You need to be adaptable. You need to be resilient because
the technology will outgrow you, the company will outgrow you,
your colleagues will outgrow you.
Your hard skills get you in the room, but what will actually
make you thrive is how you collaborated with others.
If individual contributors, people with really good
technical depth, don't move up an organizational ladder, then
mediocrity will move up. Growth doesn't have to be a
promotion necessarily. I had to learn how to ask for a
feedback and you have to learn how to receive the feedback.
It's on you how you will grow. You have the ownership of your
own career, so don't outsource this to anyone else.
Joining me today is Sanina Katira, talent expert with many
years of experience in recruitment and she shares a few
steps that are crucial for you to grow within your career.
So enjoy. I've talked to some people
specifically in big tech about the promotion process and some
of the frustration that is in there.
And I've also been to a conference where someone was on
stage and said if you want to go become a staff engineer, you
have to do these things. And the things they described
were for me borderline, like very counterproductive behaviour
for business results and outcomes.
It's like communicating to everyone what you're doing, not
just knowing what you're doing, sometimes not even doing the
work, but being very much an advocate for it, networking with
other teams and other managers so they know what you do.
And I'm like, like, this is borderline toxic culture wise.
What is your take on that? This is exactly what the soft
skills are. Of course you will have
quantitative expectations set up in the beginning of the year or
in the beginning of the semester or the quarter.
Like I need you. If you're an engineer, I need
you to deliver, I don't know, 400 lines of code or something.
Eliminate bags by 30% or something.
Depends on what your your job is, but this is what you do.
So the hard skills is what you do, the soft skills is how you
do it. What is the impact that you
have? Like what is the value you
brought in the company? You need to showcase that.
You need to make those outcomes visible and it's not only about
the outcomes, it's about the impact actually.
So in for an engineer on the job, but even before the job,
during an interview or even before applying for a job, they
need to think how their work impacts the company's profit,
the company's success. So you need to create some
stories that they can start from your CV.
It's not that I know these languages and these frameworks,
but what did you actually do? Like I, I did documentation that
have the ramp time of newcomers, for example, or I'm reduced risk
by that percent in this job that I had.
The same goes during an interview process and the same
goes when you're actually an employee.
And not only once a year in your performance review, but
throughout the year. You need to search for the most
impactful things and also create and develop your business
acumen. We all work.
Not all of us, but most of us work in in profitable companies.
There is we need to be successful.
We need to sell the product, we need to sell the service.
How does your job contribute to that ultimate goal?
I truly wonder, and I might do a poll of this from the people
listening, how many people actually know how their work
influences business results, whether it's cost cutting or
it's contributing towards revenue growth or new growth
streams. If people are actually aware of
where kind of the puzzle piece that they're working on, how it
solves a bigger puzzle that people are trying to solve.
I feel like in bigger organizations, I've been part of
a a big organization and an engineering team where the piece
of the puzzle I'm working on is very small.
But I've also worked in smaller organizations, typically
startups or scale UPS, where engineering has a lot of
autonomy and a lot of authority. And they're sometimes A-Team can
be end to end responsible for a whole business line, even though
that is a risk. And in bigger organizations, you
cannot afford to have risk. But it's a lot of fun operating
in that. And then also kind of naturally
you know what your outcomes are that you're working towards.
Yeah, the smaller the organization is, the better
understanding you have of your impact.
Yeah, if you are 50 people, you understand you launched
something. But at the end of the day you
also understand that when you launched something, you talk
you, you are in the same office with 50 people and they can be
from sales or marketing or customer success.
So they can show you your impact immediately.
But in larger organisations, sometimes you miss that.
If I do research and I've done this, especially early in career
with regards to, OK, how do I make my resume stand out or how,
how do I make myself stand out? This is typically what is there,
but I didn't understand why, right?
I have to add metrics. I did cost savings for 20% and I
had it to add metrics to everything, but I didn't really
know my metrics. So then adding it to me felt
like I'm, I'm kind of like an imposter, like I'm trying to
make up some stuff that I don't actually know that I did.
Like I'd know what I did on a technical level, but I didn't
know my business results. And then I think as you grow
more in an organization, as you mature more within your career,
now I ask questions because I'm genuinely curious how my role or
how what I do on a day-to-day impacts the business.
