A question I get asked a lot from junior engineers is “How do I get promoted to senior?”. I think this is well worth digging into, whether you’re a junior engineer, already a senior/tech lead, or someone looking to hire either one:
Being a senior or tech/team lead is not (just) a case of coding more/better/faster. You don’t get there by memorizing APIs or learning new languages. In fact, you might find that you’re writing *less* code than you were as a junior developer. So where does your time go?
The best seniors/leads I’ve worked with are more concerned with the “why” than the “what” or the “how” of what we’re building. They look to add value to the team and to the business through ownership and decision making rather than pure coding prowess. This means honing a lot of other skills:
- Dealing with ambiguity
- Creating clarity
- Task managing a team
- Refining requirements and designs
- Stakeholder management
- Communication across disciplines
- Mentoring
- Coaching
- Peer reviews
- Project management
- Extreme ownership
- Etc.
These aren’t by-products of “pure” software engineering. You don’t achieve these by “training harder” in the same way a 100m runner does. Being a senior or a tech lead means doing something radically different, and that in turn means giving up some of the things you were doing as a junior. After all, if coding is already a full time job, how can you do that *and* practice these new skills?
Have regular conversations with your manager, and be open about what you’re going to give up, and what will replace it. Find someone to mentor you. Find someone to mentor. (Can you train someone else to manage the build system, so you can free up time to concentrate on giving that briefing to leadership?) Ask questions, and look for the real problems your team or company has and think about how you can help solve them. You’ll fail a few times, but you’ll learn more, and have more impact that you can ever have with an IDE.
If you’re on the other side of the interview process and find yourself claiming that you’re looking for seniors/leads because you “need something building quickly” or “don’t have the time/budget for training”, question what it is that you really value in a senior engineer or tech lead – you might find that you’re leaving a lot on the table.
Originally posted on my LinkedIn Profile here
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