Three Things Preventing Your Promotion to Senior Engineer (from a Principal at Amazon)

Summary

This video script discusses the transition to senior engineer, highlighting four key traits: technical depth, leadership over management, rejecting hyperbolic discounting, and growing others. It emphasizes the importance of setting a long-term direction for the team and creating time for strategic thinking, rather than just focusing on immediate tasks. The speaker shares insights from their experience at Amazon, guiding viewers on how to avoid common pitfalls and become effective senior engineers.

Takeaways

• 🚀 **Senior Engineer Traits**: The video outlines four universal traits of senior engineers: technical depth, leadership, rejection of hyperbolic discounting, and growing others.
• 🌟 **Leadership vs Management**: Leadership is about setting direction and rallying the team, while management focuses on execution and accountability.
• 💼 **The Importance of Long-Term Thinking**: Senior engineers think about the long-term consequences of immediate actions and communicate a steady state for systems.
• 🚀 **Promotion Insights**: Tech promotions are conservative, often only promoting individuals who are already demonstrating traits of the next level.
• 💡 **Time Horizon**: Senior engineers consider the impact of their decisions over a longer time frame, typically a year.
• 🔄 **Rejection of Hyperbolic Discounting**: They avoid preferring immediate benefits at the expense of larger future benefits.
• ⏰ **Time Management**: Finding time to think about the future is crucial, and it's healthier to extract time from existing work hours rather than overworking.
• 🌱 **Growing Others**: Senior engineers grow others around them to take over responsibilities, which frees up their bandwidth for higher-level tasks.
• 🔧 **Technical Depth**: While technical depth is important, it's not sufficient on its own to reach the next level; leadership is also necessary.
• 📈 **Career Progression**: The video suggests that developers should have a clear idea of what it takes to reach the next level to avoid false starts that could hinder their career progression.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the video script?

The main focus of the video script is to discuss the traits and behaviors necessary to progress from being a software developer to becoming a senior engineer or tech lead.

What does the speaker suggest is often overlooked by developers when aiming to become senior engineers?

Developers often overlook the need to demonstrate leadership and strategic thinking beyond just being technically proficient and delivering projects on time.

What is the difference between leadership and management as explained in the script?

Leadership involves setting a direction and rallying the team towards a common goal, while management is concerned with the execution of tasks and ensuring that projects are completed on time.

Why is it important for senior engineers to think about the long-term consequences of their actions?

Senior engineers should consider long-term consequences to ensure that their decisions do not compound existing operational burdens or technical debt, and to maintain a healthy steady state for systems.

What is the significance of the 'more cowbell' reference in the script?

The 'more cowbell' reference humorously illustrates the point that while technical depth is important, an overemphasis on it to the exclusion of other leadership qualities can be misguided.

What does the speaker mean by 'living in the future'?

The speaker refers to 'living in the future' as the practice of planning and thinking ahead to maximize the benefits of a team's actions over a longer time horizon, such as a year.

How does the concept of 'hyperbolic discounting' relate to the decisions made by software engineers?

'Hyperbolic discounting' is the tendency to prefer immediate benefits over future benefits, even if the future benefits are greater. Senior engineers should avoid this by considering the long-term impact of their decisions.

What is the speaker's advice on finding time to think about the future?

The speaker advises against working extra hours and instead suggests finding time within regular working hours by delegating tasks and growing others to take on responsibilities.

Why is it crucial for senior engineers to grow others around them?

Growing others not only frees up the senior engineer's bandwidth to focus on strategic thinking but also helps in building a stronger team that can handle more responsibilities.

What is the 'Peter Principle' as mentioned in the script?

The 'Peter Principle' is the idea that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. The script suggests that tech promotions are often conservative, only promoting individuals who are already demonstrating the traits of the next level.

What are the four universal traits of senior engineers as outlined in the script?

The four universal traits of senior engineers are: 1) being technically deep and delivering on time, 2) expressing leadership by thinking about maximizing benefits over a longer time horizon, 3) rejecting hyperbolic discounting, and 4) growing others around them to take over existing responsibilities.