The question I receive most nowadays is how do you stay
relevant within tech, especially since tooling and AI keeps
evolving. Next to that, it's also how to
get a promotion or negotiate a higher salary.
And that's exactly what we talk about.
In essence, you need to take control over your career.
You work 13% of your total lifespan, which is a lot.
And joining me today, he has over 25 years of experience in
this industry, is Iskan Gungu, currently fractional CTO and
also working on his own startup. It was a real blast, so enjoy.
I put up a poll last week and it was about the biggest challenge
people are currently facing within their career and within
tech. And the biggest answer was
staying relevant, especially with new emerging technologies,
tooling and AII get bombarded with new tooling.
Like from a marketing and ads perspective, you've been in tech
longer than me and likely longer than the audience.
How do you stay relevant or how do you keep up to date?
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry to admit the.
I didn't want. To I'm a dinosaur.
Yeah, I I've, I've been I was there in the second AI winter
like Gandalf. So yes, I think it, it is about
like when I find myself in a very difficult sort of problem
set, I always say, what is the Super set for this?
Step back and look at the bigger picture, if you will, and then
dive back in. So for engineers right now, like
we have so many things to keep up with, but essentially what
you're doing is taking an idea and turning that into code with
certain conditions, assumptions and prerequisites and then
maintainability etcetera like also maintenance of it.
So that is not changing. So wherever you're strong, look
at the tools that will sort of amplify your strengths.
And when, whenever, wherever on this journey you're lacking
things, invest in them. And sometimes it's a tool.
For example, I recently advocated in my writing as well
for engineers. Now there is, there has never
been a great time to look into like how product specifications
are written because that is upstream from your work, but it
defines the quality of your work as well, right?
So this we have this thing with like cost of an error.
If it happens on production, it's highly costly and in the
value chain, if you catch it sooner, better, right?
So now we have, we spend less time typing code.
That means maybe we have more time thinking, reasoning about
the product, talking to the product manager or customers and
understanding the context even better because you can create
something that is even more maintainable and it's grounded
on its utility, not just a specification you've received.
So being intentional, I guess the short answer, like there's a
lot of things being thrown at you, It doesn't mean that you
have to respond to all of them. Look, you look at yourself, what
kind of an engineer you want to be or what type of an
organization you are in and what creates more value and then
invest in those things, experiment with it to see if it
will amplify your value contribution or not.
In my case, at a start up, definitely like code generation
amplifies my contribution because I can test things, I can
tweak them independently and I can sign up on them myself.
Maybe in a different organization is, yeah, just
generating more tests so that the quality can keep up.
I feel like you have the experience to make sure that you
feel in control with whatever tooling comes up.
And my assumption is that the people that answer this, how to
stay relevant with new technologies and AI, maybe they
identify with what they do. And then if something comes
along that speeds up that whole process, it's like, yeah, but
this is what I was good at. So what do I do now then?
Do I go wide and indeed go more towards product or talk to
customers because maybe I've never done that before?
Or do I still go deeper and try and find an edge which AI can't
solve yet? Both, I guess should be
strategies to evaluate. I think we are seeing a very
rapid and mass commoditization of coding and for justified
reasons as well, like it can be repetitive, it can be wasteful,
right? So I understand if organizations
and people feel like this is a, this is a right way to approach
it. So that's why we are seeing all
this push. But there are things where there
are areas, domains, where maybe this is still not the case, or
the risks of generated code could be very high.
Then you might still, yeah, have more leverage as an individual.
But it would be foolish not to accept this as the reality and
open your thinking to it. Like can I do more of what I do
with the new technologies and maintain the quality or have
more time to go deeper right that what I'm doing now being
more hands on now I can actually, I can create an
architect, I can create a documentation engineer persona
and then use all of them to do a reasonable job that I wouldn't
otherwise be able to do. For my context, it makes sense.
I'm not saying that is the way to go for every organization,
but for a 2 two people start up, it makes a lot of sense to go
faster and wherever you can make the differentiation.
