[rockostrich]

This pretty much hits the nail on the head. (3) is necessary for companies with engineering orgs that are most than a 50 or so people, but if you join when it's smaller then it takes less than 3 years. Especially since (1) is kind of a necessity at a smaller company to be successful in general and you most likely won't even have a team lead type manager if the company is smaller so you need to kind of take on that kind of role anyway.