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.

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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?

Here are mine and John’s top tips mentioned in the lesson.

Gregor’s top tips:

• Be a team player.

• Make others around you better.

• Take ownership and responsibility.

• Move your focus from “I” to “we”.

• Always do what is the best for the team.

• Offer help when you see your fellow dev in need.

• Focus on work-life balance.

John’s top tips:

• Don’t criticise.

• Don’t complain.

• Appreciate people.

• Learn and use people’s names.

• Get to know the people you work with.

• Correct people the right way (in private, focusing on the behaviour or outcome not the person).

• Rather than try to win every argument, take some time to consider which battles are worth fighting and which are not.

Your fellow engineers will appreciate you when you do this on code reviews!

There is one particular tip that is really important to keep in mind as an engineer. A lot of the time is spent on reviewing other people’s code.

It’s really important that you do the following:

Instead of making strong opinionated statements, rather ask questions. Asking for the WHY can help a lot to prevent unnecessary arguments.

Use code reviews as a great learning opportunity and not to roast the author of the code change.

What do managers think of engineers that are great to work with?

Such engineers are going to get promoted first. Let me explain from the perspective of a manager.

Managers are looking for people that they can delegate a certain problem and they just know it will get done timely and with correct quality, without a lot of supervision (or any).

And that’s exactly what such engineers are going to do.

But not just that, they will also have a great attitude and mindset and inspire others to have it as well.

So, they will get things done and also be a great example for others, which is just a win-win for managers.

It’s just a matter of time till these engineers get promoted.

BONUS: Become a credible engineer

We also mentioned the importance of becoming a credible engineer. Focus on building up your skills and also how others perceive you.

You can be the most skilled engineer technically, but if you are not a great person to work with, it unfortunately won’t mean that much.

You can read more about how to become a credible engineer here: How to build credibility in the engineering industry (paid article).

Notion Template: Become a credible engineer

This is an exercise that the attendees did and you can do it as well!

Use this template to help you define the key points where you can improve your credibility.

Paid subscribers, you can get it here: 🎁 Products for paid subscribers.

Last words

Let’s end this article with 2 key takeaways:

Be someone that you would love to work with.

Never compete, collaborate instead -> your progress is going to be much faster and your journey is going to be a LOT more enjoyable.

Thanks to

John Crickett

for the great collab and for his insights on this very important topic. Make sure to check him out on LinkedIn as well!

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We are not over yet!

Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role (24 hours left to enroll!)

It’s getting close to the start of the September’s cohort course! It’s going to start in 2 days! I’m very excited!

In the course, we will particularly focus on the development of much needed people / communication and leadership skills in order to grow from engineer to leader!

If you are not enrolled yet, you have 24 hours left!

Use code ENGLEADERSHIP for 25% off or use this link: Senior Engineer to Lead where the code is already applied.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

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Conversation with Sitesh on Byte Venture

We talked a bout a LOT of topics, some of them include: how to be a great leader, my daily responsibilities, having 1000+ ideas for articles, career tips for engineers and what are the main traits I look for in engineers.

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If you wish to make a request on particular topic you would like to read, you can send me an email to info@gregorojstersek.com.

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