Progressing from Senior to Staff Engineering
At some point last year, I had a conversation with a talented Senior engineer centered around three growth areas in which his investment would reflect very well on him during his performance review and consideration for promotion. The advice I gave him mirrored advice given many other Senior engineers in my career. The three themes were, Learn more about program management Draw a line between all the work that you're doing Step up as an authority; become an authority I'll add more color to each of these items below. 1. Learn more about program management Imagine you're a senior engineer. In the past, your designs comprised a single document and a handful of diagrams. You’re hoping to be promoted to staff and are currently stretching your scope to be the tech lead for Project X. It’s a big project with wider scope and lots of smaller changes, dependencies, and stakeholders. At this scope, a single design doc won't suffice to keep track of what & how it's going...