Here’s another unsolicited career advice: at some point, every senior software engineer will have to make a decision on which track to focus. Up until that point, I believe the main objective should be to gain experience and try things: be exposed to many different technical challenges, languages, and engineering cultures as possible.

This is to get a better feeling of what clicks with us and understand what we don’t see ourselves doing in the future, building up to the point where we need to decide what to specialize on: technical leadership, management, or even individual contributor. Each of those paths has its own challenges, expectations, and prerequisites. It can even vary from company to company.

It’s not to say that once we decide on a path, we can’t change it afterwards. It’s just to avoid frustrations. And that’s what the “exposed to many things” objective gives us: perspective.

So don’t worry about building a career early on. Experiment, try, fail (as fast as possible), and get busy. And don’t forget to live, too.