Growing Into a Senior Engineer Without Burning Out

I spent my third year as an engineer convinced that output was the only lever I had. I shipped a lot. I also stopped sleeping properly and started resenting a job I genuinely loved.

Scope is a skill, not a gift

The jump from mid to senior had almost nothing to do with typing speed. It was about choosing the right problem and making the decision legible to everyone else.

• Write the one-page design doc, even for a two-day task. It surfaces disagreement early, when it's cheap.
• Say what you are not doing. Explicit non-goals kill more scope creep than any estimate.
• Leave a trail: PR descriptions, ADRs, comments explaining why, not what.

Protect the deep work block

Two uninterrupted hours beat a fragmented eight. I block mornings, ship the hard thing, and spend afternoons on reviews, pairing, and the human parts of the job.

Burnout rarely comes from hard work. It comes from hard work that nobody sees the point of — including you.

If you're grinding and stalling at the same time, the problem is usually direction, not effort.