Senior and above positions - senior engineer, senior 2 engineers, staff or principal engineers - at Big Tech are great places to be at. The compensation is incredible. The problems you can work on often really interesting.

At "Silicon Valley-like" companies and startups with healthy software engineering cultures, these positions often also exist. They're just as fun. And they usually come with great equity - an opportunity to get meaningful ownership of a growing company.

But how do you get into these positions?

An easy way in is if you're already a Staff Engineer at Google. Or at Facebook. Or at Uber. Or... you get the idea.

But what if you're not?

You'll want to talk with someone who works at these places and does these types of interviews. One of the staff engineers. Or engineering managers.

I was an engineering manager who's done over a hundred interviews like this at Uber, hiring dozens of senior and above engineers and engineering managers. I also built and tweaked custom interview loops for some of these positions and have mentored people interviewing for similar places.

Getting these positions is competitive. And it's not just about the interview, but what you did before, and how you present that work.

I'll send you drafts of preparation advice, where I share my raw thoughts and ideas on preparing for these interviews.

What can you do on your job, today, if you later want to get a shot at these positions?

How should you educate yourself, if you're not (yet) doing staff-level work at your current place?

What is senior+ scoped work, anyway?

These emails - and the advice - are free, and won't be published elsewhere. Please do not share the contents. They're my raw thoughts and advice I've yet to share in public. I'll be interested in what you think, and feedback you'll have.

I might turn the content into a paid course later on. If I do, I'll let you know, and you can unsubscribe any time.

I hope you'll find the advice and tips as useful as much I'll enjoy writing it: