[rndmswethrwawy]

My work at Amazon was building services with Java and Spring Framework. I got that job based solely on general "algorithms and code on a white board" skills. My resume at the time was a scatter shot of some past Java work (Amazon doesn't really care) and some iOS stuff back in the early days of the app store.

I wanted to do something more systems focused, which prompted my departure. I am a capable systems programmer -- not sure why, systems stuff just "click" for me, but honestly I feel most of the value I bring to the table is as a generalist with at least "toy" experience doing a lot of other things. Particularly building systems software, work higher up in the stack helps with understanding what various workloads actually care about.

I like to think I'm one of those T-shaped people Valve describes.

I am not a manager (I'm an engineering lead). I'm ok at corporate politics -- I suspect a lot of people think I'm a pain in the ass, but I get quiet email's thanking me for being a pain in the ass from other people. Mostly I'd say my career/comp has benefitted from a optimizing for the reality of my job versus what I think I should have to optimize for. What's obviously valuable to me isn't necessarily obviously valuable to others. The ability to explain the value of my (and my team's) work so that others can recognize it is part of the job. This is particularly true as I advance -- a pre-launch executive review is basically an annual self evaluation with more on the line. The same metrics-driven approach works for both. Advancing past line-engineer in the big five means shipping successful products, and shipping means convincing executives with broad responsibility and limited context. If you don't do it, how can you be sure someone else will?

So, all of the above? Politics will probably take you further faster. Management (unless you're bad at it) is almost universally acknowledged to be an easier path to career advancement than being an individual contributor. I like being an engineer, though, so basically I optimize for how little of the other two I can do to maximizing the "useful" engineering I do (where "useful" is defined as engineering that ships, delivers value to customers, and ships in a product I can be proud of -- that last one is more important to me than comp, but I'd never let my boss know that).