Become the Engineer Everyone Wants to Work With
Such engineers have a LOT of opportunities and get promoted first!
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Let’s get back to this week’s thought.
Intro
Engineers that are great to work with are the ones that I like the most. They are:
✅ Helping others and making others around them better
✅ Taking ownership and responsibility
✅ Being a team player
They have a great attitude and the mindset.
And this is how impactful this is:
If you get better at coding for 20%, you will provide 20% more value. But if you help 5 other people to get 20% better, you will provide 100% more value!
I've teamed up with John Crickett, fellow Engineering Leader and an author of Coding Challenges & Developing Skills.
We did a lightning lesson in collaboration with Maven this week and in this article we are doing a summary of what we talked about.
This lightning lesson has been a warm-up before we start the cohort-based course Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role, which starts on September 10!
You can check the recording here - forward the recording to about 9 minutes (that’s when the lesson starts and you’ll need to enter your email to view it):
Let’s get into the summary!
I used to believe competing with others is the way to go
I used to believe that competing is a lot better than collaborating to progress in my career.
I was trying to learn everything myself on my own and not share my knowledge with others, because I feared that others would progress faster than me if they would know what I know.
Over time, I realized that my progress would be much better if I collaborate, learn and grow together with others.
I moved the focus from “I” to “we” and that’s where I saw big progress in my career.
I became an engineer others wanted to work with.
Why should you become the engineer everyone wants to work with?
You already got an idea why becoming such an engineer is so important from my mistake that I mentioned above.
But also this is very important to keep in mind:
Software development is a team activity and great teams build great software. So in order to build anything significant, we need to work well with others.
And not just that, here are some more important arguments why becoming such an engineer is really important:
You have a great reputation, which gets you more opportunities.
You have a lot better time at your work because you have built good working relationships with your colleagues. Read more about how to build good relationships here: How to build good relationships inside and outside your engineering team (paid article)
Engineers who are great to work with get promoted first.
Managers value such engineers the most.
Being easy to work with is the ultimate career hack
Everything we do at our work is connected with people whether you’re talking to your colleague or having an interview for your next role.
You won’t get the role if you are not seen as a person that they would want to work with. They have to believe that you have the right skills + the right attitude and the mindset.
You can be a firm person, but still a nice person. You can help people, you can level them up and you can also share your knowledge.
All that attracts people to want to work with you. And this brings opportunities like speaking at conferences, taking on new challenges, promotion, etc.
It’s the ultimate hack to progress in your career!
How to become a great engineer to work with?
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