[itamarst]

You can imagine three levels of skill (https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/10/10/beyond-senior-softwa...):

1. Implement a solution someone already came up with.

2. Solve a problem someone gave you.

3. Identify problems.

The higher the level, the more valuable of an employee you are.

If you are level 2, you want to make sure your resume doesn't give the impression you're level 1. So for example, don't just list "I wrote some code", explain how you came up with this design, and why.

If you are level 3, you want to make sure your resume doesn't give the impression you're level 2. So make sure you explain how you identified the problem, and why it mattered.

[muzani]

It's really hard to put level 3 on a resume though. For example, I had a situation where we built a product from 0 to release in 2 weeks, got revenue and hundreds of buyers by the second month, without any funding. But just writing it that way doesn't make it clear whether it was luck, skill or the effort of colleagues.

[itamarst]

You can give context, and what you did.

"After noticing the need for X, I proposed we build Y. As a team we build an initial prototype, and within two weeks we had revenue and hundreds of buyers."

Example from my resume:

"I created a new product from scratch for the company. I researched user needs, explored the solution space (http://...), and then built Telepresence (http://...), a local development environment for Kubernetes. As of Feb 2019 the project had grown to 1600+ GitHub stars and is now a CNCF Sandbox project."

[system_sleep]

I imagine if you don't have enough content to show for level(n), it is okay to show some of the level(n-1) content that shows your natural upwards progression

[itamarst]

Right, you don't want to omit things you've done if they're relevant. But ideal is to show natural progression, or if not then aspiration. E.g. intro paragraph can say "I am looking for job where I can take on more responsibility, not just solving problems others found but also figuring out bigger picture strategy and how to meet organizational goals." and maybe an example if you've done it once or twice successfully.

[kat]

I would like to echo this. The statements on the resume should be "did x which caused y". The caused y part should be how valuable your contributions were. The more concrete you can write the better.

If you wrote unit tests for your code, "Wrote Unit tests, maintaining 80% coverage which reduced QA cycles and increased code quality". or "Programmed on a product for x Industry, facilitating x% faster workflows for the customer"

[itamarst]

Those statements are insufficient, since they don't say whose initiative it was to do the action. There's a big difference between "I wrote unit tests because my boss told me to" and "I spent 6 months pushing to fix our failing tests, and so was eventually given responsibility to do so".

[kat]

I agree. I would say that is the difference between a junior and a senior dev. "Spearheaded the adaption of unit tests, increased coverage from 0% to 90%" for a senior dev.

Everyone is a junior at some point in their career and I don't think there is anything wrong with doing what your boss tells you to do!