How the top 1% of engineers are judged
Video clip with Rahul Pandey
I did a podcast with Rahul Pandey (Cofounder of Taro, former Staff Engineer and Engineering Manager at Meta, former Stanford Adjunct Lecturer) on “Lessons From The Top: Managing And Growing 800 People” for Taro members.
I want to share with you the above video clip, that Rahul made public, where we discuss how how to become a Staff or Principal Engineer, the most senior Individual Contributors (ICs). A big part of these roles is leadership, and the hardest kind of leadership (by influence, without being the manager).
2 key takeaways.
Technical excellence is table stakes for senior IC engineers. As an executive, I am judging their impact by 3 metrics:
Can they deploy that technical expertise to help me make better business decisions that make money, grow customers, or reduce costs?
Can they help me grow other engineers by mentoring and putting into place systems and architectures?
Are they willing to help me, including with non-technical problems? For example, do they proactively come to me and say: “Hey, I was looking at the business problem and there’s this new technology we can buy, build, or borrow that will help solve the problem and unlock customers.”
The most important skills to look for in a manager: loyalty and trajectory.
Loyalty - Does the manager have a track record of growing and promoting their people? Do they have a set of people who follow them from role to role or team to team?
Trajectory - Are they moving up consistently, with a track record of growth? Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. Are they a fast or slow train?
If you are a senior engineer wanting to make that hard leap, follow Rahul and go watch the video. Also, Rahul teaches a 2-week live online class Senior to Staff - Land Your Promotion As An Engineer (he does an excellent job, as signaled by his 4.8/5 rating).
If you are a Senior Manager or Director, go listen to how to best develop and then leverage this kind of top engineering talent.
Finally, if you are a Principal/Staff engineer, (a) congratulations and thank you for what you do, and (b) share your own perspective on what makes your job fun, hard, or interesting.
Top ICs are leaders, 100%.
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