Top 7 Software Engineering Insights of 2024

Every year on New Year’s Eve, I take a few friends hiking to watch the sunrise from one of the nearby mountains. While we primarily bond and enjoy each other, these moments often spark reflections on both the closing year and the one ahead.

In 2024, I challenged myself to grow in multiple areas of my life. In my engineering journey, I pushed myself across various domains. I immersed myself in books, content, and newsletters, developing perspectives on everything from specific technical topics to broader concepts.

These efforts led to many “aha” moments, though they also left me with a somewhat chaotic mind map that needed organizing.

This inspired me to conduct an exercise: identifying the top 7 ideas, thoughts, and reflections I discovered in this closing year. Maybe you’ll find them inspiring too.

Users First, Technology Second#

David Farley, in his popular book Modern Software Engineering, notes that during his career, he experienced only a few truly groundbreaking changes in the industry: the transition from Assembly to C, and the advent of Object-Oriented Programming.

In modern JavaScript, we get new shiny tools every month or so. But the truth is, they don’t really change the game.

Everything we need to build products people will love is already there and has been available for many years.

Users don’t care whether you built your app with Remix, Next, Astro, Qwik, or anything else. They care only about the value you promised to deliver.

This doesn’t mean we should ignore technology – it’s still important, and there are many factors to consider while building the tech vision.

But ultimately, technology is there to deliver value to users. That’s why they must come first.

Relationships Drive Career Growth#

I’ve always believed in the power of honest, strong relationships. Being people-centric, empathetic, and actively listening to others not only opens many doors but, more importantly, makes you a better human.

Though it seems obvious now, I didn’t fully understand how profoundly it could shape one’s career until I read TkDodo’s take on how his exceptional community contributions eventually led to his role at Sentry.

This has been inspiring in two ways.

First, it’s wonderful to see people receiving recognition for their outstanding work.
Second, it made me question how I can contribute more to the community, building meaningful relationships and peer networks along the way.

For now, I’m starting with this blog and some modest social media activity. I hope to do some OSS contributions too. Let’s see what the future brings.

Understanding the Staff Engineer Role#

As I approach the Staff position in my company, I’ve invested significant time exploring what “Staff Engineer” truly means, particularly within my organization’s context. I’ve delved deep into this topic through excellent books and articles by Tanya Reilly, Will Larson, and Gergely Orosz. I also discussed it with many people.

While I’m still processing hundreds of thoughts and insights I’ve noted down, one idea nicely summarizes everything:

A Staff Engineer is not simply a “better senior”.

It’s a completely different paradigm of thinking, working, and behaving – with different goals, impact, and perspective. Though it builds on senior-level skills, the role requires many additional competencies to be successful.

Of course, this is a generalization, as Staff positions vary significantly between companies. Still, this understanding resonates with me and justifies the hard work I’ve put into grasping all the “additional” elements.

I’m pretty sure I’ll write about this more this year.

People Skills Drive Success#

Among many valuable insights I found in Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track by Will Larson I really liked this one:

Your career depends more on being easy to involve than being technically correct.

And I cannot agree more.

While I’m fully aware there’s a tremendous amount of techinical-related things I’m supposed to know but don’t, I’m not scared of this anymore. Instead, I embrace it, communicating openly and transparently.

Because if there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that when I say I’ll deliver something, I’ll do it no matter what. This self-trust has allowed me to take charge of my career journey in many ways:

Asking for more impactful work.
Proactively navigating my career, e.g. by setting goals and seeking feedback.
Learning from others and building stronger relationships.

The fact is, you are the only person responsible for your career. And the only way to shape it how you want is to communicate well, be easy to work with, speak openly about your goals and struggles, while delivering meaningful work. This really does the job.

Best Mentors Are Around You#

One of the things from The Software Engineer’s Guidebook by Gergely Orosz that inspired me to act right away was the chapter about mentoring.

It’s nothing new – the idea of learning from more experienced people (or people with expertise in different fields) has a thousand-year tradition. However, I found it quite hard to implement in real life, mostly because I felt like it was a one-way relationship. The truth is – it’s not.

Mentoring helps both the mentor and the mentee grow.

Building on the previous learning, I decided to act in two ways:

Identifying people from whom I can learn by observing their work style and role modeling it.
Approaching some of them openly, asking if they would be willing to engage in such a relationship – without any hard commitments, just to see where it takes us.

And guess what – it worked.

Now, I have not only gained their support and guidance but also developed a much broader understanding of the company’s struggles and challenges, which helps me better identify meaningful work.

Want somebody to mentor you? Look around, and just ask politely, without expecting a hard commitment.

Everyone Should Be Opinionated#

Speaking of mentoring, one key piece of feedback I’m receiving is that I should be more opinionated. I believe this stems from being a natural people pleaser – I try to understand everyone’s thinking before clearly defining my own position.

While this isn’t inherently wrong, there are situations where a leader needs to, well, lead.

So from now on, whenever I’m asked to share my opinion (whether in PR discussions, Slack threads, or elsewhere), I try to follow the principle of:

Strong opinions weakly held.

The process is fairly simple:

Identify what I truly think about the given problem.
Express it in a clear, polite way.
Listen to feedback and remain open to both possibilities – either reinforce my point of view if I still believe it’s valid, or acknowledge when someone else has a better perspective.

This might seem like a minor change, but it’s already bringing great results. Not only do I feel I have space to express my point of view, but I’ve found that these opinion-driven discussions are powerful growth booster.

Making Technical Content Fun Is an Art#

Sometimes I get the impression that the tech community, including myself, is too serious. This is understandable, as engineering is a true passion for many of us.

While I have no problem with that, I really enjoy watching people who stand out from the crowd. Cassidy Williams, or Wes Bos – just to name a few who first come to mind – are great examples of how you can make your personality your greatest ally. I love how they add a fun twist to their content, not only delivering technical value but also making it engaging.

They say you don’t truly know something if you cannot teach it. I’d add one level on top of that: you don’t truly know something if you cannot teach it in a fun way ;)

This is something I’d like to eventually achieve for myself, especially since I find it tricky because of the language barrier. But one day, maybe. Who knows?