Hard Work Isn’t Enough: You Need a Strategy to Become a Senior Engineer
The mindset and strategy shift that moves you to senior roles
Most Engineers Only “Hope” Instead of “Plan”
I’ve seen this pattern: Most engineers get stuck in their careers because they wait.
They wait for their manager to notice their hard work.
They wait for someone to say, “You’re a senior engineer now.”
Some managers might see it. But for many of us, that moment never comes.
In my experience, mid-level engineers have no problem with execution such as finishing tasks and delivering projects.
But here’s the problem: Most engineers rely on “hope” to get to senior roles. They rely on their manager to notice their effort, create a plan, and tell them what to do to get promoted.
Hope is Not a Strategy
Managers are busy. They have their own issues to handle. Yes, some managers pay attention to your career growth, but most don’t if you don’t speak up.
Most of the time, getting to a senior role is an outcome of strategy. Working hard alone does not get you to senior roles. You get to senior roles by working on clearly aligned goals and matching the expectations of the next level.
What Strategy Actually Means in Your Career
Career strategy is simpler than you think.
It is clarity about what matters, and actions that move you toward it.
Strategy stops you from optimizing the wrong things. And it makes your growth visible to the people who evaluate you.
Like any software project, your career strategy has three parts:
Knowing where you are & your goals
Knowing what your team needs
Creating impacts to close the gap
Let’s break these down.
1. Know Where You Are And Your Goals
You need clarity on questions like:
What am I already doing well?
What skills or behaviors are missing for the senior role?
What examples in the team represent “senior-level impact”?
When you talk to your manager about these questions, you gain clarity.
Your target becomes clear, and you’re improving toward that specific target.
This is the opposite of hoping someone magically recognizes your potential.
2. Know What Your Team Needs
Engineers often invest time into the things they think are valuable, but those tasks might not be valuable to the team.
Just as entrepreneurs do market research before building a MVP, engineers do “team research” before starting work.
They ask questions like:
What pain points frustrate the team most?
What business outcomes matter this year?
What roadmap items will resolve team bottlenecks?
You talk to PMs, EMs, senior devs, and teammates. Once you see the priorities, you start doing work that creates business values.
This is the difference between being “helpful” and being “essential.”
3. Create Impact to Close the Gap
Strategy is choosing work that gives you leverage.
It creates impact that converts to numbers or perceivable benefits, such as latency going down, incident rate going down, saving future time, etc.
Two types of work to consider:
Early wins: Pick 1-2 things you can complete quickly that make everyone’s life easier, such as fixing a flaky test or improving the deployment process. These build momentum and prove you’re thinking beyond your own tasks. They are also immediately visible.
A stretch project: This is your showcase. Choose something challenging but achievable in 2 to 3 months. Ideally, it involves multiple people, teams, or stakeholders. Seniority is measured by scope of impact. Refactoring code in isolation won’t get you noticed. Leading a technical initiative that improves how three teams work together is senior-level work.
The key is to be selective. You can’t do everything. You need to choose work that creates impacts. While it helps the entire team, it demonstrates senior thinking.
Note that work should create impact for not just yourself but to the entire team. That’s the essence of being a senior developer: acting like a technical leader.
That’s what stands out during performance reviews.
The Visibility Trap
Even if you have strategy, you should optimize for impact, not visibility.
You might remember those colleagues who care only about visibility. They only work on requests from managers. They are not the most likable among other teammates. They never disagree with leadership, even when they’re wrong. They only contribute to projects where managers are paying attention.
That’s not strategy. That’s performance.
Don’t become that person.
Being strategic means more than visibility. It means choosing work that creates real impact and making sure that impact is understood.
My Recommendation: A 90-day Roadmap
If you want to take this further, apply strategy to your career path.
If you want a clear, structured way to start, I recommend using the roadmap I’ve created: Stop Waiting for Recognition: The 90-Day Senior Dev Roadmap.
It walks you through:
✅ Find clarity on what “senior” actually means in your company
✅ Reveals opportunities in your team
✅ Turns effort into a repeatable system
In other words, it turns everything in this guide into a step-by-step plan you can use immediately.
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As always, I’ll see you in the next post. Have a nice day!
Adler from Tokyo Tech Lead