In my case, for example, I have quite a bit of experience
developing products, rolling out products, and I like being
customer oriented. So now I can do more of that and
still do a reasonable job in terms of the code I create and
roll out. And I like that because then I
can sort of move across this value stream and do what's
important, right? I'm talking to customers, I'm
doing research, I'm writing PR DS for myself.
I'm reviewing my PR DS also called as generation assisted
and then feeding them into ER DS.
So I'm running the full life cycle, maybe lighter than other
organizations. They need more engineering
rigor. But in my case, I can move up
and down for everyone. I think it will be the same like
if you're ignoring the rest and just trying to silo yourself
into one step of the value stream, that's going to be
challenged whether you like it or not.
I mean, I think I do fear as well that we might lose the
human touch in certain things. So there's a maybe dystopian
angle to this always in in the back of my head, but I don't
think we can put the cat back in back in the bag.
Oh, no, no, I agree with that. Yeah, yeah.
If you're thinking of people that are then either early in
career or mid career that see this new technology pop up and
that reflect and say, OK, how do I stay relevant?
What what steps can they undertake within their own
career really be intentional to make sure that they will stay
relevant in the end. So I think the first job you get
in in an industry is always something of a learning
experience. So for new starters, I would say
just be as open as possible. Open your mind and you're you've
been lucky enough to find a job. Take whatever you can from that
experience, learn with it, evolve with it, and then you can
be a lot more intentional and informed about the next step
you're going to take. Right?
So the first one is always a bit of a throwaway, OK, It's OK,
right? You also, yeah, hit the wall a
few times in your first job. That's also fine.
In the second one, then you take the learnings and then you step
back and say, OK, these are the parts of my job that I really
enjoy doing. These are the parts of my job I
don't enjoy so much doing, but I can tolerate and these are the
things I don't want to do. If you can create those buckets
very loosely, then you have something to iterate from.
And that's what I did repetitively actually in my
career. And about five years ago I said,
I want to end up doing my own thing.
I knew that like this is, this has been in the works for five
years for me where I am right now.
And that helped me a lot because then I made a few decisions
along the way that would sort of tweak my position and bring me
to this exit, right, or to this new branch of my career.
So I recommend the same, but the first one, yeah, you have to be
open and roll with the punches. Then you iterate from there and
then you say, OK, these are the things that really work for me,
that give me energy and motivation and satisfaction,
right? And that's what I want for all
the engineers. That's why I wrote all the
things I I did like. I think it would be a shame to
waste this opportunity of being alive and doing things.
So the next thing to do is you have a long term plan.
How do you break it into chunks? Like the engineering work we do,
right? You don't try to code the whole
thing in one night. You break it up and you think
about how you're going to bring those pieces together.
I'm a big fan of Legos. Like people who know me know
that and like reusable parts and thinking ahead, like, OK, I want
to make a part that will be able to move.
So you set it up like that. So smaller chunks and that's the
shorter term, like you have a long term vision for yourself,
then you learn the experience to as a mirror to see where you
are, where you want to go. And then you create the next
step, next iteration in for me. For me a A1 year horizon was
usually good enough, but things might have changed a little bit
recently, like maybe six months re evaluation is good.
That's what I feel, yeah. Things.
Are moving so fast and beyond our control as well.
So but having a feedback loop on your short term progression as
well, I think is is important. And then and that doesn't change
if you're mid career or early career, like just create a
system for short term feedback loops so that you can check if
what you're doing still makes sense for you and in the
industry. And that's the other thing, like
wherever your career takes you, it doesn't mean that that's the
only option, right? When I designed competency
framework at the large organization, for example, we
tried to make that as industrial line as possible.
So not hyper focused to the organization we were creating
and managing, but to the industry.
So if when people move out of the organization, they are still
compatible with the rest of the industry.
If the organization doesn't do it for you, you should do it for
yourself for your career. And that takes me all the way
back to like our limited time on earth and why we do the things
we do. I made the calculation when I
was creating that presentation. It's about 13% of our existence
that we pour into our work, if not more, right?
I, I think for me, definitely more.
I get hooked into something and I, I can't let it go.
I want to get it done. I want to see their end result.
So I've definitely poured more hours in, Yeah.
