How to Get Promoted Beyond Staff Engineer  ## Metadata - Author: [[LeadDev]] - Full Title: How to Get Promoted Beyond Staff Engineer - Category: #articles - Document Note: Short Summary for [How to get promoted beyond staff engineer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) Strategies and insights for advancing from Staff Engineer to Principal Engineer, featuring experiences from industry professionals. [00:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=14) Insights on advancing from staff engineer to principal engineer. [02:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=162) Navigating promotions can be ambiguous without formal titles. [07:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=424) Effective delegation at higher levels enhances clarity and problem-solving. [09:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=552) Building relationships is essential for career advancement. [13:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=816) Consider true desires before pursuing a promotion. [15:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=935) Focus on business needs and have clear goals for promotion. [19:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1155) Proactively broaden your influence beyond assigned projects. [21:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1265) The coding responsibilities of engineers shift over time. [24:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1492) Building a network of mentors enhances career progression. [26:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1600) Use influence to build relationships with your manager and colleagues. [30:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1830) Develop self-sufficiency and strong communication with your manager. [32:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1935) Building visibility and branding is key for promotion beyond staff engineer. [36:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2164) Adaptability and networking are key for career growth past staff engineer. [37:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2275) Networking and understanding company culture aid promotions. [41:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2504) Building a network enhances problem-solving and career progression. [43:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2624) Navigate the IC track by balancing delivery and delegation without direct reports. [47:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2863) Engage in community roundtables for networking and shared challenges. --------------------------------- Detailed Summary for [How to get promoted beyond staff engineer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0) by [Merlin](https://merlin.foyer.work/) Strategies and insights for advancing from Staff Engineer to Principal Engineer, featuring experiences from industry professionals. [00:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=14) Insights on advancing from staff engineer to principal engineer. - Panelists share personal experiences and pathways that led them to become principal engineers. - Discussion includes the importance of bridging gaps between teams and understanding industry standards. [02:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=162) Navigating promotions can be ambiguous without formal titles. - Many companies lack clear job titles, leading to uncertainty about roles and promotions. - Career progression often depends on individual contributions and filling gaps within teams. [07:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=424) Effective delegation at higher levels enhances clarity and problem-solving. - As a principal engineer, delegate complex problems by offering simplified versions for focused team members. - Shift from direct design work to creating problem statements and managing teams to improve overall design quality. [09:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=552) Building relationships is essential for career advancement. - Strong connections with peers and managers facilitate support and trust, crucial for sharing your vision. - Networking beyond your organization helps find common goals and aligns visions with parallel groups. [13:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=816) Consider true desires before pursuing a promotion. - Promotions often come with undefined roles that may not align with your interests. - It’s essential to identify work that energizes you to avoid dissatisfaction in new positions. [15:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=935) Focus on business needs and have clear goals for promotion. - Ensure your work aligns with genuine business needs to avoid redundancy at senior levels. - Establish clear expectations and concrete goals with your manager to guide your advancement. [19:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1155) Proactively broaden your influence beyond assigned projects. - Take initiative to identify needs across teams and explore collaborative opportunities. - Demonstrate proactive thinking by refining project goals to serve multiple teams. [21:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1265) The coding responsibilities of engineers shift over time. - As engineers progress, their roles transition from hands-on coding to empowering teams. - The amount and relevance of code written can vary significantly depending on the engineer's level and company needs. [24:52](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1492) Building a network of mentors enhances career progression. - Engaging with peers and mentors at different levels provides diverse perspectives for problem-solving. - Having a personal board of mentors offers tailored advice and support for navigating career decisions. [26:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1600) Use influence to build relationships with your manager and colleagues. - Define your role and involvement clearly to avoid micromanagement and overlap with others. - Balancing primary responsibilities and collaboration enhances your effectiveness and relationships within the team. [30:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1830) Develop self-sufficiency and strong communication with your manager. - As you advance, managers have less time for individual guidance; be proactive in managing your own workload and goals. - Cultivating a solid relationship with your manager is crucial, as they advocate for you in decision-making scenarios. [32:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=1935) Building visibility and branding is key for promotion beyond staff engineer. - Understanding business needs is essential for delivering value and impacting metrics as you advance in your career. - Establishing relationships with leadership is crucial, as they may not be familiar with your work as your role