And then I know even though it's very hard to still have tangible
metrics, I now have a better idea of how to explain how I fit
within this puzzle piece. So it's quite fascinating that
the reason why is really to also understand how you help a
business from your standpoint. Yes, you need to showcase your
soft skills and you need to develop them.
They're not innate skills. You don't you, you are not born
with them. You can develop them by
practice, by training. So your communication style,
your communication skills better not not your style, your
collaboration, your negotiation, how you influence others, how
you influence outcomes. Problem solving.
Problem solving is a competency that is a bundle of a lot of
hard skills, but a lot of soft skills at the same time.
You need to know how to use a specific database so you can
extract the data. You that's a hard skill if you
would like, but actually understanding the data,
converting them into a report, influencing others based on the
insights that you found. This is a soft skill and the
whole competency is called problem solving.
So if you come to me, either I'm a recruiter if you're looking
for a new job or if you are a manager during your performance
review and you say this is what I did and this is how I did it.
Because yes, I have this knowledge on language and
frameworks, but I also have developed my soft skills and I
implemented them there. So the how is what is usually
missing. It's the you need to be a good
storyteller. Yeah, Yeah, that really helps.
Like very early on in my career, especially at this company, I
worked with a colleague and I will always remember his name is
Taya. And Taya is one of the most
hardcore engineers that I've ever worked with to a point
where he says soft skills and the communication, all of that
is BS. From his perspective, speed is
everything that matters and results matter.
If you can show results, then people will buy into that.
And I always really admired that because it was something that is
so kind of polar opposite to my operating where I'm more of a
person that bridges and wants to take people with them.
And I have a lot of patience and I had zero kind of, but he did
execute. And within a team, if I have
someone like that, I can leverage that and I can bridge
the gap and I can have buy in and I can kind of resolve things
from a more commutative soft skills perspective.
But when it comes to execution, when you have a solo engineer
like that, that's very effective.
Oh yes, don't get me wrong, I didn't say that this is not
important. In my view, this is what gets
you in the room. Your hard skills.
If you deliver fast, if you deliver with the less risk or
the less bugs, yes that gets you in the room.
But what will actually make you thrive once you are in the room
is your How you collaborated with others, how you reduced
metrics, how you made improvements, how you iterate
it. How much?
Because I feel like if you're incredibly good at your hard
skills, people will know that, right?
Even though you might be a difficult person to work with
and therefore you might not be hired through certain companies
because people just don't want to work with you, people still
recognise that you're effective. But on the opposite side, if
you're a great communicator, if you're a great storyteller, but
your hard skills are lacking, where will you see that?
Because some people with less technical depth, they might just
be like, yeah, he has the hard skills, but he might not
actually have the hard skills. And this is something that we
have seen and that happens. So you have the imposters, the
ones that they don't actually have the skills, but they talk
about them as if they had them and doors open for them.
And then you have the others that they go by the book.
They, as you say, they deliver fast.
They do their job, whatever you ask them to do, they deliver,
but then they don't grow. I I would say the truth is in
the middle. Gotcha.
When it comes to people that really have hard skills but are
not having any value yet from their soft skills, so they need
to learn and grow from that aspect, where do you usually see
the ceiling for those people specifically?
I don't see a ceiling. OK, I don't see a ceiling.
I think if you are willing to improve a certain skill, any
skill, you can ask for help, you can ask for mentorship, you can
ask for training. And if you are determined that
you want to develop a skill, you can grow.
Now in traditional organisations we we see a problem in the
growth in in the career growth in the paths that companies are
they have designed in advance for their people.
And if we discuss more about specifically an engineer, if
you're a senior engineer or if you joined as a junior engineer,
you grew, you became better your technical skills, now you're a
senior engineer. Some companies, they only give
you the option to become a people manager after that to
become an engineering manager. That's not necessarily a path
that works for everyone. People, they don't have the
skills to be a people's manager. They don't want to or even
they're not good at it. So companies, they should
understand that they have to offer multiple options, either
an IC track, an individual contributor track, where you can
become more senior and you can contributed in a different way.
And if someone enjoys managing others, then yes, if the
opportunity is there and if you have the skills which you need
to prove that you have the skills to become a people
manager, yes, please go ahead and get the position.
