Senior Engineer to Lead: Who to promote and how to train them
Overview of the insights from the roundtable on Plato Elevate conference in San Francisco!
Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role (announcement)
I am happy to share that right after my course was ready for enrollment, it immediately became the top course in Data & Engineering on Maven and has been also selected to be featured in The Maven 100!
If you are not enrolled yet, you can take a look the course here. And you can still get it with the early bird price of 25% off!
Use code EARLYBIRD for 25% off or use this link: Senior Engineer to Lead where the code is already applied.
In the course we will particularly focus on development of much needed people / communication and leadership skills in order to grow from engineer to leader!
Looking forward to seeing you there.
Let’s get back to this week’s thought.
Intro
I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Plato Elevate Conference in San Francisco this week. It was really great to meet so many awesome and knowledgeable engineering leaders.
Some of the people I met are also regular readers of this newsletter. It was really fun to hang out with you! Including Steven Ancheta, who also won the raffle for a free ticket to the conference!
I also had the pleasure to be hosting the roundtable with the topic “Senior Engineer to Lead: Who to promote and how to train them”.
We had a great mix of Senior Engineers and Managers from various of companies like Meta, Bloomberg, Google, Lyft to name a few. Which made the discussion very fruitful and there were a LOT of insightful questions asked.
Here is the list of everyone who I had the pleasure to be discussing with on the roundtable: Hemant Pandey, Vaashu Sharma, Thomas Mbise, Vasavi Gajarla, Raja Kosuru, Hanita Chalabi, Lori J. Williams, Li Ji.
And in this newsletter article, we are doing an overview of the discussion we had.
Let’s get straight into it.
Growing from senior engineer to a lead role requires a mindset shift
You become a multiplier for the team and helping others around you becomes one of the main priorities.
You are not judged by your individual contribution anymore. The overall success of the team and projects is what becomes important.
As engineers, we are used to having control and the outcome of the task normally depends on us, but in order to grow to the lead role, it’s important to shift the mindset from “I” to “we” and always think about what’s best for the team.
You can read more about the required mindset shift + how you can do that here: How to grow from senior to a lead role (paid article).
How do managers decide on which engineers to promote to lead roles?
There are a lot of different traits to look for and if we can sum up all of them in one specific word, that would be credibility. Credibility is a combination of skills and how others perceive you.
You need to have both in order to be considered for the lead role.
Managers normally want to minimize the risk as much as possible when promoting and the best way to do that is to look at the track record of past projects of that specific engineer.
Specifically, among the two most desirable traits to look for are:
getting things done (taking ownership, responsibility and being reliable),
helping others and making others around you better.
You can read all about credibility here: How to build credibility in the engineering industry (paid article)
Managers are looking to promote engineers who are making their jobs easier
That’s really important to understand. Because a lot of engineers believe that “just doing what you are asked to do” and doing that well, is enough.
The reality is a bit different. Managers are judged by the performance of the whole team and also specific individuals who are part of the team.
When the whole team is delivering a lot of business value, the team will be viewed as high-performing and also the manager will be viewed as high-performing as well.
Knowing this, what you want to do as an engineer in the team, is to find impactful things / projects to work on that will reflect in delivering the business value.
One of the great ways to find impact is to be curious and ask different people about problems, including your manager. “What is your biggest pain point and how can I help?” - that is a good question to ask.
We pointed out this specific tip: look for a problem that nobody wants to tackle. If you take complete ownership of that problem and solve it well, you will be viewed as a team player and a person who wants to make things better for the overall organization.
You are owning your career, not your manager
That’s very important to keep in mind, because nobody can do more for your career than you can do yourself. Therefore make sure that you take matters in your hand and share your goals and aspirations with your manager + proactively look for opportunities.
In particular, we pointed out the importance of using 1:1 meetings to your advantage. Don’t give the status report to your manager, rather use that time to help you get actionable feedback and specific steps that you need to take in order to grow to the next level.
You can read more about 1:1 meetings and how you can use them to your advantage here: How to have great 1:1 meetings with your manager (paid article).
The process for promoting to the lead role is different based on the size of the company
Big Tech has a pretty strict process that starts with self-review, peer-reviews, a review from the manager and then the performance discussion, which also includes a holistic overview of whether you have demonstrated the behaviors of the next level.
We specifically pointed out the importance of keeping a “brag list” and building good relationships with your peers and higher-ups. These are the people that can vouch for your promotion.