expands. [36:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2164) Adaptability and networking are key for career growth past staff engineer. - Recognizing when to shift focus from current projects is crucial to align with changing priorities. - Engaging in company forums and reviews helps gather valuable insights on industry trends and organizational needs. [37:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2275) Networking and understanding company culture aid promotions. - Engaging in guilds or employee resource groups helps build relationships outside formal structures. - Changing organizations may offer easier promotions but carries risks due to less known performance history. [41:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2504) Building a network enhances problem-solving and career progression. - Effective communication with colleagues provides necessary context for tackling unfamiliar challenges. - A strong network fosters trust and collaboration, allowing influence without direct reports. [43:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2624) Navigate the IC track by balancing delivery and delegation without direct reports. - Build a trusted network of peers to delegate tasks effectively, enhancing productivity. - Reflect on personal career choices regarding management and technical focus for career advancement. [47:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0&t=2863) Engage in community roundtables for networking - Summary: Last month we explored how to become a staff+ engineer. This month, we’ll be discussing how to promote to the next staff+ level in your organization. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkY6OjHzXP0 [Music] hello everyone and a huge thank you for joining us today for a discussion on how to get promoted Beyond staff engineer the webinar will last roughly 45 minutes after which both myself and the panelist will head over to the lead de slack to answer some of your questions in the staff plus Channel we may also have time to answer a couple of questions live so please do submit those to the Q&A feature on zoom and we'll get to them if we can towards the end so let's get started with some introductions my name is Blanca and today I'll be joined by Andrew Joy Scott and chenine I'll ask each of you to introduce yourselves could you please answer in roughly 60 seconds who you are and tell us how you became a principal engineer I'm going to start in alphabetical order by name so Andrew would you go first hi yeah thanks um so yeah I'm Andrew eot um I'm a Staff engineer uh or staff plus engineer for the last seven years in three different companies um I've spent the last two years at Miro working on authentication and content management and before that uh three years at Skyscanner on the machine learning platform so the the how I first got the principal engineer title kind of is a long story but it grew around me is the sort of the the short answer I was in a company that um I could see gaps between architecture and engineering teams and just started filling those gaps organically and over time the title kind of came my way and I started learning more about what that meant in the industry and and kind of went from there really so it's um yeah it's a complicated story but thank you for sharing that uh Joy uh would you go next yeah um so I'm a principal engineer at split software we do feature flagging stuff um prior to split I was at box for a number of years and prior to that I worked at a tiny startup in Microsoft for short periods but uh my journey I I guess I went into management at some point from about a senior Suite I hated it moved back to a staff position um from there I went through kind of a standard promotion process to get to senior staff this was appbox and then uh I moved to split where we don't actually have titles um so I at some point I asked you know what what title can I use publicly and originally it was senior staff and at some point they're like ah actually you can use principal so I I don't know it feels like a fake promotion I'm not sure if it is uh but yeah that's kind of my journey here wow that's quite a story thank you now we'll move on to Scott yeah um I like Joy's story it reminds me of mine in certain ways uh so I worked at Yelp previously for almost a decade and for a long time we didn't have formal levels at all and then as they came along I was placed into a sort of Staff equivalent role there uh so I don't know if you call that a promotion or not but it was whatever it was uh and I came over to stripe um as kind of a similar staish level and was there for a few years before a promotion and I think kind of like joy in both of those companies cases the levels were just numbers ordered in rank uh and you know you do your best to infer what they are broadly um definitely tricky to tell across companies here thank you uh and last but not least uh Shen hello um shanid gaur I've uh been in the industry in and around for 20 plus years at this point of time various roles across uh different places I think for the recent past I've been with Comcast that's where I am right now I'm a distinguished engineer with their consumer experiences team um I'm based out of Philadelphia as I mentioned earlier and I think the way I came into my roles is effectively through a lot of conversations a lot of uh Bridging the Gap I I really sort of uh agree with what Andrew was saying finding the gaps filling yourself into those gaps making yourself useful and then you sort of see everything come to you right so that's I think that's been my observation as well so you know really excited to be here and to talk with everyone amazing thank you everyone um so back back to our webinar theme for today are you wondering what it takes to continue progressing on the staff plus path you might be in a staff engineer role thinking about why you need to prepare to unlock your next promotion or you're a manager and you're looking to understand more about the role so you can better support your direct reports or establish Partnerships with inor st people last month we uncovered the skills that will help senior engineers make the First Leap into a technical leadership lad today we'll be discussing what is required for the next levels let's hear from from our expert panel and we're going to start with uh a first topic which is around what what is the different skill set that you need uh for this level I'm we're going to start with Shen uh what is the key point about the skill set that you'd like to highlight yeah um I think often when I get asked this question uh by folks that I'm mentoring or otherwise I think my usual answer is you know the skills that sort of got you to this level aren't the ones that are going to take you any further and the and there's a very specific reason for that um what you will notice is that as you basically progress across you