Yeah. I had a recent conversation
actually with my CEO also on this podcast.
And he's of the opinion that people that have really good
technical depth, if they are in an organization, they should
move upwards in some type of hierarchy.
So if that is more on an IC track where you become staff
engineer, senior staff engineer, etcetera, or whether it's on a
technical leadership role, people should move.
Because if individual contributors, people with really
good technical depth don't move up an organizational ladder,
then mediocrity will move up. And that kind of might kill your
organizational culture. People that get valued then
cascades into also more mediocrity.
And I thought that was an interesting perspective, but
like, organizations need to be set up for success to be able to
do so. Yes.
And usually organizations, they make that mistake.
You hire a senior engineer. The senior engineer, at some
point he outgrows his role, but the role stays static.
And then the engineer lefts, leaves, and then the company
says, oh, the market is so competitive.
Someone else got that wonderful engineer from us.
That's not the truth. If you had created a path for
this person, if you didn't stick on the jobs titles, years of
experience so that they can see growth for themselves.
And you see, I'm not talking about promotion, I'm talking
about growth. Growth doesn't have to be a
promotion necessarily. So if companies they don't do
that, they will lose their people eventually.
Yeah. I want to zoom into kind of the
current day job market out there and specifically I want to get
your opinion on what sets people up for success.
You already mentioned soft skills and figuring out from the
business side what you're working on and how that
contributes to results. That's a great way and you being
able to communicate that really helps.
Hard skills you mentioned is a way to get the foot in the door.
What contributes even more with regards to people making
themselves stand out? I think there are two specific
soft skills that you need to have, adaptability and
resilience. Our world shifts so fast
nowadays with with AI and you need to be adaptable, you need
to be resilient. You cannot afford not be 1
because the technology where will outgrow you, the company
will outgrow you, your your colleagues will outgrow you.
And then there are two options. Either the company doesn't need
you anymore or you get bored or you cannot contribute anymore.
You are disengaged, you are disconnected.
So you need to be up to date. When it comes to adaptability
and resilience, for me, sometimes they might be kind of
opaque concepts. How do you make them tangible or
how do I show resilience or adaptability as an IC?
By being proactive, identifying the problem before the problem
shows and also suggest the solution while others are trying
still to identify what the problem is.
You already go there with a solution, with options, not one
solution, but you go there and you test something, you pilot
something, you experiment with something.
So you're you are showing also another soft skill that you're
willing to learn, you are willing to grow and you're
investing time in this. Either it is a successful or not
solution. You you had them the drive to do
it. Yeah, I like that a lot.
I recently spoke to AVP of engineering as well and he said
that our our most senior engineers are the people that we
can just give an opaque problem to a very abstract thing.
And they indeed they own solutions end to end.
They have the responsibilities. He called it Adri, some people
didn't get the context. So it's a directly responsible
individual, yes. Yeah, I've heard that term
before, but only in very specific organizations that use
it. My organization doesn't have it.
Yeah, we, we have it in in my company actually it's one of our
ways of working. So every project follows the
RASI method like who is the DRI, who is the accountable, who is
the interested? Like you're not actually
contributed, but we need to inform you like a.
Stakeholder. Yes, that's the RASI method.
The RASI, Yes. OK, RACI.
I'm going to put some stuff in the description for the the
acronyms stuff, yeah. It's a, it's a framework.
I mean, you, you can find it with other acronyms, but at the
end of the day is who makes a decision?
Gotcha. Yeah.
You need to know who is making the decision because
collaboration is wonderful. But unless someone takes
responsibility, unless you have one person to give you the green
light or to say no, this is not possible to be done.
You have you end up having a bunch of contributors that
nobody's taking the lead. Yeah, I feel like most often,
and especially I'm reflecting now early in career, like I was
very happy doing my thing and kind of letting those
responsibilities of the right decision making fall onto other
people's shoulders. And I had a lot of faith in
that. And then when I got burned and I
got burned a few times, then I started asking questions because
some stuff that I would build would would not make sense.
And if someone would not be able to explain the context for me,
that kind of is a hit in the trust that I have into someone.
Because if they are not able to explain it to me, then how well
do they understand it themselves?
Or have they actually asked these questions to the people
that actually make the decisions?
