I don't think I am anything special nor was I a super go-getter and I've moved up fine in the same time span (came in as an ~associate, moved up to senior in ~2 years, got principal in 1.5 years, sat around high-level senior / defacto tech lead for a few years until I finally got a break with an actual lead title).
You are either in too big of a pond (ie: you should work in a smaller place to have a bigger impact) or you are too focused on your own work to appear as someone worth bringing up.
I am not a boomer but if you are a software engineer who is wanting to move up past associate and especially senior, you need to be looking out for others, mentoring, writing documentation on why certain decisions were made; something more than just nose in the code.
The adage of "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" is kinda true. You don't even have to kill yourself for it either. I did the 10+ hour days for a year as a junior then I realized no one I wanted to care cared nor saw it as a point of pride.
I'm not doing shit now. I gave up a few years ago. I was an acting senior dev for a year and a tech lead for another. I had great reviews and was performing beyond my role. I was involved in stretch assignments/groups too. I even had a tech lead from another team I was working with send an email to my manager praising my help. Then that project was outsourced and I helped bring the sourcing team to speed.
I went to another area of the company and volunteered to be a security champion (above my level at the time) which turns out I was the only one for 6 teams across 2 departments. I had awesome reviews from the people I worked with on this. I volunteered for other assignments too and "won" (asshole manager would give teo people a task that one person could do to see who would step up). I was a regular attendee and contributor at the tech lead and manager meetings (like a design/architecture/SoS for the app). When I was leaving that team one of the tech leads asked what role I was taking on a different team. I told them it was a midlevel dev. They then asked why I was taking a demotion - they thought I was a senior dev the whole time. Maybe just to be polite, but a few others echoed the same sentiment at hearing that.
The security and tech lead years were a lot more than being in the code. In fact, I was focused on a lot of PM related stuff during the tech lead year and feel my lack of coding actually hurt me in the future because I was no longer coding on a daily basis but doing stuff like coordinating, troubleshooting, etc. So then I wasn't as fast at actual coding.
I don't think I am anything special nor was I a super go-getter and I've moved up fine in the same time span (came in as an ~associate, moved up to senior in ~2 years, got principal in 1.5 years, sat around high-level senior / defacto tech lead for a few years until I finally got a break with an actual lead title).
You are either in too big of a pond (ie: you should work in a smaller place to have a bigger impact) or you are too focused on your own work to appear as someone worth bringing up.
I am not a boomer but if you are a software engineer who is wanting to move up past associate and especially senior, you need to be looking out for others, mentoring, writing documentation on why certain decisions were made; something more than just nose in the code.
The adage of "dress for the job you want, not the job you have" is kinda true. You don't even have to kill yourself for it either. I did the 10+ hour days for a year as a junior then I realized no one I wanted to care cared nor saw it as a point of pride.