know on your career ladder there'll be a lot less Clarity and a lot more fuzziness in terms of everything when I when I mean fuzziness it means like what is it that you're supposed to do on a day-to-day basis how much direction are people giving you on a project that you're responsible for and even extends to what exactly Your Role is uh the biggest skill that you bring to the table for your organization and for your team is your ability to effectively take that fuzziness away and bring Clarity to it you're expected to effectively help not just yourself but the folks around you see that Vision see what they're supposed to be doing and sort of help unite people that skill to simplify and bring Clarity and take everyone on the journey with you that's that's the primary skill from my perspective thank you I can I can definitely relate to that and also I I found that people look at you for the clarity so you you better enjoy doing that uh we're gonna move on to to Scott next uh can you give us an example of what what delegating uh work looks like at this level yeah um I mean I I love Shan's uh framing of it as as improving Clarity right you don't take it necessarily to zero um and and other people might still be doing it for you but I think I think to me that is delegation is finding a way to give the people who uh are more focused in their scope than you are a simpler version of the problem to work on um and I think like at staff we're all used to doing this like it's been probably a while since you personally did every bit of work that that you uh were providing leverage over um for me I think the big difference at principle is instead of kind of uh receiving well-formed problems and producing specs or designs or concrete outcomes I tend to work a level up now right it's receiving big vague directions and uh producing a problem statement or a few problem statements and then delegating those to yet more people who are going to do my old job of taking the problem statements and turning them into designs and so that can mean developing TLS under me it can mean developing groups of TLS under me sometimes depending on how much work is to be done and for me it involves getting really good at um basically working uh on judging and and fostering the conditions for great design even where I'm no longer a deep expert in those areas uh which is a pretty meaningful shift from what it used to be involves a whole new set of skills um and if if you're looking to practice that for the first time I might suggest running a design review process like owning owning the process itself uh because it gives you a lot of on the ground experience with seeing other people's designs trying to give useful feedback even though you're not going to be the ultimate expert in any single one of them thank you uh one quick question when you said uh develop inls you mean tech leads yes tech leads yes thank you or staff Engineers essentially staff so but so you kind of delegating to people who will then also delegate onwards yeah yeah much like I used to get projects coming into me uh before yeah exactly okay cool uh thank you uh we're gonna quickly go back to to chenine and and ask uh how can building bridges help you advance with your goals within the organization yeah I think that's another uh that's another important skill to it's a it's a great question for that right it's another very important skill to build um because your ability to effectively build those relationships with your peer networks your you know your managers your supporters like that's going to be a crucial factor in your success right you have to be able to build deep enough relationships within your network so that you have folks that you can turn to when you need help but those but you know it also goes to the level that you the people on that Network know you they understand you they have enough trust in the relationship that they are willing to listen to your vision so I I talked earlier about Clarity and vision and all that your vision is only as useful as the people who are willing to listen to it if you're not even going to be able to have a good conversation about it it's not a very helpful Vision so investing in your network your peers and the like specifically right especially peers who are not in your organization peers are who are in parallel organization who may not have the same sort of converged objectives as you you have to be able to build that relationship so you can go to them with your vision and say Hey you know my vision here your vision here not so different you know we should see these things in in a similar sort of light that ability to network to build those relationships and to effectively sell your vision is going to be key and and you know that's that's again one of those skills that you should be having at principal and above level for sure thank you I I wondered when the when the selling kind of question was you know answer was going to come up because we do a lot of selling uh and now we're going to focus on Joy uh and uh what is the most important thing in uh in your experience that people need to realize when tackling a promotion yeah um all of the things that have been said so far around skills are super important but one of the things I've always found is that it's not just about the skills themselves it's also about your mindset and your approach and how you're thinking about stuff um this starts to become true even at the staff level but I feel like it just keeps becoming true that you need to think start with thinking broader and then and then approach things that way um for example I often see the mistake of people looking at their particular area and seeing like this is the most important thing we need to solve this problem and then thinking about how do we apply this outward how do I convince those those peers that we were just talking about that they should be doing this thing instead of looking broader first and seeing okay what are the big problems across a larger area and then how do I maybe which ones also apply to my area and which ones make sense to work on rather than starting from small and moving out you instead start big and then maybe move back a little bit that's a great me uh thank you we're we're going to move on to the second topic which is how to get promoted uh to this to this level as an individual contributor uh now Andrew uh uh why is it important to reflect on why do we want to be promoted before the fact of kind of getting that promotion yeah um it's a good question so so the topic of this this webinar um kind of got me thinking like one of the first questions you need to answer is do you actually want to be promoted from from where you are right now especially if you're if you're getting like what's your rationale for it um is it because you want more reward or more recognition or more responsibilities because the