Navigating Growth and Leadership as Software Engineers

Adopting a nuanced and restrained approach to your work is vital as a software engineer.

Maximizing productivity by focusing on what matters becomes crucial as your career and commitments expand.

Effective leadership requires maintaining alignment with authority over time. To achieve success, you should embrace feedback, lead by example, take responsibility, and offer solutions.

Maintaining technical quality is a shared goal for engineering leadership teams.

Focus on the core business while striving to improve quality. To this end, adopt best practices and establish measurable benchmarks for technical quality. Rotating team members can foster a culture of quality and alignment.

Be mindful of tensions between centralized quality and support teams. Instead, focus on supporting improvements led by other leaders and providing non-blocking feedback.

The duties of senior+ software engineers may vary based on team needs and strengths. However, your primary responsibility should be guiding the team in setting a technical vision.

As you ascend, you should focus on business needs and advocate for technology. You do not have to prove yourself with credentials, even with a title. Additionally, code review is essential to ensuring technical quality, even if you are not writing code.

[¹]: The Staff Engineer’s Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change