So it's good to be intentional about like creating your road
map and then chunking it and iterating on it and getting
feedback. And 13% that's is that of waking
hours or of just hours total? Hours total.
OK, so sleep is like a big chunk.
Absolutely, of course. Everything else, yeah, it should
be. At least you have sacrifices
somewhere. But 13 percent is more than I
thought, yeah. Yeah.
And this doesn't even include like commute and other things.
Maybe it's now less, right? That's another big shift that we
have seen in commute less. But back in the day when I
started, commute was a big chunk of my life as well.
And I was doing learning and development during commute so
that I wouldn't waste those hours.
For me, the the hard part when you mentioned like long term
plan, I've mentioned many times on the podcast, I'd love to
start my own business, have a startup, be self-sufficient with
regards to that. I really create something that I
own and get pleasure out of doing.
That's one track. Then I have, I love personal
development, talking to people, figuring out what makes them
take and how they can thrive. Also within an organization, be
kind of an advisor or a mentor in that aspect.
And I feel like engineering management fits more within
that. And then I also like doing a
podcast and then standing on stage and actually sharing
knowledge, creating docs, making content for people to learn and
to thrive off of. And that's more the developer
advocacy role. So then I have a lot of
branches, and that's not just doing software engineering.
I also love more the product sense, like you talking to
customers, figuring out what actually is of value,
experimenting with that, throwing things away that don't
make sense, and then thriving through that.
I don't have to be the person that executes necessarily.
So they have many options and then I have a very hard time
picking and choosing, especially when we're talking about not
just a one year plan, but on a longer term horizon.
What I want to do is really what I struggle with when it comes to
being more intentional with my own career path.
Yes, you and I seem to have a lot in common start up advocacy.
Like maybe not on the very technical things, but I've been
writing about like career management and skills
development, collaboration, teamwork, all of those things,
sometimes more philosophical and maybe like tangential, but I'm
interested in helping others as well.
And then also I've enjoyed every other job I, I've done.
Like yourself, I guess. Like it doesn't mean that you
don't like what you're doing today, but you might want to end
up doing something else in a few years that's also perfectly
compatible. So I totally resonate with that
statement. And now also, I don't have any
other forcing function. So I am dictating my calendar
and I I'm more more and more faced with that reality.
But I think that the then the start up experience is helping
me out here in a weird way. Like what is the one thing you
can not not do that you want to make sure it it has evolved even
a little bit today. I think that should be the first
priority that you invest in first and other things then fall
into place, right? So, but it's a tough question to
answer. It's a very deeply personal
thing to answer as well. I think it takes a while to be
also to learn how to be honest with yourself.
Like it takes experience to know what you like and don't like.
That's why I said like the first job, just do and learn from it
because that's your step zero. And then that's why I
recommended engineers to take stock of things that they've
done and they enjoyed and that is differentiated for them as
well As for the industry, so they can leverage that and turn
it into earning. And then you still have to look
at the long term plan. And in my case, I've been
investing in being able to set up a company.
I didn't get the financial returns I hoped from like
exiting with companies etcetera. But I still had the intention to
end up where I am not right now. And all I had to do was like,
OK, everything else is in place. I don't have the financial
cushion. Can I do it not and for how long
That was the decision. So again, like the biggest
decision was already like made for I made it for myself five
years ago that I would do this and what type of a startup
founder I would want to be. And I've been investing in that
everyday with everything I do, I try to also gain something that
contributes to this, right? So maybe on the local maximum,
it's not the investment. But then when you zoom out and
look at the global maximum, I was, I was investing in that.
The type of challenges I jumped into at work, outside work, the
things I've read, these are always like in the backdrop
contributing to me positioning myself to do the one, at least
one company that I I was designing and running.
Here I am now. So that's very interesting.
But yeah, that doesn't like your biggest priority being something
longer term doesn't mean that you don't enjoy today, right?
It's just what is it superimposing those so that they
you get like multiple wins? Yeah, I feel like what you
mentioned with regards to early in career, that's really what I
had. I joined in operations and my
idea was to learn as fast as possible.
Then I joined consultancy and I had experience in the back end
and it was a front end project. They would like, do you want to
do this? And I had no clue to be honest,
if I think back, but I I wanted to experience as much as
possible and as fast as possible.
