John Kim on YouTube · Open on YouTube
Orientation · Explorer · Lesson 2 of 98 · 17 min video, then about 45 min of practice
The career ladder: junior, mid, senior, staff
After this you can explain how expectations change from junior to staff engineer and where this roadmap's later phases sit on that ladder.
Why it matters
This roadmap does not stop at your first job, because the career does not. The levels are not about years served; they are about scope. A junior completes well-defined tasks with help. A mid-level engineer owns features. A senior owns systems and makes the people around them better. A staff engineer shapes technical direction across teams, mostly through writing and influence rather than code. Read a real career framework, not just a video. Notice how quickly the expectations shift from 'writes correct code' to 'writes design documents, leads incidents, mentors, and makes good decisions with incomplete information'. Those later skills are the ones almost nobody teaches, and they are the back half of this roadmap. Trap: level names and pay vary enormously between companies. Use the ladder to understand the shape of the career, not to predict a title.
How to use this resource
A staff engineer walks through each level with what is expected and roughly what it pays. US big-tech pay, so treat the numbers as an upper bound.