_tlo4

When working as a senior engineer, I've never been given enough business context to confidently say, for example, "this stakeholder isn't important enough to justify such a tight deadline". Doesn't that leave the business side of things as a mysterious black box? You can't do much more than report "meeting that deadline would create ruinous amounts of technical debt", and then pray that your leader has kept some alternatives open.

Just a misunderstanding, then - thanks for taking the time to clear it up, I appreciate it.

Strange that your company calls its tech leads "senior engineers", when every other company is going through title inflation! Hiring for those roles must be a pain.

I agree, but I think that input is limited to unopinionated information about the technical impact or user-facing impact of each task.

I don't think it can be said that senior engineers persuade their leaders to take one position or the other, because you can't really argue against a political or financial decision using technical or altruistic arguments, especially when you have no access to the political or financial context in which these decisions are made. In those conversations, "we need to do this for the good of the business" is an unbeatable move.

> Influencing without authority

> Getting work prioritized

> Developing 1YP+ plans for their areas

I was a little surprised by your list. Aren't these normally the responsibilities of a team lead or a manager? If I were hired as a senior engineer, I'd expect to be involved in group decisions about cross-cutting technical concerns (architecture, choosing languages and frameworks, the code review process), but changing my team's priorities would fall well outside the job description.

If somebody has the power to tell me what to prioritise, it feels topsy-turvy for them to ask me to tell them what they should tell me to prioritise. At that point, why have a leader at all?