Trailer for the talk
Here's a sneak peek of the talk: Robert, Senior Technical Evangelist at SUSE, will share how you can build a productive relationship with your engineering manager to build the skills necessary to take your career to the next level.
About the talk
Being new in your developer career and working under an engineering manager can be an intimidating experience. However, your relationship with your dev lead can also help take your career to the next level if managed well. In this talk, I’ll share my experience both as a junior developer and a dev lead and offer practical steps to help you do exactly that.
This talk will cover
- Organizing technical personal development goals with your dev lead - What new framework or language should you learn?
- Setting a meaningful meeting cadence with your manager - How often should you meet, and what should you talk about?
- Tips on how to track your progress towards your goals
About the speaker
Robert Sirchia is a Senior Technical Evangelist at SUSE. He has been in tech for over 19 years, mostly in the .NET and Microsoft space. He moved towards the cloud when .NET did and never left. He has also led several large modernization efforts.
Highlights of the talk
What are engineering lead’s priorities and job details?
Something you want to understand is that engineering leads have “day jobs” as well. What that means is engineering leads have to close tickets, write code, and attend meetings just like you do. On top of that, they also need to be your lead, and perhaps the lead to many other developers. Therefore, their time would have to be split between different developers on the engineering team. Sometimes, your engineering lead may not be your manager. What that means is they are a guiding force, and not a managerial force. And most importantly, many of them may not know how to be a lead. Understand that it might be new to them, as your job or your role may be new to you. Remember your engineering lead is a human, not a superhuman, but they are a wealth of knowledge, and you just have to find it.
What are some new developers’ challenges and needs?
For some developers, this may be their first job. They may be fresh out of college, have a computer science degree, but may not have hands-on experience with coding. Similarly, this may be someone’s second career. Whether they’re fresh graduates or someone who’s transitioned into coding, they might not know the level they’re at. A lot of times, individuals struggle with imposter syndrome and are not sure of what they know and don’t know. Inversely, they may think they’re better at something they’re not really good at.
Another thing to keep in mind is that just because someone knows how to code doesn’t mean they know how to be a developer. What that means is they might not know that there are processes in place for pull requests, closing cards, or even what a card is. They may also come from a waterfall background going into agile, or vice versa. These are all things that need to be understood and addressed. Lastly, like engineering leads, developers are humans. They’re going to have good days and bad days. And likewise, they are a wealth of knowledge, and you just have to find it. You have unique points of view, new perspectives, and backgrounds.
How do you make it easier for your lead to help you?
The first and very basic element people forget is establishing and defining communication channels that are preferred for different purposes. So, the first thing you want to do with your lead is to establish which communication channels are preferred and what they will be used for. For instance, a Zoom call might be a good touch point for when something needs further explanation or discussions while Slack messages are good for general, non-emergency async messages. Different forms of communication may be done better in different channels.
Next, you want to align the stack with your lead. You want to align your local development environment with your lead and try to use the same tools and process as your lead. Don’t be different if you don’t have to be, but be different when it makes sense. For instance, if your lead is using IntelliJ, so do you. But if your engineering manager is using Vim, any text editor might be better.
The last thing is: cadence is key. Set up some time with your engineering manager, whether that’s a daily 5-10 minutes morning coffee check up or a weekly or biweekly one on one. Know that this can be in person or virtual, one isn’t better than the other. And always ask before you send an invite to be respectful of each others’ time as a common courtesy.