And if not, why not? Because otherwise what are we
doing in the 1st place? Like those thoughts more and
more stuck with me to a point where even as an IC, as a
software engineer, I got so interested that I even moved
into product for like a year and a half.
Now I'm back software engineering and my next
assignment's also going to be product because I actually care
about business metrics and moving the needle a little bit
more than just tweaking software and being in the nitty gritty of
that. I enjoy that, but I enjoy that
even more when I know it's working towards a certain
outcome. I feel like the people that are
aware of that and even though it might not be their Forte or
their their preference in the 1st place, but they are able to
communicate that will definitely distinguish them from others
that cannot. Yeah.
What else have you seen people really leverage?
So you mentioned resilience, adaptability, and how to show
that in proactivity. How do people stand out?
Yeah, I think that's enough, isn't it?
Yeah. Then going into hard skills and
soft skills. For me, this was always
interesting because I really love the hard skills part of it.
I started in operations that I moved into software engineering
and then I read, had joy into figuring things out, tweaking
things and then making things work.
Getting a green light on a pipeline and then having a pull
request go through is what I really found joy in.
So when people ask me, OK, how do I balance developing a hard
skills and soft skills, I don't necessarily know if you need to
focus on one versus the other. In the end, you need both.
Oh yes, you need both at the same time.
You don't have to choose one over the other, but if you are
aware that you are lacking 1 certain skill, you can invest a
little bit more time in developing that skill.
That doesn't mean that you will leave the rest for three months
or a year and say, oh, I'm very good at this, so I will only
focus on this skill. But if this is the only skill
that you're missing in order for you to grow, then you need to
invest a little bit more time. And how do you know that's?
That's the next question. You need to have set up
expectations. You need to have a very clear
direction on what is expected from you and.
Your manager should be able to give you that or who should.
Yes, yes, your manager and your manager's manager.
And of course they have. Ideally, they have consulted a
human resources professional or a people specialist about that
because everything is connected at the end of the day.
It's not only your manager's desire that you have specific
skills, it has to come from the top.
Yeah. If I ask my manager what do I
need to do, or from your perspective, what am I not doing
that I should be doing to get to a next level and they don't have
a good answer, what do I do? Because they should have the
answer, at least from my perspective, but sometimes they
do not. What is that next level that
you're talking about? So my manager's manager or my
growth level? Your growth level, so is do you
have any other colleagues that they are in this level, you go
ask them. OK, but they might just say,
well, it's, it's luck of the draw and some people get
promoted and other people's don't.
And it's like time based. I, I hate the idea of time based
promotion. I want to see promotion based on
skills, based on merit and based on outcomes, but not all
organizations have that. So then it's also tenure, which
plays a big part. And not all organizations have
to have that. Imagine that a company starts
with 100 employees and in three years time all these employees,
they grow, right? All senior.
All senior? Do you need all senior people?
No, you don't. You need to have a good balance.
So you need to be very careful on your workforce planning.
You cannot say, oh, I need 100 senior people, Congrats, get
them. Let's say that your recruiting
team, they're so awesome and they get you 100 senior people.
What do you do with them in two years time?
In three years time, is there any space for them?
Maybe there is, but most companies, they don't plan
ahead. They they want to cover their
current needs. Yeah.
So if I'm an employee in an organization already in certain
organizations that I've been in, if I don't see a growth path for
myself, I'm not going to be happy because I'm like what?
What is the next level? Either I only see people
managers or I say I see people like me, but I don't see them
moving upwards with regards to a hierarchy or with regards to
more responsibilities. I don't necessarily have a lot
of value in titles. My organization's a little bit
strange because my title has been the same for six years and
that's what all the consultants have.
They're consultant on paper and that might be a problem with new
regulations coming in, but that's.
Why? Yeah, you're right.
But that's why I don't really value a lot in a title.
But I do want growth. Yes, so.
And you shouldn't value a title because a title is a title and a
title can mean different things in different companies.
But you should value scope, scope of your work.
And again, I'm not talking about more workload.
I'm not saying that you're so busy that you stay over time.
I'm not talking about more workload.
I'm talking about more scope and more impactful projects.
Now I I cannot give you an advice on how what to do.