You can read how to keep a brag list here: Keep a brag list of the wins you achieved, thank me later (paid article).
In small and mid-size companies, the process is not that strict and can vary. I have pointed out an example of what my process looks like.
What I do when I am looking to promote someone is to do a trial run. For example, if I am looking to promote someone to the Team Lead position, I will give them the trial run for a couple of weeks, so they can see if they even like the role and also I can determine the fit + provide actionable feedback.
There’s nothing wrong if an engineer decides that they would potentially like to move back to being an IC. If you don’t try it, you don’t know. So it’s better to try it, than just think about it.
How to provide necessary training for the newly promoted lead?
We didn’t get to talk about this topic, since we had such a great discussion on the topics above. So, here I am sharing my view on this and what I like to do:
I am already looking for specific behaviors that are needed in the role
That being said, providing opportunities to showcase such skills + a trial run helps a lot already in order to get onboarded to the role.
Providing the necessary coaching and mentoring
The best coaches and mentors are inside the organization, because they understand the context and details of their particular situation, but if that’s not possible, then I look for external ones.
Newsletters
Newsletters are becoming more and more a great source of knowledge and especially this Engineering Leadership newsletter is particularly helpful for newly appointed leads.
Be patient
Like in everything, they are not going to be great as soon as they start. it takes time to develop the skills and being patient is the key.
Provide frequent feedback
I like to use 1:1 meetings to provide regular feedback. I believe that’s a great way to ensure that they know how they are doing in their role and how far are they from the expectations.
Let them also make some mistakes
This is a very underrated advice. Nobody is perfect and we all learn the most from our mistakes. So make sure to let them make some mistakes → they will learn from it.
Read through and pick a couple of resources to deep dive from: 100+ Resources to become a great engineering leader
List of books, newsletters, people to follow and more. I am regularly curating this github repo to ensure that all of the up-to-date resources are there.
Last words
If you take one thing from the article, that is to take your career in your own hands. Think about how you can provide value proactively and focus on impact. That’s what’s going to help you to grow and progress!
We are not over yet!
Here are also some pictures from the Plato Elevate conference in San Francisco:
What’s next? As I am writing this newsletter article, I am traveling back to Munich and then hading towards Amsterdam, where I will be hosting a workshop on the C3 Festival.
The workshop is named From Senior to Lead: Grow and Thrive in the role. This will be the 2 hour version of the upcoming online course in July!
I also have a couple of free tickets, each worth 700$+! Respond to this email or send me an email to info@gregorojstersek.com with a few words about “Why would you love to attend the conference” to be considered for a free ticket!
Are you going to be attending the C3 festival? Would be great to meet you there!
Last but not least!
Transform your craft (course)
My friend Daniel Moka launched his TDD course this week and he also gave me access to it.
These are the 3 things that stood out to me:
- The explanations are very clear and simple + on point.
- The course is very practical and focused on real-world projects.
- The course is language-agnostic, therefore no matter if you are a FE or BE dev, you'll get a LOT of value from it.
So, if you wish to learn or enhance your knowledge of TDD, this is a course for you.
You can take a look at the course here: https://transformyourcraft.com/
And you can use a special discount 50% off with the code GREGOR_50.
Liked this article? Make sure to 💙 click the like button.
Feedback or addition? Make sure to 💬 comment.
Know someone that would find this helpful? Make sure to 🔁 share this post.
Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you further
Book a Coaching and Mentoring or Consulting and Advising call with me here.
Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Check the sponsorship options here.
Get in touch
You can find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
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.
This newsletter is funded by paid subscriptions from readers like yourself.
If you aren’t already, consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive the full experience!
You are more than welcome to find whatever interests you here and try it out in your particular case. Let me know how it went! Topics are normally about all things engineering related, leadership, management, developing scalable products, building teams etc.
Mentoring should be inherited for any first-timer on a leading position. It might be useful for experienced leaders but in a context of a new company.
I have found interesting the fact you added the permission to make mistakes. Leading requires a learning curve, where someone will make mistakes eventually. Leading and coding are two completely different sets of skills. It’s like learning a new job.
The “Grab list” is a great tip. Especially for me, once an objective is done, I move to another without spending much thought on it. However, it is a great tip for improving our image and giving us factual arguments on our value inside the project or organization.
+100 on the idea you own your career and not your manager. Also def good practical tip on keeping a list of achievements to show during perf reviews.