7 Must-Know Lessons To Be A Better Engineer From Top Industry Leaders
2024 Month of Collabs: Best lessons to take your career forward
Whoa! What an action-packed month of August. For our month of collaborations, we had a CTO, Software Architect, Meta Staff Engineer, award-winning author, and 2 Amazon Principal Engineers.
In this article, you’ll learn the key lessons from each guest to officially close out the month of collabs. After the recap, we’ll return to my articles for a while.
But there’s a poll at the end for you to share your thoughts and say if you’d like to see more like this in the future.
There are so many memorable lessons from this past month, so strap in!
1) Avoid Perfectionism
Collaboration: Perfectionism - one of the biggest productivity killers in the engineering industry with
, CTO and Author of Engineering Leadership NewsletterKey lessons:
Work in short iterations, get feedback, and improve. Short iterations where you can course correct is 10x better than going into a cave by yourself for days and coming out sharing what you think is "perfect."
2) Design Better Software
Collaboration: What a Home Designer turned Software Architect can teach you about Software Design with Mike Thornton, Software Architect.
Key lessons:
Ask the “so that” to any requirement you get. "I want a big kitchen." -> "So that?" -> "So that I can host gatherings for the whole family."
Divide decisions into 1-way door and 2-way door decisions. 1-way door decisions are irreversible. 2-way door decisions are reversible.
Make irreversible decisions at design time. Make the reversible decisions at build time.
3) How To Say “No”
Collaboration: How to say "No" and win back your time as a software engineer with
, Meta Staff EngineerKey lessons:
As a Staff Engineer at Meta, Sidwyn needs to say “no” a lot to ruthlessly prioritize. He uses these 4 tactics the most:
Direct: Thank, decline, and express interest.
Say this: “Unfortunately I’m not able to take this on as my plate is currently full, but thank you for the opportunity. Would love to see updates though.”
Redirect: Refer to someone else who is better suited for the ask
Say this: “Thanks for sharing this opportunity. However, I believe Jenny might be the best person for this since she has a ton of experience in this area. Have you already asked her?”
Change Their Perspective: Is this ask phrased correctly? Does it really need me?
Say this: “I know this might be different from what you’re asking, but have you considered trying this <insert path> instead?”
Stonewall: Ignore, and follow up a few days later.
Say this: Say nothing at all. Leave them on read.
4) Communicate With Impact
Collaboration: How to Communicate with Impact as a Software Engineer with Jay Sullivan, Author of Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond
Key lessons:
We can talk about 3 things. (1) Ourselves. (2) Our content. (3) To the audience about the audience. Prioritize (3) to capture people’s attention.
Before speaking to an audience, your manager, fellow engineer, or anyone, ask yourself, “What does the other person care about most?” Speak to that.
❌ Avoid starting with, “What I want to…”
✅ Start with, “What I thought would be most helpful to you”
5) Promotion Mistakes
Collaboration: The 3 Big Mistakes That Almost Cost Me My Promotion (And How You Can Avoid Them) with
, Ex-Amazon Principal EngineerKey lessons:
Avoid the "Promotion Donut." The Promotion Donut is where you only prioritize next-level responsibilities and leave your current responsibilities unoccupied. Doing this holds you back from promotion.
If your manager isn’t supporting you, know that it’s ok to look elsewhere, whether it’s a different team or company. You don’t need to be stuck.
6) Tech Promotion Algorithm
Collaboration: My Tech Promotion Algorithm with
, Ex-Amazon Principal EngineerKey lessons:
Use an Excel spreadsheet to track a “red, yellow, green” score of how your manager and coworkers assess you on the promotion requirements.
Work backward by understanding what would get a “green” for the areas you need. Now plan out your actions to get to green before the promotion cycle
Execute on that plan, ask them iteratively for feedback, and repeat until you’re all green. Once you’re all green, you know you’re more than ready to go up for promotion.
7) Ace Your Behavioral Interviews
Collaboration: A 3-step framework to never get down-leveled in your behavioral interviews again with
, Principal AWS ArchitectKey lesson:
STAR isn't enough to ace your interviews. STAR provides the structure, but not the content. Map STAR to the content required to get the level you want.
Situation → Scope and Impact
Task and Action → Technical Depth and Complexity + Leadership and Collaboration
Result → Revisit Scope and Impact
Use this template to create your own stories you can tell in interviews
Thank you to all the collaborators 🙏
This month of collaborations was phenomenal, with a diverse range of lessons and guests. Behind the scenes, at least 10-20 hours went into each of these articles. Often, more work goes into collaborations than an article either creator would do individually.
So I want to give a huge thank you to the folks who contributed and shared their knowledge with us High Growth Engineers! 🙇♂️
What were your thoughts?
👏 Shout-outs of the week
I’m leaving my team at Google by
on — I liked hearing about Kevin’s decision process as he relocated and switched teams. He also shows a practical application to 1-way door vs. 2-way door decisions.- on — I loved Kent’s suggestion to reframe “Requirements” to “Stories” because not everything is a requirement. If you can find the right set of real requirements, then you can reduce scope and save yourself time and effort.
Finally, I loved learning about the PSHE framework to think about your career from CEO of Coda, Shishir Mahotra. The full video is here but the short version is “Problem-Solution-How-Execution.” Starting your career, all steps except execution are handed to you. The more you can shift left and take on all of these, the better outcomes you’ll drive for your career. Try to move toward taking on the problem, solution, how, and execution and you’ll be in the boat with the best engineers. 👏
for hosting the great interview.
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This was a great month full of a lot of learning and insights. Thank you guys!
Hello,
Thank you for the "so that" advice.
On the diagram for the house design and the software design, the payment is an external entity(3rd party) or an internal entity?