chances are you can probably get most of those things doing your current role if you if you know where to look um and as as we we've all said here the the the expectations and the the role changes significantly the the sort of as you promote into staff and then from Stu onwards it changes again and it it may well be the case that you you you put a lot of time and effort into chasing a role and or a promotion and you get it and you realize you don't actually want it because the role has changed so much that it's not really what you enjoy doing anymore so I think that that's something that people need to really consider when they're when they're thinking about going for a promotion is do I really want what what that offers and in many cases as as you get more senior the role is undefined it's unclear what it is that the expectations would be on you anyway so you can quite often find yourself in in a position you're not comfortable with purely because you just think well it's the next logical step so I think that's just something it's it's really worth being thoughtful about before you you start on that Journey yeah it's fantastic that you brought this up because we discuss a lot about people who move into management such as Joy when when you did your intro you move into management and you you realized that wasn't for you but we really discuss among the levels how things change and it's it's okay to to stay where you are and be great at that absolutely yeah yeah so um so now on to Scott uh what do you recommend people focus on when figuring out their next role yeah um I like I like Andrew's Focus there on kind of recognizing that you need to know what you're looking for I think to some degree that's always true from day one of of working in the industry but I think as you get more senior it gets really really important um uh I think a lot of people focus on telling you to do the find find the kind of work you enjoy uh I have a cooworker Michelle Buu who says the same thing as saying find the work that gives you a lot of energy uh and that may seem like a really minor pivot in wording I think for me it actually kind of changes my answer um and it helps reinforce for me that like waking up and being excited to do whatever that work is at the next level is really Central uh I I think probably the panelists would agree sounds like Andrew would that like it's very easy to accidentally find yourself in a place where you're doing a bunch of work that you like authentically do not like and do not want to be showing up for um and I think you just have to feel like you own that and are paying attention to it um and and the other big thing I think you have to watch out for is making sure there's actually a business need for uh the work at the level that you're trying to get into um when you're more Junior there's generally always room for one more person at the senior engineer level or something like that even at staff that's usually true but as you get very very senior there's actually not a lot of spots for it and so um you really don't want to be put in a spot where you find yourself uh fighting for work or you find yourself sitting around and people saying what does that guy do around here what's he actually adding in value um you want to be walking into a spot where everyone agrees wow we really need somebody at this level in this role for XYZ reasons um usually we frame that as a business need maybe you would take the terminology different for the orc that you work in but I think people wanting you to be there is the point and then just you and your manager need to be really clear about what the appropriate level work is um I find it kind of hard to guess this when especially when I'm going for an up level kind of by definition it's new to me but if you and your manager can agree on XYZ projects or something very concrete uh and you can say great this is my number one number two goals I'm going to not focus on a bunch of other stuff that just makes sure you're all on the same page and share expectations thank you for that I I thought you were going to talk about skills but I I love the framing that is much much broader than that and and he's kind of focused on the business benefit more than anything yeah and and and maybe like I guess the skills differ right uh when depending on the person depending on the the principal engineer you might do a lot of coding or do no coding you might specialize in different areas and so it's very unique to the person yeah thank you for that and now we're going to you know ask Joy uh because you've been in promotion committees and that's you know it gets very juicy there uh what do you look for when considering candidates for promotion at this level yeah I've been on um promotion committees at a number of places and I guess some of the things I've noticed there's three things I've noticed so the first one um maybe by this point as staff Engineers most of you have figured this out already but I'm going to say it anyway um often what we're looking for when we're looking through a packet or a case is the gaps what are people not talking about because everything that's written down is going to be glowing it's going to be say great things so where where are the things that aren't being said and my assumption is usually if it's not there then they didn't do it which might not be true so try to think through that when you're putting together a case if that's how your company um works so that's the first thing the second thing is communication this hasn't really been said yet but communication the higher and higher you get the more and more important communication is um you need to be able to communicate broadly at large like yeah broadly basically um and while on a promotion committee I never look for does the person communicate it usually colors like do I already know some of the projects are working on do I already understand the complexity and the like how great is it and if I do then it's going to be less likely that I'm going to like make assumptions in ways that I shouldn't be so that that can be a subtle way to help yourself as well well and the final thing this is a mistake I often see but people there's often requirements for you know working broadly or like kind of related to what I was talking about earlier in terms of thinking broadly and people will answer this in terms of like oh I worked with Team I worked with you know my PM or I worked with you know these three other teams but then you look at you're like but yeah you were given a project that required you to work with people in those three other teams so of course you worked with them like I would have major concerns if you didn't work with them but instead it's more of were you given maybe still a small project but did you go and say oh but this actually applies to this team over here but even though nobody told me to or do you