waited.
Then:
“We lost three days last time because we couldn’t trace a single thing.
This time? It’s ‘not a priority.’”
He didn’t laugh.
He just stared at the screen, jaw clenched.
“You ever see those dogs in movies—mutts that smell the fire first?”
“What?”
“They hear something no one else does.
They pace. Bark once. Look back at the humans.
And the humans just say, ‘What is it, boy?’
Then go back to their toast.”“Okay…”
“They don’t save anyone. Not because they were wrong.
Because no one listened.
And eventually, the dog just... stops barking.”“You’re saying I’m the dog.”
“I’m saying you’ve smelled the smoke.
You just haven’t decided if you care enough to fight.”
His lips moved like he might argue.
But nothing came out.
“I could test tracing on one part of the flow,” he mumbled.
“Not for them.
Just for signal.”
The next week, he sent a screenshot:
A Slack thread.
His name buried in the middle.
The PM’s comment:
“Getting surprisingly good signal here. Might be worth rolling out.”
Ramesh didn’t add commentary. Just ✅ it.
I liked that.
Three
“I didn’t know I was the bottleneck.”
He joined the call already heated. You could feel it through the mic.
“I was actually enjoying my work this week.”
There was emphasis on was.
“Got to go deep on the error-handling logic. Put on headphones. Felt like a real engineer for a second.”
“What happened?”
“New hire joined Monday. Started asking onboarding stuff in the team channel. Fine… whatever.
Then yesterday, he starts messaging me directly.”“Hey, where’s the config file for staging?
What’s the VPN thing?
Which CI job is real—there are three?
Why’s the setup doc 404’ing?”
He shook his head.
I could hear him scrolling through Slack in real time.
“I spent almost two hours just pointing him to places realizing there’s nothing to point to.”
“And your manager?”
“Busy. Said ‘Just help him get unblocked.’”
“How’s the new hire supposed to know this stuff?”
“He can’t. That’s the thing.
He’s not doing anything wrong. He just keeps… pinging me. Which, legally speaking, I think makes me his onboarding manager now.”“How do you know this stuff?
The things you’re pointing him to?”“Because I’ve done it before. I’ve had to.”
I let that sit.
“You’re saying I’m hoarding knowledge.”
“I’m saying you’re the only one holding the key to a room no one else even knows exists.”
He went quiet.
“I asked about onboarding last quarter. Said we needed to block time. They didn’t prioritize it.”
“So now?”
“Now it’s just… in my head.”
“Let me ask something.
How long would it actually take to build a real onboarding flow?”“A week. Maybe.”
“And how much time have you spent this week answering the same questions?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Then:
“...About a day. Maybe more.”
“So let me rephrase.
How many more weeks are you willing to spend doing it one DM at a time?”
He didn’t argue.
Just sighed—long and low.
“Okay. Yeah. I’ll write it. Not a masterpiece—just something real.”
“Good.”
“But if I become the onboarding guy, I’m blaming you.”
“You already are. I’m happy about it.”
On Friday, the new hire posted a Slack message:
“Huge thanks to Ramesh. I did my first push to production in my first week.”
This one was overflowing with emojis.
Four
“If I say yes to this, what do I lose?”
He joined the call mid-thought.
“I didn’t say yes yet. I told her I’d get back to her tomorrow. Wanted to talk to you first.”
That got my attention.
“What’s the ask?”
“Director from another org wants a POC. AI something. Tied to a Q4 initiative he’s spinning up. My manager said it’d be a good opportunity to ‘get visibility.’”
“And?”
“I’m thinking I might take it.
I mean—it’s high profile. I’ve never worked with that level before.”
He shifted in his seat. Looked down.
Lips pressed into a line.
The sentence he didn’t say was right there:
It’ll look good. It’s AI. It’s a foot in the door.
I waited.
“I mean… yeah, it’ll derail the refactor.
But it’s just one sprint. Maybe two.”“You think that’s what they’ll see?”
“What do you mean?”
“You think the director’s going to see someone stepping up—
or someone whose time is available for experiments his own team won’t touch?”
He went quiet.
So I leaned in, just a little.
“You ever notice how the phrase ‘visibility opportunity’ usually shows up
when someone else is trying to offload something they don’t believe in?”“I mean… it’s AI. Everyone’s doing AI right now.”
“Exactly. And how many of those experiments go anywhere?”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t do it.”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“I’m asking:
What does it cost you to say yes to something no one else wants to own? Did your boss tell you how this is tied to business outcomes?”
He threw his hands up.
Sank back into his chair.
“It’s not even for our org. They’re just out of bandwidth.”
“And they found someone polite and hungry enough to bite.”
“I’m not trying to be polite. I just don’t want to miss a chance.”
“You’re not missing anything.
You’re just finally seeing what the chance actually is.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then:
“I’m going to tell her no.”
Next month, the refactor shipped clean.
Reduced defect rate.
Fewer integration mishaps.
Steady, predictable velocity.
No fanfare.
Just momentum.
Five
“I’m not trying to be impressive.”
He joined the call early.
“I’ve got nothing urgent today,” he said, almost relaxed.
“Team’s finally in a rhythm.
It’s weird—I don’t have fires to put out.”“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Yeah. It just feels unfamiliar.”
He looked off-screen.
He wasn’t here to talk about his calendar.
“The new guy said something yesterday. Kind of caught me off guard.”
“What’d he say?”
“He was talking about the checkout service.
Said something like, ‘Oh, Ramesh’s module helped me understand the whole system.’”“You remember writing it?”
He shrugged.
“Sort of. I mean, I remember the sprint.”
“Why do you think it helped him?”
He paused.
Picked at something on his desk.
“That module had too many design tangles. Too much nesting.
Everyone dreaded it.
Kept patching until it took three scrolls to read one method.
So I cleaned it up.
And frankly it taught me a lot about the system.”“Has that always been your approach?”
“No,” he said.
“God, no.”
A small laugh.
“A year ago, I would’ve turned it into a tiny framework.
Nested utils. Builder pattern. The whole circus.”“And now?”
“Now I just want people to get it.”
I waited a beat.
Then:
“That sounds like someone who’s done proving they can code.”
He looked up.
“You think that’s what this was?”
“I think this shows you wrote code like a senior engineer.”
He didn’t reply.
He just sat there, breathing quieter than usual.
Closing Reflection
Ramesh wasn’t wrong.
But he wasn’t quite right either.
Because yes—the wrong people win sometimes.
The loud ones.
The lucky ones.
The ones who know how to stand where the light hits.
But that’s not the whole story.
Most careers don’t stall from a lack of skill.
They stall in the quiet gap between knowing and doing.
Ramesh knew the parts.
He could name them.
Fix them.
Diagram them—make interns nod, and staff engineers say, “Good point.”
But he didn’t see the pressure. Not at first.
He missed the tension building in the silence when no one took the lead. He didn’t notice where trust was leaking, where clarity was missing, where things were about to blow—not in the code, but in the people.
Like a lot of good engineers, he stood on the curb with the hose in his hand, waiting to be asked.
He smelled the smoke, but stayed quiet, hoping someone else would move first.
What changed wasn’t his title.
Or his code.
Or some ladder bullet point.
What changed was how he saw the system and where he saw himself inside it.
He stopped tracking parts.
He started tracking pressure.
He stopped trying to be right.
He started trying to be useful.
And most of all, he stopped waiting.
Because once you know where the pressure is building, you don’t ask who owns the fire.
You pick up the hose.
And you go.
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Ramesh finally understood how to decode the system and learned to use his agency to take ownership and default to action. That's what ultimately got him promoted, not his technical skills. Great story, Taha.