In your specific no no. No, not my situation, but yeah,
people, they should be very certain about what they want.
Let's say you find out what you want.
I need to become XI, need to grow into a product manager.
I need to grow into an engineering manager.
You need to have a career goal. And then you communicate that
with your manager and you say, is that possible here?
If yes, because I know if the position opens, if someone
leaves, if the business need comes, but I want to be prepared
when this time comes, what do I need to do so I can be the best
candidate when the opportunity arises?
And they should have an answer for that.
They should or. Someone should they need.
To found someone, someone should have an answer to this.
But the fun thing is I like impact for work.
And somehow I feel like I always wiggle my way through and then
get to impact for work. But what you say really hits
home with me for other people that I've seen where they're
super busy, but then the work that they might be doing might
not be as impactful as they want it to be.
And they either have the awareness or they don't have the
awareness. And typically when they have the
awareness, they're like, yeah, but the impact for work is
finite. And it doesn't just go to me
because I'm part of a team. So it kind of goes to everyone.
Or some people jump on it and then I don't want to step on
their toes. Like, there's a lot of reasoning
there. But in the end, if everyone
wants to do impactful work, I think that's really good for an
organization. Yet people are working like on
busy work. Sometimes that is not as
effective. There is always that business as
usual, as we call them, call it the BAU, but you will always
have those tasks in any profession you have.
But you will always work on some projects at the same time.
Either you're an engineer or you're an account manager or
you're a recruiter or you're a marketing manager.
You should have your business as usual, but at the same time, you
should work on more outside of the box, more experimentation,
more R&D if you would like. So what's next for us as a
company? And this is where we connect the
impact because let's take that for granted that you love the
company that you work at, you support them, you're a big fan
of the product, you are a big fan of their mission and vision,
and you see yourself as part of it.
If you see yourself as part of it.
And of course, some companies, they assist you thinking like
that by giving you shares of the company, like you are an actual
shareholder. You also want to do more about
the company. That's why I said before you
need to come with ideas. And not only an idea, a plan.
And not only a plan, perhaps something that you have tested,
a pilot, something that you have tried before or you want to
implement it differently in a different project.
It's interesting because if someone were to came to me and
negotiated with me or I, I feel like that's kind of negotiating
and says, OK, I don't feel like the work that I'm doing is
impactful. I don't have any impact for
initiatives. I typically have business as
usual, but here is an idea, something that I've done an
experiment with and these are the options and this is really
what I want to do. Why not from my perspective,
have someone work on that? Because first of all, they took
initiative. Second of all, they seem super
excited about this thing. They want to grow and work on
impactful thing and they feel like they have this thing.
Yeah. So organisations, they should
enable the growth of their employees.
They should offer, let's say frameworks, processes, how you
grow, but it's on you how you will grow.
You have the ownership of your own career.
So don't outsource this to anyone else.
Do you feel like, because I feel like I've asked this question in
a poll, I don't remember the results, but I was like, OK, how
much control do you actually have over your own career?
It's a feeling. Let's say on a scale of 1 to 10,
it was not a 10. Definitely not.
People feel like there are many other influences about their own
career, whereas I do feel like you should be able to own your
career. I'm never going to say it's
going to be a 10, but to a certain degree you should feel
ownership over your career path because it is yours, even though
external influences are there and they will influence.
Yeah. And we have seen the past few
years now that external factors like in the market,
geopolitical, health and others there are out of our control.
So you cannot really control having a pandemic and you're
losing your job. Yes, nobody's going to blame
you. For that Black Swan events.
Yes, yes. We're not talking about the
external factors. We are talking about within
let's say safe environment which you are in, in an organization
that you are and how you want to grow.
And again, if you see that there is no more space for you there,
you can start looking for something else.
It's OK. Yes, yeah.
Yes, if people are listening and they are maybe not at that level
where they feel like, OK, I have control over my career, but
there's no Black Swan events. Let's just assume that what
would be for, for them the next step to get a better feeling of
getting control over their career?
Is that talking to someone? Is that setting up career goals?
What would what would your advice be?
Start with your mentors and also do some, I don't know,
meditation. Like write down what what do you
want to do? What's your ideal Tuesday at
work? Which task do you enjoy the
most? Do you enjoy talking to people?
