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High Growth Engineer
Grow faster in your software engineering career with actionable tips you can use right away. Written by a Sr. Staff Software Engineer at Pinterest. Click to read High Growth Engineer, by Jordan Cutler, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Engineering management / careersAI / MLSoftware / engineering practice
- Posts
- 117 from 26 Mar 2023 to 14 Jun 2026
- Posting
- monthly (7 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
- Feed
- https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/feed
2026 3
2025 27
- How to Build Your First ChatGPT App
- My weekly tech industry intake routine as a Staff Engineer
- Top 5 Communication Frameworks for Engineers You Must Remember
- Never forget how to delegate. This is the easiest framework for engineers.
- My 2025 Software Engineering Desk Setup
- A One-Pager Is All You Need
- Operating Principles That Guided Me to Staff Engineer (Part 2: Expanding Influence)
- Operating Principles That Guided Me to Staff Engineer (Part 1: Driving Impact)
- 5 Tiny Phrases Every Engineer Should Use With AI
- How to tell when AI is lying to you
- Communicate like a Senior: Add the (right) context
- The 5 levels of communicating impact as an engineer
- My (mostly) minimalistic AI setup as a Senior Engineer in Big Tech
- 🚫 Stop building AI agents. Here’s what you should build instead
- 2025 Guide to Prompt Engineering in your editor for Software Engineers
- How to use the AI-boom to level up in your career and land a job
- 3 Ways to make impact as an engineer using OpenAI Codex or Claude Code
- How to turn chaos into clarity with Investigation Docs as an engineer
- How AI Chatbots are built (behind the scenes look)
- MCP (Model Context Protocol): Simply explained in 5 minutes
- Unspoken git secrets that save you mountains ⛰️ of time as an engineer
- Engineer to CEO in 3 years: These key lessons got me there
- Frameworks for Managing Up as a Software Engineer
- 6 Must Have Software Engineering Templates
- 3 Mistakes to avoid when writing your performance review
- How to build an AI side project using AI in 2025
- Happy 2025 High Growth Engineer 🎉
2024 47
- High Growth Engineer Update/Break
- The one framework every engineer should know
- How I got 27 hours in a week by installing one tool
- 5 Frameworks To Master Communication And Influence As An Engineer
- 5 Lessons I learned the hard way from 10+ years as a software engineer
- How to get past "no" and beat cross-functional friction as a software engineer
- Out With the Old: 3 Steps for a Successful Software Migration Plan
- 3 Career Principles that got me to Director at Google
- 5 Keys to the Hiring Manager Interview from a Meta Senior Manager
- The #1 Mentorship Mistake I Made Which Held Back My Growth
- 7 Must-Know Lessons To Be A Better Engineer From Top Industry Leaders
- A 3-step framework to never get down-leveled in your behavioral interviews again
- My Tech Promotion Algorithm
- The 3 Big Mistakes That Almost Cost Me My Promotion (And How You Can Avoid Them)
- How to Communicate With Impact as a Software Engineer
- How to say "No" and win back your time as a software engineer
- What a Home Designer turned Software Architect can teach you about Software Design
- Why perfectionism destroys your productivity, and what to do instead
- How to influence with data as a software engineer
- Communicate like a Senior: How to write well (Part 1)
- Managing up: 3 things I wish I realized sooner
- How I plan my week as a Senior Engineer in Big Tech
- How to get promoted: Lessons from an ex-Amazon VP
- Communicate like a Senior: Phrases used by the best leaders
- The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Rockstar Product Engineer
- What an actual Staff and Senior Engineer collaboration looks like
- 7 Tips to Crush Your Onboarding from An Apple Staff Engineer
- 5 Powerful Lessons From My Opinionated Mentor
- Communicate like a Senior: Use clear deltas
- My Mentee Went From Junior -> Senior Engineer in less than 2 years. Here's how.
- Why reading whitepapers takes your career to the next level (and how to do it)
- Never struggle to give feedback again (even to your manager)
- How I setup my terminal for max productivity
- Exactly what to say in code reviews
- How to get deep, technical expertise as an engineer
- Why I write a newsletter every week even with a full-time software engineering job
- Engineering Crits at Figma: Interview with Laura Pang
- How to lead projects from start to finish as a software engineer
- 5 Lessons I learned the hard way from 6 years as a software engineer
- Guide to Leading Meetings for Software Engineers
- I wish I started doing this on day 0 of my career as an engineer
- The Making of a Senior Engineer 💡: Guest Post by Addy Osmani
- 2024 Guide to Mentoring for Software Engineers
- Simple tricks to level up your technical design docs in 2024 👌
- 9 key lessons learned on my path from Engineer to VP 🔑
- Taking Time Off as an Engineer: Why, How Much, and When Explained
- How to get 💩 done as a software engineer
2023 40
- 2024 Guide to Goals for Software Engineers
- Software engineer side hustle: Making $30k+ and 35k subs in less than 1 year
- Becoming a go-to person gets you promoted. Here's how to do it as a software engineer.
- Lead and Influence: Insights from an Ex-Uber Staff Engineer
- 6 tiny wording tweaks to level up your communication as a software engineer
- 7 Books That Transformed My Career as a Software Engineer
- Framing: The Essential Communication Concept Every Software Engineer Must Know
- A Guide to Public Speaking for Software Engineers
- 7 Types of Difficult Coworkers and How to Handle Them
- Continuous growth in tech: 50+ Resources I swear by as a Senior Software Engineer
- Boost Your Tech Career: More Interviews, Offers, and Higher Pay
- Top 7 software engineering workflow tips I wish I knew earlier 🧰
- You and your manager: 3 ways to work better together and get what you want
- Influence: Lessons from a Staff Engineer and ex-Twitter 8-year Tech Lead
- Building your brand: How I reached 10k subscribers in 6 months
- The Journey to Staff Engineer: Main takeaways
- Becoming the Mentor You Wish You Had: A Guide for Software Engineers
- Winning Over Your Product Manager and Designer as a Software Engineer
- Mentorship’s Role in my Staff Promotion
- Everything you wish you could ask your manager: Main takeaways
- "I have a mentor." Now what?
- Starting Your First Engineering Job: A Survival Guide
- 12 Essential Debugging Tools for Software Engineers
- Mastering Presentations and Demos for Your Team
- Avoiding 3 Common Code Review Mistakes: Lessons Learned
- Turning Technical Disagreements into Wins for Your Team
- New Grad to Senior Engineer in 2 years: Guest post & summary
- How to make difficult technical decisions you and your team won't regret
- Avoiding 3 Common Mistakes in Performance Reviews
- Being blocked sucks. Here's what to do when it happens
- The Life-Changing Impact of Having a Mentor in Tech
- How to maximize your productivity and growth with AI, without overwhelming yourself
- Everything top software engineering creators wish they knew early on
- How you can ~1.5x your salary through negotiation
- How to get estimates right 95% of the time ✅
- 5 Ways to Improve Your Slack Communication as an Engineer
- Navigating Job Searches During Layoff Periods: Advice for Engineers
- What The Mandalorian can teach you about approaching difficult conversations at work
- Fast-track your career: From Junior -> Senior engineer in 2 years
- Making Yourself Known at Work: Strategies for Visibility