Shadowing Practice: Every Level of Engineering in 15 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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40 versus 400,000.

Same degree, different title.

Now, you know as well as I do that engineers make good money.

But believe me when I tell you there are levels to this.

Some are drowning in student debt, living paycheck to paycheck.

Some are barely pushing over the average salary.

And some make millions a year on top of more equity than you and I would know what to do with.

So today, we're going to lay out the rewards and responsibilities for each rung of the engineering career ladder, starting with a broke student at level zero,

going all the way up to one of one multi-millionaire CTOs.

And as always, we're giving you a real engineer's perspective on what this journey actually looks like, what you earn, what you do,

in my experience, on just how hard it is to move up.

And on that note, I'm willing to bet that you can't answer these two simple questions about engineering.

Fewer than 38% of my viewers got them both right.

Question one, what is the most common first job title for engineering graduates?

And two, how much can a principal engineer make at a top tech company?

Hold on to your answers, we'll come back to them.

Now let's get right into it.

I'm Engineer Joe, welcome to Engineering Insiders.

We start today with level zero, a student.

The bottom rung starts with a young engineer living in a dorm,

microwaving ramen, slamming caffeine, and desperately trying to figure out how to solve a three-page triple integral without going insane.

This is the standard night as an undergraduate, or at least it was for me.

Very broke, thousands of dollars in debt, struggling through late-night homework and labs, and killing time with friends in the dorms.

A simple life, one without many responsibilities besides passing your classes.

Now, these students don't even know what they're gonna have for breakfast tomorrow, let alone if they'll be in that minority that actually end up graduating with an engineering degree.

But they do know that they are dirt broke.

Most students didn't have jobs, but I worked at a few restaurants and then became a tutor to make a few bucks during my undergrad.

But I, like many other students, was thrown deep into debt.

In this tough but exciting stage of the ladder, the average American student is about $29,000 in debt.

But what do they have to show for their hard work and monstrous debt?

Well, most students don't make much money, if any.

So the rewards of this stage come with progressing through school, passing crazy hard classes, and building out their resumes.

Not necessarily monetary income.

But do you know what our undergrad saving grace is?

Internships!

Which brings us up to level 1, an engineering intern.

Our students growing up fast and is already in a real world engineering firm.

But do interns actually have real responsibilities or do they just grab coffee for other engineers?

Also, how much do they make?

Now we'll get to the uneven intern salaries, but first our undergrad has to earn it.

The internship can be very meaningful, full of real, stakeholder-impacting engineering work like testing satellite hardware,

3D modeling robotic arms, or running thermal simulations on jet engines.

It also can be extremely disheartening, slow, and downright boring.

In my experience this has more to do with the stage of the company rather than anything else.

For example, I've had friends land internships with massive defense companies and have terrible times.

Only doing things like updating documentation, very minor firmware or software changes.

Basically just following around other engineers and asking, begging for things to do.

On the other hand, if you join a startup, there will be no shortage of tasks.

Everyone is basically working five different jobs at once, and you could be doing real design engineering on very key facets of the company.

And real quick, a reminder to subscribe if you learn anything in this video.

It's free and really helps us out.

Thank you for your time.

Now the reward here is the experience you gain

that ultimately aids you in the quest of landing a full-time position later down the road.

But some internships can pay pretty freaking well, with the lowest coming in at $9,000 over a summer and the highest over $24,000 in the same summer.

Now just like our student, most of this money is spent on rent and other day-to-day expenses.

Maybe our engineer has a little bit of savings, but that student loan is pretty much still the exact same.

But I think our engineer has something up his sleeve.

Now he has some real world work experience, understand how the industry works a little bit, and has now graduated and is ready to take on a full-time role,

coming up on level two of today's ladder.

Which brings us right back to the first question I asked earlier.

What do we think is the most popular title after graduation?

The correct answer is C, an engineering intern, which 77% of my audience answered correctly, so good job to all of you.

If you're hired at a company with good company culture, you can find yourself in sports leagues with your coworkers, meeting a ton of cool new people and not really having much stress on your shoulders.

You're being introduced to one or two projects

and slowly starting to make impacts on testing new versions of products

or doing some of the more repetitive tasks that higher level engineers shouldn't waste their time on.

