How can you leverage the principles of reciprocity and mutual benefit to build alliances across different teams or departments?

Where to find those projects and with sponsors?

To go from E6 to E7, you shouldn't expect to find projects. You'll need to find enough scope and then convince a bunch of people why your idea/vision is compelling enough for a bunch of people to work on it.

Start by looking at where you have unique insight, either from people you've talked to, data you've studied, or past experience. Then figure out how that overlaps with the needs of organizational leadership.

How to get involved in strategic initiatives that align with the company's long-term goals?

You don't need to be working on company-wide scope as an E6, that's more for E9 and above. If your goal is to go from E6 to E7, make sure to stay aligned with your Director of Engineering and maybe your VP if your org is flat. You aren't held responsible for overall company impact at this level - I would know because I worked at Portal (which had several E7s/E8s) and it ultimately added 0 impact to the company as a failed product.

When it comes to being involved on the best projects, here's what comes to mind:

1. You come up with it on your own - In this case, you own the project by default. This is expected behavior for E6.
2. You have a strong reputation as an expert shipper - Tactically speaking, you always deliver on-time and with high quality (minimal SEVs). I recommend these resources for this:
   1. [Course] Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer
   2. [Taro Top 10] Project Management
3. You have deep relationships with other senior members - In other words, make all the E5/E6/E7 engineers really like you.

Building effective alliances takes time and consistent effort. How to be patient and continue to foster relationships even when immediate benefits are not apparent?

Just do it. This is more of a mentality shift than a problem that requires tactical change. The entire point of healthy networking is adding value to other people while expecting nothing immediately in return. Most people have a bad poker face, especially software engineers. If you are doing something purely for ulterior motives (i.e. "You're on the best project right now so I want to be friends with you so you'll put me on it"), people will notice and this will ultimately hurt you.

I 110% recommend our networking masterclass - It covers this entire mentality shift in-depth: [Masterclass] How To Build Deep Relationships Quickly In Tech