The Ultimate Sprint Retro: My 10 Years of Software Engineering

The piece maps a ten-year journey from a fresh graduate thrown into production code to an engineering manager leading a multi-disciplinary team. Each year is distilled to the single focus that mattered most, showing that deliberate, incremental growth beats vague long-term visions. The author argues that real leadership emerges when you consistently expand the scope of your impact, not when you chase titles.

In the first two years the story underscores the importance of raw coding practice and self-reliance. The author describes building a core feature with no prior examples, learning the gulf between academic and production code, and then shifting from "get it done" to "get it done right" by improving naming, documentation, and testability. Those early habits form the technical foundation for later design work.

Years three and four bring system design, technical debt, and communication challenges. The author highlights the shock of speaking with sales and users, the danger of assumptions, and the need to over-communicate requirements. Confronting out-of-date architecture and advocating for simplicity become the catalyst for influencing team standards and reducing waste.

From year five onward the narrative pivots to people management, discipline, and mental resilience. The author describes naturally taking on coordination roles, adapting communication styles to diverse personalities, and building personal routines that sustain energy. The pandemic period emphasizes the value of hybrid work dynamics and philosophical grounding for stability.

The final years focus on engineering management: hiring, mentoring, establishing processes, and staying hands-on while shaping strategy. Key takeaways include the exponential benefit of mentorship, the power of "good enough" solutions, and the necessity of continuous learning beyond the eight-hour workday. The article provides a concrete, year-by-year template for technical leaders who want actionable guidance on scaling their influence.