think about like oh this underlying technology we need I think some other teams might need that let me go talk to some engineers and see if that makes sense and then maybe refine the goals so that it works broadly across those so it's more about like are you proactively going out and are you thinking larger and not just with the project you're given and working isn't less about working with people and more about are you thinking more broadly I I like how this kind of goes back to the point that Shen mentioned early about Building Bridges so you start early on showing you can build those bridges thank you uh before we move to the next topic we've had some really good questions submitted so I'm going to I'm going to take a couple of minutes to just answer those because they're relevant to what we've been discussing uh so the first one is uh as always how much hands- on code uh code time do you spend now as a staff plus engineer I find it hard to balance playing a team leish kind of project lead role sometimes and then being that design review person uh please unmute yourself if you want to answer or raise your hand and any anyone Andrew um I think the reality is it varies from from um engagement to engagement like you you go where you're needed and you you do what's needed so sometimes that is Hands-On writing code sometimes it's being hands off and just empowering a team so it's really difficult to answer that question I I'll take a stab at it as well I think the um I think it to to Andrew's point it definitely does vary with time and I think it also shifts as you sort of progress right I I I I feel that when I was at the principal level I wrote a lot more code it might have been pish code but it was pish enough that I could sort of you know push itad somebody else would take it over and I still do enough coding so that I get my hands wet and I sort of have a sense of what I'm asking people to do but I find less and less of my code is relevant enough to actually put push to prod like even after refinement it would be very very obscure on the side sort of experimentation that I would done as opposed to when I was a principal it was more like you know try it out do a little bit lay the ground workor for the team have them take it over and push it to Broad so it's it's a it's a Continuum of how much code you write it's also a Continuum of like what happens to the code after you've written it thank you Jo I see you are muted yeah um I would mostly Echo what's been said in terms of like it depends on who you are as to um Scott's earlier point of like is that something you really want to do or not and is it something your company needs or not but I would say like it also for me at least recently it's varied a lot like the last couple weeks I've been coding almost as much as I did when I was a senior sui but there are other times when I went for you know four weeks without writing any code at all and I I wouldn't say I loved that but it kind of depends on the current needs of the organization and the current you know project cycle and like where things are and what what's going on outside of your your day-to-day thing thank thank you all for that I I I I think you know there should probably a follow-up question to this which is how how do you keep you know your tool shirt kind of sharpened so when you need to go back into coding you can write some some code that is kind of reasonably good but maybe that's for for later on uh or maybe for the chat I'm going to take one more question before we move on uh uh because it says did you have any mentors who help you bridge that Gap from staff to principal could like to go um I I would love to say yes I would love to say I had like a really clean single person here or even a couple people um I've found this very hard like transparently very hard to find mentors um that I can sort of spend a lot of time in maybe because it's so specialized it's hard to find people who are shaped just like me who want to do things just like I do um I I have found some value in I think it's um Lara Hogan maybe has a blog post about a manager Voltron kind of having the idea that look if you can't get everything you need from a single person maybe you can find pieces of what you need from a lot of people and kind of Cobble them together in a way that makes sense for you and I've absolutely done that um across companies I've done it with managers sometimes that have traits that I want to emulate even as a principal engineer and I think that's that's been as close as I've gotten um but communities like this are a great place to find those people too thank you I think the one thing I would add to that is that we sometimes think of Mentor as being somebody more senior but I found more of like a pure mentorship thing still being useful too finding people at my own level or even somebody lower but really good at one particular thing being useful to just talk to bounce ideas off of it's a great take sh I think the so I I'll build on top of something that Scott mentioned which is very important it's it's kind of hard to find good mentors um but at the same time in order to progress in your career you do need those men mentors um so I've I've been fortunate where I've had periods of time where I've had great mentors who told me exactly what I need to do but most of the time it's been a network of mentors who've been sort of helping me right um someone I forget who first you know coined the phrase but this idea of a personal board right a board of people who can effectively tell you like here's what you should be doing so not one person in that committee or board as you think of them in your head is going to tell you what you need to do but there's there's a there's a set of people like three or four or whatever is the right number for you who you can approach with your problems who will give you their own perspectives on how to solve for it and it empowers you to at least get some additional context before you make your next decision before you sort of think about the next thing so I think there it's a combination of mentors mentors who are like going to tell you what to do as well as this idea of a personal board where they they provide guidance and give you their perspectives and you know you shape that in the directions that you want to shape it thank you thank you shanan uh I think I will add that it was when I promoted to principal that I saw my role was so specialized that sometimes even in like peer meetings I felt it was a bit of loneliness I bit like oh my God my role is just so different from everyone else uh and I started going to communities such a sleep death but then also in conferences I would try to like almost like grab people that I felt were in maybe like a similar area of expertise and it it helped me enormously because they they were feeling the same way I was so yeah this is a great place