Mentor Articles
Everybody Agrees You Should Hire Junior Engineers. Almost Nobody Does.
A colleague, Charles Penn, asked me recently what I thought the future looked like for junior engineers. He’s someone who always keeps the human element in view, and he’d been reading the same things I had. Juniors wondering out loud whether they’d be unhirable in a few years. Companies saying the quiet part out loud: […]
3 Things Our 2026 Interns Learned About Trust and Bad Questions
Another summer at SEP is wrapping up, which means another round of interns has spent the last few months writing real code, asking real questions, and getting a real look at what it’s like to build software that matters. We asked our 2026 interns to look back on their summer. Left to right: Evan Dossett, […]
What Does It Mean to be a Senior Engineer?
As a team lead, I coach and mentor many junior engineers. One topic that always comes up is “What does it mean to be a Senior Engineer?” That’s easy, you just… have a four-year degree from an accredited college? Work for 10 years and don’t get fired? Learn 3 front-end technologies? Check some boxes on […]