How to excel technically if projects are collaboration/communication heavy?
Hi everyone, for next 6 months, I will most probably be working on projects which are C/C heavy. For example, project may involve discussing things with A and B teams, finding an engineering design from the abstractions the teams are using and execute it. There might not be much complex items from code perspective and execution may look simple.
While projects like these would give me good credits in terms of cross-team collaboration and communication, I want to be technically competent. Looking back after next 6 months, I don't want to feel bad that from code/eng perspective, I didn't do anything complex.
I understand that probably I should ask my manager for complex/craft heavy item, probably at least once per half but I see some engineers in queue for promotion so there is no guarantee for that.
Any suggestion from the community would help a lot. Thanks!
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Discussion
(4 comments)- 34 months agoEng @ Taro
- Even if the project isn't technically complex, if the outcome of the project can improve KPIs, that might be the more important thing.
- You can add technical complexity to the project by greasing the wheels and making sure that the project is executed smoothly. This might involve adding internal tooling, analytics, or helping out with the coding to help debug issues or make it easier for teams to accomplish their goals.
- 14 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Since it sounds like you're leading a pretty broad area for this project, there are likely many moving parts and various pieces. Can you take the most technically complicated part and dive in to ensure its progress?
This will likely have decent technical depth if the project is big enough, and this is part of the core responsibility for a great Tech Lead: you should try to continuously reduce the risk of a project delay or mishap over time.
David Pan talks about this here: What Makes A Truly Great Tech Lead - A VP of Engineering's Perspective
- 1
4 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI would talk to your manager and see if technical complexity is even necessary for you to perform well at senior and get to staff.
From my experience, senior -> staff is the career stage where it really is mostly about the impact. If you are able to meaningfully move OKRs/KPIs, it doesn't really matter how you got there. If you can boost a core metric by 10% (which is generally insanely good at a Big Tech company like LinkedIn), I really doubt your VP of Engineering would care if you did it with 10k lines of code or 10 lines of code.
Junior and mid-level are different as the company is forcing the engineer to build up a solid technical foundation. For those engineers, it's far more about the execution than the impact (impact generally barely matters for junior/early mid-level). Since you're senior, you have earned those stripes and don't need to prove your technical skills anymore (but of course, if you can solve a problem that's both technically complex and high-impact, that would be amazing).
I recommend going through the "Project Credit And Scope" section of my promotion course as well: https://www.jointaro.com/course/nail-your-promotion-as-a-software-engineer/its-not-just-about-impact/
- 14 months agoSenior Software Engineer [L5] [OP]LinkedIn
Thanks Charlie, Rahul and Alex for valuable insights!
