From Mid-Level to Tech Lead: The Unspoken Path to Senior Developer

3 advice that can make you an 8-figure income.

Let’s Be Real: “Just Write More Code” Isn’t Enough Anymore. You have often heard these questions while giving interviews:

What percentage of your day goes into coding?
What are the other things, apart from coding, that you do?
How does your day look as a developer?

When I hit 3+ years in my dev career, I felt… stuck. It’s the same job I am doing, I was not able to clear the interviews, as I have to talk about my responsibilities apart from coding, which I didn’t do.

My Answer because of which I was facing countless rejections.

My work is when the ticket is assigned: Do the coding, test the feature, and deploy it.

Then I decided to talk to someone who could help me, so I connected with one of the experienced people on Topmate.

After which I got to know the real advice which helped me crack a salary, through which I was able to make an 8-figure income in 2 years.

And today I am going to share the same advice with you. So are you ready to crack yourself a jackpot?🎰

3 Advices That Changed My Life!!

Let’s kill the myth early:
Being a “Senior Developer” has less to do with years of experience and more to do with impact.

Here is our conversation in brief:

👨‍💻 Senior Developer: Neha, How does your day look as a developer?

🙎‍♀️ Me: We work as per agile methodology. We start with a sprint, then the tasks will be assigned to me, whether it's a feature, bug, or anything else. I complete those tasks, test them, and deploy them.

👨‍💻 Senior Developer: This is what you’re doing wrong when someone asks this question; they want to know what your contribution to the team is. As a developer, you’re fulfilling your duty, and it's just about coding for you.

The advice shared by him:

Advice 1:

When you want to grow as a senior, you have to show your contributions to the team, work and your company. You have to show that you’re elevating them and making a better team.

Ex- Instead of just saying that somebody assigned you tickets, this should be your go-to response.

“As a team, we discuss what our upcoming milestones are, what challenges we’re facing, based on that we discuss the priority of tasks and then create a whole sprint”

This shows that you’re not only responsible for delivering the tasks, but also an active member of your team in the decision-making.

Advice 2:

When you have to transition to a role, you already have to show your senior or hiring person what they expect from you in future, you’re already doing that, and this is how you can answer it:

“Once the tasks are sorted, I help them get assigned to appropriate member of my team. It's not a compulsion, but I take initiative as I regularly connect with my teammates and have an idea of their skills. I also help them navigate the difficulties while simultaneously working on my tasks. We as a team discuss ideas of how we can do better and grow as a team.”

This shows that not only do you perform your work, but you also help your team members or juniors when they’re stuck, you know your team members in a better manner. You take initiatives while doing the work and are not only surrounded by the tasks assigned to you.

Advice 3:

You also have to show that you’re ready to take responsibility for your team by navigating them through an actual example of your work, and this can be one of the responses.

“I also own the production releases of my team, and make sure everything goes smoothly. There was once a case where one of my team members forgot to test for an edge case because of which caused the whole production to go down. In this case my senior and I took the responsibility of handling the management, emailing to keep everyone up-to-date, fixing the bug, informing the team so that the case doesn’t escalate and we did it very smoothly because of which my manager has shown appreciation towards both of us.”

There can be n number of similar examples like this which you must have done in your life, use them to show that not only, you do your work as an active member, but also take ownership when nobody asks you to do that.

From Mid-Level to Tech Lead: The Unspoken Path to Senior Developer