61–70 of 155 posts
tl;dr: s/"Avoid politics, but have right folks vouch for your work"/"Become an adept politician".
It's a (thoughtful) list for the "senior engineer in 500+ heads company". If you work for a small startup (where you'll be forced to be "senior engineer" if you like it or not), you'll have no "manager", "peers", "projects", "hiring", "mentoring", "networking", and so 95% of the list items immediately pop.
Further to this point, networking is crucial too, but it's more networking outside the company. With other startups, with other technical folks -- your hiring pipeline is built on your personal network until you get to at least 20+.
These are excellent, except for one, which is to avoid politics. Politics is the art of making other people want the things that you want. If you can't do that, you're not a senior engineer. Politics is critical for your success, and honestly, a large number of these sixty points fall under, IMO, politics. tl;dr: s/"Avoid politics, but have right folks vouch for your work"/"Become an adept politician".
I would say tactical negotiation and leveraging personal connect is healthy, but manipulation for personal gains at the cost of a larger good is what is my definition of "politics".
I have seen couple of managers in my career who, while were poor managers based on employee voice surveys in the company, ended up with large charters due to being good at politics/"rubbing backs". I want to say that end result was they screwed it up since their directs ended up leaving their team, but in reality, they thrived despite losing folks and not delivering projects, again due to politics. As an engineer, I failed to appreciate that.
It's a (thoughtful) list for the "senior engineer in 500+ heads company". If you work for a small startup (where you'll be forced to be "senior engineer" if you like it or not), you'll have no "manager", "peers", "projects", "hiring", "mentoring", "networking", and so 95% of the list items immediately pop.
It's a (thoughtful) list for the "senior engineer in 500+ heads company". If you work for a small startup (where you'll be forced to be "senior engineer" if you like it or not), you'll have no "manager", "peers", "projects", "hiring", "mentoring", "networking", and so 95% of the list items immediately pop.
If you're at a startup you better be hiring! That's your #1 job! You better keep that bar high because the next round of folks will be hired by them. Further, at a small startup you can't get away from a bad hire, they're literally adjacent to you for 50+ hours a week. Further to this point, networking is crucial too, but it's more networking outside the company. With other startups, with other technical folks -- you…
Did you use a tool to create the JSON or did you type it by hand?
Why json and not csv? Strictier parsing by javascript.
Sounds like the person who wrote worked for Amazon or similar company. Almost all of this was official Amazon guideline for engineers.
Thanks for sharing. I would instead describe this list as "principles" instead of a checklist. A checklist is often used for a much more specific scope with very specific items. These are not applicable to any specific time or scenario and have activities that are not very specific. Here's my thoughts on a few of the items themselves: "Follow the principles of extreme ownership." -- Unless the term "extreme ownership…
Extreme ownership probably refers to the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win .
'Get involved with hiring for your team and company, and maintain a high bar for hiring quality candidates.' Posts derailing this 'high bar' are posted semi-daily to Hacker News, no? It's a really big dilemma (extensive hiring process that weeds out good candidates due to time and frustration or take risks) and it makes it sound like it's just something, you can, you know, do on a Tuesday in your spare time, and then…
'Get involved with hiring for your team and company, and maintain a high bar for hiring quality candidates.' Posts derailing this 'high bar' are posted semi-daily to Hacker News, no? It's a really big dilemma (extensive hiring process that weeds out good candidates due to time and frustration or take risks) and it makes it sound like it's just something, you can, you know, do on a Tuesday in your spare time, and then…