Progressing a technical career requires hardwork and a vision on what you are trying to achieve. Assorted career advice can be found here.
Career Path
When thinking about your career path, you often start as Junior Software Developer, through learning and hard work you progress to Software Engineer. This is the backbone of a team, and a solid, but undeveloped individual contributor. Technical careers become interesting after this point, as they generally break into two tracts: senior individual contributors and technical leaders. This does not mean that you cannot jump between tracts, for example this hackernews thread on SSE to Engineering Manager. As a leader, you will need to develop a career ladder that supports both tracts.
- Senior Individual Contributors
- Technical leadership
- Tech Lead
- Lead
- Director
- Executive