uh to build that uh the community uh we're gonna go back to the to the webinar uh now uh I'm going to go to the to our third topic which is how to get your manager to advocate for you and provide opportunities for growth and development and Shany we're back to you uh uh and on the topic of influence how can you use your influence to shape the relationship with your manager and your peers um yeah so I think uhu I think it was mentioned earlier right one of the one of the advantages that you have at the most senior levels is you have a lot of flexibility in defining defining ining your role and also defining your level of involvement so for everything that comes your way avoid the temptation to be that one person who has to solve it all there's a there's a combination of you're going to be a primary on a few things you're going to be a collaborator on some things and on some things it's actually okay to say that I'm going to take a backseat on this one and have someone else Drive um getting that Clarity is actually important for everything that comes your way and there is a direct core relation between you having that Clarity for yourself and the relationship and influence that you have on your your network right your manager specifically as well because when you achieve that you basically get to a point where you can actually be a better um partner better employee better peer like however you want to think about because when you try to get into everything at the same time you just end up stepping on everyone's toes and you're going to be ineffective you're going to make everyone else also ineffective by bringing that Clarity to yourself you know what you should be doing you know what you should how you should be engaging and that actually leads to better relationships and it leads to you being able to influence a lot more um and specifically when it comes to your managers your manager sees that they they see your technical skills and all of that but they also see your ability to be able to navigate through that the the the thing that I think goes through a lot of managers is how much chaos can I throw at one person and expect them to stay afloat to some extent right and by able to sort of have that sort of Mind map in your head where you're able to classify you're able to sort of navigate the chaos you're actually demonstrating to folks around you and your manager that yeah I'm good I'm happy I'm able to sort of progress on the stuff and if there's more I can probably take a lot more of it and that's you know sooner or later that gets noticed and people tend to sort of promote you for those reasons right so again it goes back to promotion it goes back to Clarity it goes back to your pier network all of those things come together in you know in this sort of uh frame framing I guess oh thank you for that I think I think I I have a follow follow off question maybe for the chat too which is how do you say no yeah but maybe later later on uh we're we're going to move on to Scott uh uh to get some insight what strategies do you use to advocate for yourself well uh Shan had talked about kind of being a a Handler of chaos and I think like something that I've I've accepted over time is that my manager is also a Handler of a lot of chaos and uh as you get more senior you have to kind of accept that the volume of chaos your manager is probably handling especially if you report up to someone who has a bunch of people under them is is tremendous um and at any given time there's probably at least one if not five or 10 completely burning fires that they're actively managing and so the the time and attention they have for you is just less um and that is something that that I think you have to to some degree get comfortable with um and you have to go into a mode of more self-sufficiency uh you have to know what you're looking for you have to know what's going well and not going well for yourself um if you're getting really overloaded or if you're getting really bored uh you need to be saying that out loud because the odds that it gets kind of pulled from you are lower than they were when you're junior even if you have a really good manager they're just busier um and so I think just being really clear about that communication especially if you want to change anything about your role or your focus or your scope is is essential um and we talked about the importance of kind of having strong relationship with peers and I think that's totally true I think you also just want to have a a really excellent relationship ship with your manager wherever possible um you know they're going to be whether you like it or not they're going to be in a lot of rooms that you're not in and they're going to be speaking for you and they're going to be nominating or not nominating you for work um and that will never change uh and you really just want them to have like a rich mental model of like what does Scott care about what does he want to be doing more what does he not want to do any of um what's going to make him happy and excellent so that they can speak for you and really um be your Advocate uh in all those places that you basically won't be present in thank you I I love how you're kind of tying and building on each other's answers U because that Clarity for yourself is also that Clarity for others and it will help you kind of be known for what you do which is also a bit about branding and and people knowing what what to ask you even so uh you really go and ask anyone in your team or your company who know who you know they are really busy and really spread thing so you you always think like oh I just leave them to be we're g to move on to to the next topic uh which is about how to make your impact visible to the business uh because in this worldes you are working for the business and uh we're going to go uh to Andrew why is it important to invest in getting to know the people at leadership level uh yeah so um I think as you as you said The more senior you get the the closer you work to the business and the expectations on on you are to to deliver business value and demonstrate that you're able to move business metrics and obviously that comes a big part of that is is understanding what the business needs and what they want from from you and um so I think earlier in your career and also like the more senior you get the the the greater the emphasis is on as Shen said um building your Bridges and your ability to influence is is just one of the most important skills that you have and so earlier in your career when you're thinking about promotion probably the people that making made were making the decisions the ic's and the managers in the room they knew you personally they'd worked with you they knew everything you did and they had all the information to decide whether or not you were ready for the next level um as you get more important and your