#11 - What Does Being A Senior Engineer Mean In The AI Era?

#11 - What Does Being A Senior Engineer Mean In The AI Era?

AI can now help engineers write code, generate tests, draft specs, review pull requests, and even suggest architecture ideas. So what happens when the visible output between junior and senior engineers starts looking increasingly similar? Do engineering levels still mean what we think they do? In this episode of Build With Maya, I explore how AI is changing engineering growth, career progression, and the signals teams use to assess capability. We’ll talk about: * Why the classical signals of senior-readiness is not relevant anymore * How growing faster doesn't equal to actual growth * The risk of confusing AI-assisted proposal with actual capability * What still differentiates engineers in the AI era If you're a software engineer, tech lead, staff engineer, or engineering manager navigating AI-assisted development, this episode is for you.

#10 - When Senior Engineers Should Push Back (And When Not To)

"Choose your battle well" Being a good engineer means sometimes you need to push back. But not everything is worth pushing back. And that's the part where we move from being good to being senior engineer - decide when it's worth it. In this episode, I talk about one of the hardest parts of our engineering work: deciding when to push back and where our energy can actually changes the outcome. We’ll cover: * Why pushing on everything reduces your influence * How to identify decisions that actually matter in long term * Why timing matters * How AI makes it harder by suggesting "better" options * Practical 3-question model to help in your decision making process. If you’ve ever wondered "should I speak up or just move on?", this is the episode for you.

#9 - Why Alignment Is Harder Than It Looks

If something feels obvious to you but not to your team, it’s probably not a communication problem. In this episode of Build With Maya, I talk about why alignment is harder than it looks. It is not because people don't communicate well, but because they’re working with different context. We’ll get into: * Why explaining something clearly doesn’t always create agreement * How different experiences lead to different conclusions * What actually changes as you grow from trying to convince to making context visible If you’ve ever walked out of a discussion thinking "why can't we align on things", this episode is for you. Follow Build With Maya if you’re interested in how engineers actually think and work through real problems.

#8 - The Seniority Trap: Why "More Skills" Won't Save Your Career

Learning more won't get you to senior , thinking differently will. As engineers move from junior to mid-level, mid-level to senior, there’s often this pressure to learn more tools, frameworks, especially now with how fast AI is evolving. As if that's the way to level up, or stay relevant. But "learning more" can quietly become a trap. In this episode, I talk about what actually changes as you grow as an engineer, and why seniority is less about expanding your skill set, and more about shifting your perspective. It's about learning when not to build something. We’ll get into why choosing the right problems matters more than solving them perfectly, and why growth at this stage has less to do with tools, but more on decision-making. If you’ve ever felt stuck trying to move from mid-level to senior, this episode is for you.

#7 - The Work No One Assigns You

A lot of the work that actually makes systems succeed… never shows up in a ticket. In this episode, I talk about the kind of engineering work that isn’t assigned, tracked, or measured, but quietly becomes your responsibility over time. Things like noticing risks early, asking questions no one asked, or connecting gaps across teams. This is usually where the shift to seniority starts. Not by doing more tasks, but by seeing more of the system. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing work that “doesn’t count” on paper, this episode is for you.