How to be a reliable engineer
Being reliable has helped me enormously in my career!
Intro
We might believe that being reliable is something that just comes by as a side effect of doing good work. But there’s a lot more to it than we might think.
It’s really important that we are intentional with the way we showcase reliability.
What may seem reliable to you, might not seem reliable to your manager or stakeholders.
It’s really important that you put yourself in their shoes and think of what would help them the most and what are they most curious about → what is something that they would want to know.
If you are able to do that proactively and on top of everything that you do, you take pride in finishing with the highest quality, with good communication and on time.
Do this enough times and you will develop an amazing reputation for being a reliable person who gets things done.
if you wish to find actionable advice on how to be reliable, which you can use immediately, make sure to read on!
This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:
- Why should you become reliable?
- I’ve learned about the importance of reliability the hard way
- Being reliable got me more projects I could handle
🔒 This is what you should do to become reliable
🔒 Do exactly what you say and agree upon
🔒 If you’re not exactly sure how long something will take → share confidence and a range when estimating
🔒 Your manager shouldn’t ask you for a status update
🔒 If you make a mistake, admit it and do whatever you can to learn from it
🔒 Focus on predictability and consistency
🔒 As a manager, I value reliability a LOT
🔒 Last words
Resources mentioned in the article:
How to build credibility in the engineering industry (paid article)
My secret for growing from engineer to CTO (paid article)
I am not a fan of heroism in the engineering industry (paid article)
Let’s go straight into it.
Why should you be reliable?
As mentioned in this article: How to build credibility in the engineering industry (paid article).
Credibility consists of both your skills and how people perceive you and being reliable plays a big role in the second part.
Being able to consistently showcase that you are reliable will enable you to build a great reputation, which will then get you more opportunities.
It’s especially important if you wish to grow to lead roles (Team Lead, Tech Lead (Staff Engineer), EM). Your manager is making a calculative risk promoting you to such role.
The reason is that you are a lot more involved in being a leader for the organization and you need to be a good example for others.
If you have a good track record of successfully finishing projects and being reliable, you will have a much bigger chance to get there.
I’ve learned about the importance of reliability the hard way
As you may know, I did a LOT of freelance projects over the course of my 11+ year career in the engineering industry. It’s been My secret for growing from engineer to CTO (paid article).
And on one of my first projects → I was building a website for a client. And I was working very hard on it, but my communication wasn’t really on point. I wasn’t asking questions and I wasn’t finding out what was really needed.
Instead, I was focused more on just building and less on managing expectations. Well, it turned out I delivered something that was not expected. I went too much in a different direction than a client would want.
This has caused concerns with the client and I automatically became less reliable to them because of it. Luckily, I was able to turn it around, by making appropriate adjustments.
But unfortunately, the reputation was already damaged and I didn’t get additional work after.
This is the lesson I learned the hard way:
You can do the best work in the world, but if you don’t manage expectations the right way, it won’t mean much.
And that’s why focusing on reliability is SO important.
Being reliable got me more projects I could handle
So, after that, I learned my lesson and ensured that my communication was on point.
I was updating my clients regularly on the progress,
I was asking the right questions and
sending previews + asking for confirmations before I started building.
It turned out that continuous communication is SO much better instead of trying to do BIG BANG reveals.
Trying to “surprise” the client a lot of times backfires.
And the exact same thing works for full-time roles as well!
Instead of clients → you have stakeholders, your manager and your teammates. And the same thing works for any projects you are working on in your full-time role.
That’s why I was able to build credibility and progress in my career a lot faster → I’ve developed all of the skills of being a reliable person as part of my freelance projects and then used that in my full-time roles.
So let’s break down all of the things you should be doing in order to be seen as a reliable person who gets stuff done next!