Do you get fulfilment when I don't know you see revenue
doubling. Try to understand what triggers
you, what motivates you and try to talk to people either
internally in the company. If you cannot find them, just go
outside. It feels like it's a lot of self
reflection to get a better understanding of what makes you
take what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy.
Someone out usually has to trigger me for that.
Like I I am very bad at just sitting down and doing self
reflection. That's why I like having
conversations like this, because it makes me reflect.
You need to have your eyes open. You need to know what happens in
the market. I was talking to a friend the
other day who's a software engineer and he's in between
jobs right now. And I suggested I shared with
him an article podcast. I don't remember.
And within this podcast there was the name of a company and he
was like, oh, I didn't know this company.
I'm like, this company exists for years now.
How come you didn't know? So you need to open your eyes.
You need to understand what is out there.
I'm not talking about salary security like your your
benefits, your compensation package.
Yes, this is this is wonderful. But if you care about your job,
because again, not everybody there are I, I know a lot of
people that they just want to go 9 to 5, do their job, get their
paycheck and then go home. That's fine.
But if you have something in you
that doesn't keep you, keeps you awake at night, and you want to
do more for XY reasons, you need to open your eyes, go there and
learn from others. Try to research.
And I mean, these days we do have AI people and it's the
excuses of not knowing they're not a lot anymore.
No, I get that. I think it's, I mean, I love
people with ambition. Like I feel like if you are
passionate about something, it just fuels energy in in other
people. So especially those people, if
they reach out to me, I'm open to help.
And I've seen other people make use of that when they are either
laid off or they're looking for their next assignment, they want
to grow faster. They typically reach out to
people within those organizations with just a
genuine question. I'm interested in these things
or this thing I researched and I don't really, and I'm thinking
you can help or can you with a genuine question.
Typically, people are actually very willing to help.
I think it is the best platform to reach out to people.
I do it all the time and it works wonders.
Yeah. So even though you might be
listening and you think, OK, I don't really have a network or
anything, I feel like there's enough tools out there nowadays
to familiarize yourself with kind of the type of companies.
Do I want to work in enterprise, big, medium, small?
Do I want to work in consultancy versus agency versus product,
let's say? And then what type of role, what
do I want to do on the day-to-day?
Requires maybe a bit of reflection, but you can also
just ask a question. And again, the professions, they
evolve a lot. The job that I have today didn't
exist 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
When I was growing up, I didn't even know that I won't do this
job. So try to be open minded.
Maybe there is something out there, especially with the AI
technology nowadays, that you, you or none of us have imagined
that it will exist in the next couple of years.
Zooming into you then specifically, do you have career
goals for the next few years or what is that timeline horizon
that you're thinking of typically?
There are periods that I have a very clear path and there are
others that I'm more exploring. OK, but visualizing it helps.
Many years ago and I will thank one of my ex managers who made
me visualize it. I was still a recruiter at that
point and they were like OK what do you want to do?
So I created a nice middle board and I said I want to become a
senior recruiter. Then I will do something else
something else. And in the end I want to buy an
island. OK, not bad.
I like that a lot. Yeah, why not?
Like having, of course that's not the actual goal, that's not
career ambition if you would like, but that it gives you.
It gives you the self reflection that I am ambitious.
Let's just put it like that people, they are ambitious, but
sometimes they don't even know that they're ambitious.
So creating and visualizing your your career and if something is
missing and some, if some steps are missing, that's fine.
Maybe you can add instead your impact.
There are people that they want to have impact in society.
Maybe you don't know how and where and what, what's the name
of the company that could offer you this, but it could actually
be that. Just just write what what do you
want to get out of it in specific phases of your career.
Sometimes you are a little bit more motivated for for the
money, others it's the fulfilment of the job.
Some others it's the impact, some others is stability.
So depending on which phase you are, you can you can adjust.
Did you get help with visualizing this or was it
really just yours? No framework, just write down
whatever comes to mind. I started as whatever comes in
mind, but then because my, my company had very specific
rubrics, competency matrixes for each level.
So I could also connect it with my, with the organization.
Like these are the skills that I have now.
These are the ones that I am doing very well.
These are the ones that I can still develop.
