Why Your Progress Is About The Same As Everyone Else's

Why do senior engineers feel stuck while peers advance faster

Progress feels invisible because you're comparing against survivorship bias—the engineers you see succeeding publicly aren't representative of the full distribution. Understanding how to measure your own growth against realistic baselines, rather than curated examples, changes how you evaluate career momentum and skill development.

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Questions this essay answers

  • How do I accurately measure my progress as an engineer against realistic benchmarks?
  • Why does my career growth feel slower than peers I see on social media?
  • What's the difference between actual progress and visible progress in software careers?
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