And oh yeah, you're getting paid.

Here's a few salaries for entry level engineers.

Not a bad deal in my opinion.

Personally, I started out with 80k salary right out of my

electrical engineering degree with a few healthy bonuses to sweeten the deal.

But this honeymoon phase does not last forever.

Before you know it, you're gaining responsibilities, starting to work late when deadlines are looming and actually being relied on to produce results.

Ugh!

All jokes aside, it is honestly very rewarding to gain responsibilities and be genuinely helpful to your project and team.

But naturally, with more With more responsibilities comes a new level of our career ladder.

Level 3 usually comes about the time you see an entire project from start to finish.

Anywhere between a year and like three years in, you'll start pushing to become a mid-level engineer.

Which by the way in the industry is usually just called level 2 engineer, but that doesn't fit the levels I laid out so ignore that.

Now this is the level where things get more real.

There's no hand holding and you're expected to start taking ownership of entire subsystems or projects more junior engineering.

You're now making impactful decisions, reviewing the work of interns and pushing the project forward even if no one tells you exactly how.

This freedom can be stressful but ultimately is pretty fun to work around.

Now depending on your company and performance, this is the phase where you start owning features or landing design reviews.

It's not uncommon to start mentoring interns or newer hires at this point too.

And guess what?

The pay bump reflects that added responsibility.

Now this is where I'm currently at in my career, landing code in our company repository, designing electronics boards with tight deadlines,

planning and executing entire test campaigns for satellite hardware, and mentoring interns on their tasks, results, and direction.

And honestly, I'm enjoying it.

Now engineers can stay in the stage for some two to five more years and then start pushing for level four, senior engineering, one of the most flexible,

respected, and well-paid roles in the industry.

But real quick, here's what I'm going to do for you.

If you have any questions you want to ask me, check out our discord.

I'm frequently in there, but no one really takes me up on this.

I started this channel to help students and I want to connect with more of you.

So hop in our discord, ask a question in general, and I'll get back to you.

Now that's all.

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Let's get back to the video.

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And we're at level four senior engineering.

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By this point, you've been in the industry for around five to eight years and people know who you are.

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You've shipped products, led critical efforts, and handled those Friday night emergencies that somehow always happen right before launch.

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You're not just building anymore, you're guiding.

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The senior engineers around me start to influence company direction, make calls on our satellite specs, make multi-million dollar design decisions, and negotiate product terms with vendors.

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And in many organizations, they're invited to early product meetings, budgeting sessions, or even patent discussions.

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And boy, are they paid for it.

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But all this comes at a cost.

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Your hairline, er, I mean your stress level.

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You are now measured by how well you lead others, de-risk projects, and influence results.

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It's not a small responsibility.

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And some engineers plateau here forever.

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Which honestly isn't a bad thing.

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Senior roles offer excellent pay, autonomy, and flexibility.

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If you're happy staying hands-on, you can ride this role for decades.

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But if you're not satisfied here, it doesn't end.

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The next big leap is becoming someone who defines architecture, strategy, and long-term company vision.

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This would be a lead or staff engineer.

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At this point, you can be anywhere from 8 to 20 years into your career.

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You're trusted and respected, and you're basically the person your co-workers come to when everything is on fire.

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And by the way, the titles can vary.

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It can be lead engineer, staff engineer, technical specialist, or even distinguished in some companies.

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But the essence is the same.

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You are driving major decisions and systems.

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You can picture it like this.

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If a senior engineer is responsible for thermal regulation of of a battery system in a car,

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staff engineers could be responsible for the thermal regulation for the entire vehicle across HVAC, battery, and software teams.

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And a key note that at this stage, we start to see a larger fan out of engineering expertise.

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Let me explain.

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In senior engineering and below, most engineers are very successful living in a single vertical.

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But once you reach staff engineering and beyond, you're required to pull from a wider range of knowledge, which only comes from years of studying and expertise.

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And another thing, this role can be pretty lonely.

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You might be the only staff engineer in your entire org chart, helping chart the future while still keeping a keen eye over the trenches.

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But this high responsibility definitely comes with a worthwhile salary.