And these are the, the ones from the next level that I want to
grow. So I was working with my
managers and I, I was saying I want to be involved in projects
so that I can showcase to you these skills, either hard or
soft skills, and your manager can assist you with this.
Yeah, specifically for skills and growth in those skills,
it's, it's very easy and it's always been easier for me to go
towards certain skills that I feel like I already have a knack
for and to really deepen them out and excel at those rather
than looking at skills that I'm not as good at.
Because I feel like I can either delegate or I can accommodate in
a different way by being good at other skills.
But I do feel like you need to have at least the minimum
capability on a certain level for a lot of skills, especially
as software engineer. So we talked about soft skills
and hard skills, but hard skills have a big slew when it comes to
technology. And then soft skills, just by
virtue of you interacting with so many people, the bigger your
impact is, likely the more interaction you will have with
more people or different people with different agendas,
different political stances, and different sizes of
organizations. So it's, it's a lot.
And having a minimum set with regards to a lot of things I
think helps. And then figuring out what
you're really good at and what you're not as good at, you can
accommodate for and thrive in the things you are good at.
And if you don't know, you can always ask for feedback.
Can you just ask for feedback just like that?
Yes, I want to get better. I am trying to learn a new skill
or I'm trying to reflect. I mean, we are heading towards
the end of the year. So there are many resolutions
happening. You can go to your colleagues,
you can go to your direct reports to your managers or to
your stakeholders or or to the customers.
Actually, if you have a good relationship with them and say
I'm looking for feedback, could you provide me with some
constructive feedback? And within this constructive
feedback, maybe you can, you might have an A moment or maybe
not. That's also nice.
Yes, but but you will definitely learn something, yeah.
What withholds people typically from asking feedback in that
you've seen? Fear.
Really, I've it's it's the fear of the fear of what they already
know that they're not good at. Yeah, yeah, that's sad.
But also asking for feedback is a skill itself.
OK, so I also had to learn that I didn't know I was brought up
in a society where questions are not asked.
OK, so we will tell you what to do and you will execute.
OK, yeah, command and control. Yes, command and control.
So many years ago, I went to an organization and I was not
growing. And then before I left that
organization, I had some open conversations with a couple of
my very senior stakeholders and with my manager.
And I said, yeah, I know that things didn't work out.
How can I do better? And they were like, why are you
coming to us now? Oh, OK, yeah.
I'm like, I didn't know I was allowed to.
I didn't get any direction from my manager at the time.
No one tells you. No, nobody told me.
Of course I was an external collaborator.
I was not inside the company. There were different more admin
things, let's say that were not enabled me for for this, but
they were like, wow, I we wish we could change our minds.
You should have come earlier to us.
I had to learn how to ask for feedback, and you have to learn
how to receive the feedback. Once you ask for it, you need to
learn how to receive it. I, I never even have had this
perspective because I feel like in Dutch culture and the culture
that I grew up with, people are very good into giving feedback,
sometimes even not ask, but also then taking feedback like it's a
very Dutch thing. So feedback kind of came
naturally. I have learned that advice is
very different from feedback, and people love giving advice.
But I want feedback. I don't just want to know what
you would advise me to do. I want to know what I did, what
you observed and how it made you feel or how you saw it had
impact on others. And I can learn from that.
Those are like observations. Not necessarily what I should
do, but what I have done and what you thought about it.
Yeah. So you need to go with specific
questions to these people, not an open-ended question like as
as you said. What did I do?
How did I make you feel? Did I facilitate you or did I
create a blockage for you by me doing XYZ?
Yeah, The funny thing is within organizations, and I'm now just
reflecting on this, people like ask for feedback, but they never
tell you how. And then you you go Google or
you have a standard template and it's always what did I do Well,
what what did I not do well and what should I do?
I like one of the one of those and maybe even a rating system
star one out of five, whatever that means.
So yeah, I feel like consciously being, asking your feedback can
actually be incredibly valuable. And I don't think a lot of
people make use out of that. And it's a very kind of low,
yeah, low gap to bridge, basically.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks so much for coming
on and sharing, Zenina. I had a lot of fun.
Yes, me too. Me too, Patrick.
Awesome. We'll round it off here.
If you're still with us. If you're still listening, let
me know in the comments section what you thought of this episode
and we'll see you on the next one.