3 Critical Skills You Need to Grow Beyond Senior Levels in Engineering

at an institution, you can’t just do what is best, you also have to build trust and coordinate with others so you are on the same page. This, however, doesn’t mean that you should abdicate your judgment and get in line.

I like the approach Sholto Douglas expressed in his interview with Dwarkesh Patel:

If I’m trying to write some code and something is

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There are four key transitions you need to make: Depth in one type of product work → Breadth across multiple types of product workBeing good at your job → training others to be good at theirsSolving with the resources you have → Solving by allocating resources and influencing othersGaining more personal scope → Creating more scope for the organizat... See more

You have to move beyond solving with the resources you have and begin to influence others in the org to solve problems outside your direct span of control. You need to start identifying the full set of things blocking your problem area, and influencing others in the org to do that work. In addition, rather than being given a set of resources, you b... See more

Environment

Your Environment is everything that enables you to do great work that is outside of your direct control. There are a few major sub-variables of Environment:

• Manager - Your manager isn't just someone you report to. It is the person responsible for growing your career and shaping your output. This person should be invested in helping you

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When you started out as an engineer, your manager probably told you what to work on and how to approach it. At senior level, maybe your manager advised you on which problems were important to solve, and left it to you to figure out what to do about it. At staff+ levels, your manager should be bringing you information and sharing context, but you sh

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A prototypical head of engineering will be skilled at organizational design, process design, business strategy, recruiting, mentoring, coaching, public speaking, and written communication. They’ll also have a broad personal network and a broad foundation from product engineering to infrastructure engineering. That’s not even a particularly complete

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Here's my six-step approach to strategic micromanagement:

1. Gauge Task Maturity
   
   When handing off work, assess the employee's skill level. Are they new to this task or a seasoned pro? Newbies naturally need more support. You can take off the training wheels as skills develop.


2. Set a Clear Baseline
   
   Just because an employee can execute a process doesn’t

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