A Framework to understand & assess the scope of Impact & Influence of Engineering Leaders in Big Techs:
1. Platform 2. Product 3. Process 4. People
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The 4 Ps are the Engine of Career Growth in both the Management and Technical Track.
I consider it to be a strategic abstraction of how to think about your career and how to positively impact the project, team, department, product or company you are currently working with.
The 1st P -> Platform - It is the Codebase, the Infrastructure, the CI/CD Pipeline, the Engineering Practices, the Architectural Patterns, the Databases, your Technical Skills with a particular Paradigm, Language, Framework, Tool or Library.
I especially loved knowing what Louie looks for when interviewing engineers.
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Louie mentions two kind of unpopular & almost forgotten ideas these days, but that I fully agree, and that, in my opinion, are crucial for ICs & Managers: work ethics & extracurricular activities.
- Tell me about your work ethic
- What have you done outside work?
This reminded me of another kind of unpopular career idea that I read in one of @simpleprogrammr's book :
After my article about Behavioral Interviews last week, many folks asked me for examples.
Today, have left that world, I'll be vulnerable and share the essay that landed me three $650k+ job offers at BigTechs last year.
Question: What is the most innovative thing you have done?
> My Answer (from Jan 2021).
During my first year as an Engineering Manager on the Mobile Engineering Team at American Express, my team and I struggled to deliver two important features on the Amex Mobile App, doing only two “Big Bang” releases throughout the year.
After realizing that our dev. approach wasn’t working well, I switched to a lean development approach that has since helped us slice dozens of large business initiatives into small incremental releases, increase our team productivity by 12% and reduce our cycle time by half.
The 5 Engineering Leadership Levels of Ownership in Code Review/PR Comments (How do you lead by example on PR reviews?)
🚼 Level 1 - Complain Generally. “This is a piece of s***"
continue...🧵🧵🧵
🚶Level 2- Complain Specifically / Pin Point the issue, but leave it as it is. “This method is not as functional as it could be. It is not testable:"
🏃Level 3- Propose a Solution Forward. “This method is not as functional as it could be. It is not testable, you can use this tool to do this. Here is an example: xxxx:"
Try to do it right after 15 minutes of meditation first thing in the morning.
Why does it work?
After 15 minutes of meditation trying to not follow your thoughts, it is almost impossible not to have things to journal about.
For the first time in my life I have been able to journal for 10 days in roll.
For years I have been reading 1 chapter of a book as the first thing in my morning routine.
A mistake I made many times was try to journal as the first thing in the day when I had nothing in mind, didn't work. I often had nothing to write about or felt it was dumb to write only what I was grateful for for instance.