"A safe anchor point for many senior engineers has always been technical mastery. You see a problem. You design some architecture. You work in a team to crank out some code. You build a complicated system, roll it out at scale, rinse and repeat. This is a happy place for many engineers. Naturally, you think in order to progress, the journey should in theory look something like this. You expect to be rewarded as you take on more technically challenging problems, climbing the ladder."
"As you get to staff-plus, your role is to solve the most complex technical problems. It's natural to think like this. As you get to staff-plus, the technical challenges are a small part of the equation. Sophie Weston's talk described career growth as a journey. It's not a linear ladder that you climb, but rather a meandering path filled with difficulties and opportunities and tangents along the way. I want to spend my time giving some of these tangents away."
"You need to master influence, communication, and strategic thinking. You need to find intrinsic motivation and take control of your own growth journey. Don't leave it in the hands of your manager or leaders or peers to define your growth. My talk is going to give practical advice on finding and filling in the cracks within your organization, as you get to and go beyond staff-plus. These are actionable takeaways on how you should be thinking about your use of time. These are going to be techniques to grow yourself, grow your teams, and grow your organization."
Technical mastery alone ceases to be the primary lever for impact at staff-plus levels. Influence, communication, and strategic thinking become essential skills for solving organizational problems and shaping outcomes. Career growth follows a meandering path with difficulties, opportunities, and tangents rather than a linear ladder. Engineers should cultivate intrinsic motivation and take ownership of their growth instead of depending on managers or peers. Identifying and filling organizational gaps unlocks additional leverage for teams and the company. Time should be used strategically with actionable techniques to grow individuals, teams, and the organization. Platform teams provide infrastructure, libraries, and tooling to enable product work.
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