(a friend recently got a new job, a very senior role, very well paid, and pretty different from his previous gig. he was asking me how to do a 60 to 80-hour week, how to do well enough to get promoted, etc. and as we talked, I realised he was feeling a bit of imposter syndrome and really wanted to prove himself. I ended up giving him a bit of a monologue. this is more or less what I told him.) okay, so this is the most common failure mode I’ve seen. I call it the senior engineer death spiral. it usually happens when an engineer goes into a new job, gets a promotion, or even just gets a big project at work. or they ask for a big project because they think to themselves, “oh, if I work harder, do a bigger thing, then I will be rewarded with promotions and what have you,” right? like, that’s the move. and the thing they do is they tell themselves they need to almost cosplay being a more senior engineer than they are.…