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And if you think that's nice, just wait until you see what happens when you start managing people, budgets, and entire engineering organizations.

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What I'm referring to is level six, engineering management, which to me is similar to level five, but they're really just a divergence in career paths.

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You see, around the senior-ish engineer level, you'll face a fork in the road.

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Do you want to more deeply develop your engineering skills or do you want to start developing your management skills,

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working less in the lab and more in meetings and with people?

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Now, this engineering management really does have levels in itself, but for the sake of the video, We're averaging it all into one.

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But what do they do?

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Well, they hire, onboard, retain talent, resolve conflicts, conduct performance reviews, career development plans, one-on-ones, and a whole lot more things.

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Which, if you're a people's person and believe in the company, you might really enjoy.

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And if you're not, well, then you can take the technical depth route.

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But in case you are interested, here are the salaries.

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Now, do you remember our second question regarding principal engineering salaries?

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It's about time to see if you answered correctly, like 49% of my audience did.

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And on principal engineers, they're different.

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They define the principles behind engineering products.

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It's actually pretty funny.

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At one of my previous companies, they had very actionable bullet points for literally every type of engineer, like massive paragraphs describing what you have to do to become that level,

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but when you got to staff engineer, the highest level, it doesn't say anything at all except requirements to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

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And in case that doesn't make it super clear, these engineers are rare.

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They're the top 1% of technical individual contributors in most companies.

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And you might guess there's probably only going to be one principal engineer per department or none at all.

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We're talking company will literally wither if you leave level of engineer.

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These are engineers who don't manage people, but somehow guide entire organizations.

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They define the architecture, not just for one product, but for the future of the company's technology.

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If senior engineers are expected to own features and staff engineers own systems, engineers own outcomes across disciplines, across timelines.

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So how much do they make?

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If you guessed a lot, you'd be right.

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But how much can a principal engineer at a top tech company make?

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Now, if you guessed C, $600,000 a year or more, then you'd be right.

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Now remember, this is just salary, not equity, bonuses, equity, perks,

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or the massive and generational amounts of company equity that these engineers bring home.

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Now you might be thinking, how could there possibly be another level?

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He just mentioned equity three freaking times.

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But buckle up, there are two more, the first of which being Vice President of Engineering or in smaller organizations, Director of Engineering.

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This is where you're not just managing engineers, you're managing entire departments.

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You've probably got managers reporting to you and they've got managers and engineers under them.

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We are talking Steve Wozniak magnitude of engineer here.

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You're setting roadmaps, defining long-term goals, balancing technical debt against business urgency,

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and making calls that affect hundreds or thousands of people and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more.

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To make it clear, this role is very far removed from how do we solve this bug and much,

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much closer to how do we scale the company from 50 to 500 engineers without breaking everything.

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You will still be deeply technical, but your workday is likely full of budget planning, cross-functional alignment, hiring strategies, and high-level performance reviews.

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And depending on the industry and company stage, directors and VPs can easily make $300,000 to $700,000 or more a year.

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And I don't know if you saw the news, but if you're the leading AI engineer in the world, you could make $100 million freaking dollars with a sign-on bonus, which is, by the way,

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the largest engineering poach of all time.

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Now it's time for the final boss.

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You've been a staff, principal, or director for a number of years and want to be a major executive or start your own startup.

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What does that look like?

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Well, only about .0001% of people in the world can answer that question truthfully, but I do know that it doesn't involve a lot of sleep.

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At this point, if you made it to the 110,000th percentile, you have a very deep knowledge of your technology and business space.

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You also have a crazy intuition of what products are

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or aren't worth delegating your hundreds or thousands of employees to work on.

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The decisions you make will impact what markets the company enters, what products get built, how millions of dollars are spent every week,

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and ultimately whether the company survives or dies.

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But how much do you make?

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This very much depends on what stage of company you're at and, well, if the company even survives.

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Startup founders and CTOs might not make a ton of money right off the bat, but will have have more dollars in equity than drops of water in their infinity pools.

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We're talking tens or hundreds of millions when the company decides to exit, but it's risky.

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You could spend a decade building a company brick by brick for it to ultimately fall apart.

