Advice for his younger self, imposter syndrome, saying no to bad projects

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Ricky, a Google Staff Engineer, rapidly progressed from Junior to Staff by age 28, achieving significant compensation growth. Key factors to his promotion included balancing technical and soft skills, saying no to less impactful projects, and staying within a supportive team. Ricky faced imposter syndrome and stressed the role of luck and preparation in his success. He advises new grads to trust themselves more and act on ideas sooner.

28 Year Old Staff Engineer @ Google

and here i’m not even getting senior position.
working for pennies 😭😭

These posts are always a little cringe because they are selling a dream and are a little misleading about how to get there.
Getting to 500k+ at 28yo is about 95% luck and 5% skill. Find me 100 really well performing 22-year-old entry level engineers and only a few will get to this level even if they are all equally competent. The rest will toil away, often harder, and end up around 150-250k with a far lower title.
It’s not so much about grit and excellence as it is about being the right place at the right time. In this individual’s case they joined a mega company just before a worldwide epidemic that brought on a tech growth explosion that led to their rapid promotions.
In more normal times, like now, the same person would join and maybe get one promotion over those same 5 years. Maybe.
The post does at least acknowledge that it was 50% skill and 50% luck, but guarantee you there is a lot more luck involved than that. No one can follow in this person’s footsteps and have a reasonable chance of getting the same results.

Nice Salary, he probably use it to launch something later.

Until 28 I was also progressing rapidly and thought that I can do everything. I’ve been there, did everything he is doing. And suddenly after hitting 30 everything changed. Now I’m closing to 33 and feeling the burning already. It sucks, I tell you.

No developer is worth $527K/year.
If you earn that kind money the you stopped coding and only become some paper pusher creating an illusion that you are a programmer.