How to develop soft skills like leadership, stakeholder management, etc.?

Stakeholder Management

• [Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech
• "How do I ask XFN partner for help to make progress in the project?"
• "How to align multiple cross-functional stakeholders & keep them updated?"

We don't have a dedicated resource for this, so those 2 are the best ones I can find that don't bleed over into the project management portion too much (I consider stakeholder management a subset of overall project management).

Some more tactical tips:

• Make sure there's a source of truth somewhere on who stakeholders are and what they're responsible for. In my system design series, you can see that I put them at the top of the overall project spec. If there's a lot (10+) and responsibilities are complicated, you can make an entire spreadsheet for this.
• In big project meetings, make sure to always come out with action items and assign them to people (I use the @mention functionality whenever I can). Make it a habit at the beginning of meetings to hold stakeholders accountable for their items and make sure that they did them. If they didn't, figure out why and how you can better support and empower them.

In addition to the resources on Taro, I'd also recommend you figure out a low-stakes way to have these conversations with a co-worker. Ideally someone not in your reporting chain, someone who won't judge you.

You can even use Taro for this if you have specific questions! We have a bunch of DoorDash engineers here.

Project Management

• "Got hit with a last minute requirement on my project - How do I minimize the thrashy impact it has?"
• "How to sequence activities to reduce risk?"
• "What are good strategies to push back when the deadline is not realistic?"
• "How can I get better at estimating long-term projects?"
• "How do I create proper timelines and roadmaps for my projects?"

Here's the playbook I ran when TL-ing a project at a large company like DoorDash or Meta:

• Create a very thorough and clear overall project spec like the one shown in my System Design Series
• Have a weekly or bi-weekly meeting to stay in sync
• Publish weekly or bi-weekly status updates