impact and your scope increases um sorry not more important as you get more senior and you your your scope um increases the business the decision makers for for that level are probably um leaders who may never have heard of you um and so what becomes more important is is as you say your personal brand like tying demonstrating that you know the right people they know you so that the the decision is is is easy to to make because they already know what your impact has been and and what you've done um unfortunately that that means that politics are involved the sort of more senior you get it's it's a it's a dirty secret but you do have to think about making making sure that the right people know who you are and you pick the right projects to give yourself the opportunity to to show what you can do um it's unlikely that if you sit in a room on your own and just write awesome code you're going to demonstrate that you can deliver the um the outcomes and the impact that that somebody else could do by just knowing the right people and it's yeah it's unfortunate but it's tends to be true thank you and that highes when Joy was describing being on promotion committees and looking for people who are kind of expanding Beyond uh because I think getting to leadership it starts much earlier than actually getting the promotion I think it might even start when you are a senior engineer and you're starting to kind of go outside of your circle of influence uh so so don't think that you promote and then all of a sudden you have to acquire all of these people like well if you're if you're at the same org of course you know take your time and and build this up and and we're back you know we're going to move back to Joy uh you describe in an early conversation uh the impact of the importance sorry of keeping your ear to the ground can you tell us more about that yeah um this this is really tied to what Andrew was just talking about in terms of like understanding the lay of the land and understanding what is actually going to make business impact what's actually important to the business right now and trying to align what you you would like to do or to that or maybe even possibly completely change what what you've been working on based on that um one of the hardest things is recognizing and realizing the project I've been putting my Blood Sweat and Tears into is not actually important anymore and maybe I should pause that or stop it and go work on something else but that's something that's important to like keep re-evaluating and I guess back to the original question a little bit more of like keeping my ear to the ground there's this is something I've been trying to think about what the right balance is too there's a question about coding but there's a balance for this as well like what are the best forums for me to gather information without spending all my time gathering information because that's also a potential suck like which slack channels make sense both internally possibly externally there's some great resources externally where I can get the buzz on what the newest Tech is especially my areas and kind of understand what people are thinking about um but also things like we have a quarterly Business review for some most senior people and like that's something I always make sure to attend because that's a good way to get some insight into the rest of our business and understand what's happening um all hands like depending on your company those may or may not be useful but like that's also a way to kind of gather what people are thinking about what people are talking about what concerns are anything along those lines um we have and ask me anything with our VP of engineering which um for a while there I was noticing that it was only the most senior people who would show up every time and they didn't necessarily even have questions they just mostly wanted to see what other people were thinking and what try to get a pulse that way um we managed to change it a little more to get more people in there but that was another thing I've noticed is like trying to get that pulse and understand what's happening is incredibly important and yeah thank you I I also found that sometimes guilds or even employee resource groups if your or has them they're great ways to kind of navigate outside of kind of the formal structures and kind of meet people sometimes have very high levels um yeah that's a good point the women and Tech group at box was how I got to know people across the organization in many cases and it was a great way to already have somebody if I needed more information in a particular area thank you and we're going to move to the last topic uh we have I think five minutes left uh together so the last one the last we're going to focus on whether it's better to promote up within your organization or outside in uh and Andrew uh what has been your experience in promoting when changing organizations um yeah so whenever I changed organizations I kind of ended up with a different title so it's difficult to know whether is actually been a promotion or not um but I think thinking about so so obviously it takes time and effort to get promoted within a company and the the main reason for that one of the main reasons is that there's so much data for the committee to go on they they know what you've done and they've got a huge amount of information to assess what your ability is and it's just not possible to get the same amount of signal from an interview with an outside candidate so I think it's probably fair to say that it's easier to get promoted by changing jobs than it is to get promoted within a company but there is a huge risk in doing that and I think that risk is that you don't really know like getting promoted within a company and taking on the next level which we've always said is is a change in in role and scope and is harder but you're already in a place where you understand the context and you have your network and you have your people so you it's an easier transition whereas coming into a company from the outside and expecting to have a bunch of stuff thrown at you that you don't have any context you don't have any network it's a high-risk strategy to change jobs just to get a promotion at this level um yes you can do it but it may not end well so I think that's one of those things that again you need to be really clear what it is you're doing and why you're doing it to um before you go that route yeah definitely and and also as that doing the interviews to make sure you're interviewing for the level you think you are well especially because yeah as I said every company has a different expectation set of levels you don't it's very hard to assess when you're outside the company what the expectations are because everyone is quite vague about the roles um until you actually try and live it it's it's really hard to understand what's expected