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.
MASTERING is the core verb here.
Mastering by LEARNING & BUILDING around solid engineering foundations & SELECTING & APPLYING the right practices, technologies, and tools.
All the cross-functional requirements of your system: reliability, scalability, extensibility, debuggability, testability & maintainability.
The 2nd P -> Product Delivery. It is the app, the website. The external. It is the User Experience, what the user is able to accomplish, and how quickly. It is also the Project Management & Continuous Delivery Strategy.
DELIVERING, especially, delivering value is the core verb.
DELIVER must be focused on customer impact and incremental improvements.
Improving only the codebase (The Platform - 1st P), the same way that improving only the Process or the environment for the People is not enough.
The 3rd P -> Process & Culture. It is the HOW.
It is the Culture, the Rituals, the Systems & the Metrics.
How scalable are we as an engineering organization?
How dependent are we of single points of failure?
How balanced is the work?
The core verb here is STRENGTHENING!
STRENGTHENING by adding flexibility on how we scale the product, the codebase, the infrastructure, how the people and teams interact.
It is the Sustainable Pace, the Collective Ownership, and the “Bus Factor” risk that Kent Beck talks about in his famous XP Book.
The 4th P -> People & Leadership. It is the second HOW, the most important one.
It is Mentorship, Feedback, the Leadership Values.
How do we collaborate as a team?
Are people happy? Are people feeling safe?
The core verb here is SUPPORTING! Support & Empathy.
SUPPORTING the emotional well-being of group members in difficult times, celebrating their successes, Inspiring day to day, maximizing potentials, challenging the status quo in a compassionate way.
Those are the values, things that people do even when no one is seeing.
The most successful Engineering Leaders that I know focus on getting better and increasing their Impact and Influence not only on the 1st P - Platform - but in all the 4 Ps: Platform, Product, Process & People.
Where should you focus on the impact at different moments of your career?
At lower levels (less than ~5 years of experience), Technical Platform, Architecture, and Coding or 1st P and Get Stuff Done or 2nd Pillar (the "adder" attributes). They are the primary drivers of promotions. Impact on specific projects or specific contributions to the codebase.
At higher levels (Staff+/Director+, > 10 years of experience), the importance shifts to contributions to the Process & Culture, Mentorship, and Sponsorship, "People", the 3rd and 4th pillar (the "multiplier" attributes). They become the primary drivers of promotions/growth”.
Between focusing on "Making Impact" or "Having Influence", I would focus on making positive impact because I believe that is the only way to get to influence.
I'm a strong believer in leading by example and walking the talk.
Continuous impact is the most effective way of Influence that I know.
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If you are an Engineering Leader interested in more Frameworks like this and/or Tips, Tricks & Examples on How to Crack the Big Tech Interviews as an EM or Staff+, make sure to follow me:
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.