What does "senior software engineer" actually mean? Why isn't being the smartest person in the room enough to get there? In this episode, I break down the real ingredients of engineering seniority: technical depth, the judgment you can only build by being catastrophically wrong in production, and the career trap of staying comfortable in a pond that stopped teaching you things.

Featuring a production incident when I was a mid-level engineer that ended up costing the company way more than my year's salary, and the moment the bosses laughed -- a reaction that quietly shaped everything that came after.

This episode is for software engineers who have ever wondered if they've actually earned the title, engineering managers trying to calibrate what they're hiring for, and anyone who's shipped something that worked in staging and absolutely did not work in prod.

Topics covered: senior engineer career growth, production incidents, engineering judgment, technical leadership, software engineering seniority, developer career advice, pair programming failures, and building experience as an engineer.

If you're building a career in software and you want the honest version of what it takes, not the LinkedIn version, this one is for you.

Hosted by Joanne Skiles: engineer, PhD, AWS Community Builder, Director of Engineering, professor, and someone who has definitely taken down prod.