of you thank you and I'm gonna ask the last question to Shen uh because you've been in your current Organization for nearly 15 years uh maybe you can provide some counterbalance to Andrew uh what has helped you navigate different R yeah I I I think it's I think I concur for the most part with what Andrew was saying right I think there's a little bit of conventional wisdom out there in terms of you know the easiest way to get promoted is to go to a different job at a different title uh and I think it's exactly what Andrew said what you lose when you do that effectively is you lose your network you lose the context that you had and the advantage that I find that I have in my role you know being here for a while is I've had the opportunity to build and nurture those relationships that pure Network that I talked about that relationship with managers and leaders in the company that comes with time and you know ever so often it's going to be a scenario where a problem is thrown at me that I don't fully understand but I know enough of the people around me to be able to have a conversation with them and have them give me enough context so that I can actually jump into it um and that's the that's the trade-off there right you it takes sometimes a little longer to get promoted within your organization but you've built enough of an understanding you have enough of the context you have enough of the network that that transition becomes a lot easier for you and you're in many cases in my opinion uh you're better positioned to handle the next challenges that are going to be thrown at you thank you uh and I think before we we close up I'm going to take one more question uh from the audience um and someone asked do you all as staff Plus have direct reports or have folks here individual contributors this is a touch on the topic on influencing a staff Plus without direct reports and level setting with manager um on work goals with that structure I can I can start that I think I've lived on both sides of it um so I've have had uh direct reports in the past um I'm currently in a role where I do not have uh direct reps um the interesting thing though is that I still have the idea of here's a group of people who are closely aligned to my objectives who are closely aligned to my career path and I buil like a more Federated sort of um relationship with those with those individuals where no one reports to me I don't expect any of them will ever report to me but we have enough of a trust and a working relationship where when they need something they know to come to me when I need something I know I can sort of reach out to them so so you you sort of you know you sort of have this you know this sort of relationship where no no one actually reports to you but you have enough people that you trust around you that you you have a similar sort of relationship I think much of the navigation that happens on the IC track is going to be around how do you keep yourself um grounded in your ability to deliver but at the same time also find that balance with here's a network of people who don't quite report to me but also I trust enough to to be able to delegate work to thank you we have time for one more Andrew did you want to add anything um only to say um that I'm I'm an I see I I was given a decision I was given a choice um sort of seven eight years ago of do you want to be uh do you want to have direct reports do you want to just be focused on the tech and be a pure Tech lead with no management responsibility um and yeah it was a no-brainer for me it was it was just one of those things where I'd managed people before and it's not something I was I enjoyed doing all was good at so I it's just I I strive very hard to stay away from that kind of reporting structure thank you well uh I'm going to take a few minutes to thank you all our panelists for sharing your insights today uh now we're going to wrap up our panel so let's go around the room and summarize in a sentence what is the most important skill in your opinion to develop to become a principal engineer and now we're going to go back uh in Reverse alphabetical order so we're gonna start with shaid um yeah so I I think if there's one thing that I would like everyone to leave with is is to think differently think differently about your role think differently about what you need to be doing to to get there and also think differently about how you approach what's put it in front of you don't jump into it head first think about it a little bit understand your own um interest in certain things understand your limitations understand where to leverage your network so think differently in how you approach some of that stuff as well so that's that's the one thing that I would tell everyone think differently amazing uh now Scott yeah I'd say I like Joy's comment like zoom out um understand what you're trying to accomplish and then take a couple steps back and feel empowered and like an owner to color outside the lines of your technical job title or your technical org or whatever and really focus on the outcomes and um be flexible about the how and the what that you do in the process fantastic uh next Joy yeah I was kind of on the fence between what both of you have already talked about so I'm going to go with my my other answer which is uh really around communication um working on communication being able to do written spoken um both big groups small groups all that kind of stuff it becomes more and more and more important the more Senor I've gotten thank you and finally Andrew um don't ask with permission like the whole point of the role is is you need to go and find what needs to be done not wait for somebody to you and that comes down to just not asking for permission thank you I'll add one last which is reframe politics to relationships and focus on on building a a work environment that you love to work in and other people also love to work in and we're going to wrap up here so thank you so much for all the good insights for today we're all going to be heading for the Le slack uh stff plus Channel please head here uh to read the answers on the questions that unfortunately we didn't have time to get to we're going to be back on the 4th of June for our next staff plus webinar and we will be announcing the topic and the panelists in the coming weeks we're also excit excitingly running quarterly a staff plus Community roundtables uh there a chance for you to network with with your peers over shared challenges and connect with us at the lead def to help share the future of these webinars and wider content the next round table is going to take place on June 27th we've got 15 places open for folks to join us look out for the messaging slack in a moment for more info thank you for joining and hope to see you next time bye [Music], How to Get Promoted Beyond Staff Engineer, LeadDev, 01jdabxj4vt1xm5txsamb60y57.