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On the other hand, tech and big tech CTOs can make well a lot also with a lot of equity.

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But where's the gamble in that?

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Where's the fun?

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Now you might have noticed we missed a very key point in this video.

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Are these engineers actually happy?

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Check out this video to find out.

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And let me know which stage of engineering you're at in the comments below or join me in our discord, I'm happy to chat with you.

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Now thanks for watching and happy engineering everybody!

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación de nivel B2 se basa en el vídeo “Every Level of Engineering in 15 Minutes”. Las palabras que más se repiten: engineer, engineering, student. Este vídeo tiene 201 frases y 2799 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 15:35. El hablante habla rápido, unas 180 palabras por minuto, así que espera sonidos enlazados y reducidos. El 84 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés; conviene repasar el resto antes de empezar.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
intern sustantivo	/ˈɪntɝn/	pasante, practicante
internship sustantivo	/ˈɪntɜːnʃɪp/	pasantía, práctica
ladder sustantivo	/ˈlæd.ɚ/	escalafón
discord sustantivo	/ˈdɪskɔɹd/	discordia, desencuentro
startup sustantivo	/ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/	arranque
thermal adjetivo	/ˈθɜːməl/	termal
paycheck sustantivo	/ˈpeɪ.t͡ʃɛk/	cheque de pago, cheque salarial
mentor sustantivo	/ˈmɛn.tɔː/	mentor
expertise sustantivo	/ˌɛkspɜːˈtiːz/	pericia, expertise
deadline sustantivo	/ˈdɛdˌlaɪn/	plazo, expiración/caducidad de/del plazo
actionable adjetivo	/ˈæk.ʃə.nə.bəl/	accionable
dormitory sustantivo	/ˈdɔɹ.mɪˌtɔɹ.i/	dormitorio
spectacles sustantivo	/ˈspɛktəkl̩z/	gafas, gafa
buckle sustantivo	/ˈbʌkəl/	hebilla
robotic adjetivo	/ɹoʊˈbɑtɪk/	robótico

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
check out verbo		investigar, chequear
get back to verbo		responder / contestar (en un rato), volver / tornar a contactar
lay out verbo	/ˌleɪ ˈaʊt/	encaminar
end up verbo		terminar, ir a parar
fall apart verbo		despedazarse, desintegrarse
figure out verbo		averiguar, captar
find out verbo		averiguar, anoticiarse
grow up verbo		crecer

Frases que vale la pena repetir

Frases cortas y completas del vídeo que puedes reutilizar en la conversación diaria:

It's free and really helps us out.
What do we think is the most popular title after graduation?
Let's get back to the video.
You're not just building anymore, you're guiding.
If you guessed a lot, you'd be right.

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Oraciones condicionales if + oración, will/would + verbo — una condición y su resultado	if you join a startup, there will be · If you guessed a lot, you'd be
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	was thrown · is spent · being introduced
Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora	I've had · has now graduated · you've been
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	someone who defines · bonus, which is

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 69 contracciones y formas reducidas, como you're, I'm, we're. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: thermal /ˈθɜːməl/, worthwhile /ˌwɜː(ɹ)θˈwaɪl/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: internship /ˈɪntɜːnʃɪp/, actionable /ˈæk.ʃə.nə.bəl/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/, shortage /ˈʃɔː(ɹ)tɪd͡ʒ/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: actionable /ˈæk.ʃə.nə.bəl/, dormitory /ˈdɔɹ.mɪˌtɔɹ.i/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, repetitive /ɹɪˈpɛtɪtɪv/, contributor /kənˈtɹɪb.jə.tɚ/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: startup /ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/, spectacles /ˈspɛktəkl̩z/, stressful /ˈstɹɛsfəl/, sleeve /sliv/
/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: uneven /ʌnˈivən/, repetitive /ɹɪˈpɛtɪtɪv/, viewer /ˈvju.ɚ/, vendor /ˈvɛn.dɚ/, sleeve /sliv/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: expertise /ˌɛkspɜːˈtiːz/, spectacles /ˈspɛktəkl̩z/, resolve /ɹɪˈzɑlv/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como intern, internship, ladder.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

Shadowing Practice: Every Level of Engineering in 15 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video

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