Beyond the Opening Moves: Playing the Long Game to Senior
summary
Is a senior engineer at Adobe and has 7.5 years there, working across three cities, four projects and three teams; maps career stages to chess to argue promotion requires sustained impact not a title. Offers concrete practices: keep a running doc of wins (uses MacBook Notes daily), ask for feedback and action it, seek manager‑sponsored stretch assignments, contribute to open source or internal tooling, mentor to solidify learning, demo work to increase visibility.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction and personal career journey
- 1:46How chess works and promotion basics
- 3:55Career progression from junior to senior
- 6:28Building your village as a junior engineer
- 8:35From pawn to protected pawn in your career
- 10:20Strategies for mid-level engineers to grow
- 11:45Overcoming stagnation and shifting your path
- 13:14Why titles matter less than your impact
- 14:19Actionable steps to track your growth and wins
- 16:31Demonstrating your work and self-awareness
- 17:56Doing hard things to stand out in your career
- 18:59Life lessons from chess and career resilience
- 20:41You control your career and life at the board
- 21:06Q&A and closing remarks
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