https://skamille.medium.com/an-incomplete-list-of-skills-senior-engineers-need-beyond-coding-8ed4a521b29f

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Camille Fournier
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An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding

For varying levels of seniority, from senior, to staff, and beyond.

Camille Fournier
 

Camille Fournier

 

2 hours ago*2 min read

 1. How to run a meeting, and no, being the person who talks the most
    in the meeting is not the same thing as running it
 2. How to write a design doc, take feedback, and drive it to
    resolution, in a reasonable period of time
 3. How to mentor an early-career teammate, a mid-career engineer, a
    new manager who needs technical advice
 4. How to indulge a senior manager who wants to talk about technical
    stuff that they don't really understand, without rolling your
    eyes or making them feel stupid
 5. How to explain a technical concept behind closed doors to a
    senior person too embarrassed to openly admit that they don't
    understand it
 6. How to influence another team to use your solution instead of
    writing their own
 7. How to get another engineer to do something for you by asking for
    help in a way that makes them feel appreciated
 8. How to lead a project even though you don't manage any of the
    people working on the project
 9. How to get other engineers to listen to your ideas without making
    them feel threatened
10. How to listen to other engineers' ideas without feeling
    threatened
11. How to give up your baby, that project that you built into
    something great, so you can do something else
12. How to teach another engineer to care about that thing you really
    care about (operations, correctness, testing, code quality,
    performance, simplicity, etc)
13. How to communicate project status to stakeholders
14. How to convince management that they need to invest in a
    non-trivial technical project
15. How to build software while delivering incremental value in the
    process
16. How to craft a project proposal, socialize it, and get buy-in to
    execute it
17. How to repeat yourself enough that people start to listen
18. How to pick your battles
19. How to help someone get promoted
20. How to get information about what's really happening (how to
    gossip, how to network)
21. How to find interesting work on your own, instead of waiting for
    someone to bring it to you
22. How to tell someone they're wrong without making them feel
    ashamed
23. How to take negative feedback gracefully

Enjoy this post? You might like my book, The Manager's Path,
available on Amazon and Safari Online!

Camille Fournier

Author, "The Manager's Path." http://amzn.to/2FvjeHH Distributed
systems, dysfunctional programming. camilletalk.com,
elidedbranches.com

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Author, "The Manager's Path." http://amzn.to/2FvjeHH Distributed
systems, dysfunctional programming. camilletalk.com,
elidedbranches.com

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