So I said yes. I said yes to a lot of things
where I thinking back now, now it doesn't make sense, but back
then it did because anything was kind of new ground and new
exploration. Now I do have a lot of learnings
with regards to the things I don't like and that I feel like
gets me closer to eventually what I will want to do on the
long term horizon. I think maybe in the grand
scheme of things, it's just very odd for me.
Maybe this is who I am to think of something I'm going to do for
the longer term. Right now I'm having fun doing a
lot of things. I'm quite, I'm very happy with
what I do nowadays and the only thing I, I don't want to like
give up is this feeling of growing and learning
continuously with the things that I've dropped.
It's usually been the feeling of, I don't feel like I add
value. I don't feel like I have
anything personally that I can learn from.
There might be impact for the organization, but if it's not in
there for me necessarily, then I will have to make sure that, OK,
the impact for the organization can stay, but I can take myself
out of that situation. That's usually what I found
myself in and I feel like that's OK in the end.
There's multiple tracks, there's multiple paths.
I try and be more and more intentional.
I feel like I've I've gone from that first phase where
everything is kind of green and fresh to being more intentional.
But then what I want to do with that intent, or what that intent
is even going to be, I don't know yet.
Yeah. Well, one thing I can recommend
I've done myself, I've recommended a lot of engineers
is to really ask yourself like, why am I enjoying this or why am
I not enjoying that? Right.
We've all done the five wise exercise at one point in her
career. You can apply it to your career
as well. That helps you.
And you should take some time aside for this and find yourself
or immerse yourself in a, in a setting where you can think
freely, could be complete. Like for me, it's pen and paper
and a cup of coffee or something.
Definitely not a laptop. I don't want to follow each
rabbit hole of my thinking. I just want to take stock.
And I ask myself, OK, how did this go?
What did I learn from it? Why did I enjoy this more than
other things? And also, surprisingly, it's
liberating because then you can tell people about it.
And that helps them help you. Even your manager could be your
ally. And I have a very good example
not from me, but and someone I worked with, they had a, they
had someone who wanted to switch careers completely, become a
chef or ABM bed and breakfast host or something.
But they won't, they didn't have money to do it.
They were good at what they did today, which was coding.
So they made a plan to be able to end up in that position in a
few years, and they did. And their manager knew about it.
They could manage their team, they could plan for the
transition and everything. It was mutually beneficial that
they could establish a general direction and then slowly move
towards it. It doesn't mean that like if
they want to leave in three years, you have to ask them to
leave the organization today. And they are very motivated to
be where they are that day. So there's no problem.
And we are all professions, we are all grown-ups.
We can do that. So I think that kind of thinking
also helped me a lot when I was really getting frustrated about
certain things in my career. I was asking myself why?
Why is this bothering me? Because it's limiting my ability
to contribute. It's giving, putting shackles,
right? And OK, then I need to change it
or like I'm getting super excited about this, but I won't
have the returns. OK, then I will pace myself.
It's it's not going to give me my energy back if I pour it in.
So I have to, yeah, just for that.
So asking yourself what makes you tick?
Why gives you some ideas on like where you want to end up as
well. Yeah, The poll that I alluded
to, the second point that people voted on the most was
negotiating a higher salary and promotions, which is going to
tie to that has actually been third.
I've never worked in big tech organizations, but some of the
feedback that I've heard or some of the signals is that the
promotion process is kind of broken, where it's not just on
merit, but it's actually about kind of showing other people
what you do compared to actually providing value for the
organization. It's not just what you do, it's
also who knows what you do, which is an interesting tidbit.
I haven't faced it too much, but I know you've worked in big
tech. What would be your advice on
kind of negotiating a higher salary or even getting a
promotion on that aspect? I've operated in big tech and
I've seen the bigger machinery behind it, and I've worked at a
somewhat smaller organization where I had to run this for the
entire engineering organization. And I'll confess, I know who I
am, what my values are, and people who know me can attest to
that. You can try your damn hardest
and only make the process so much unbiased.
Like it's just an emergent property of things, right?
You can design counterfactor processes, but you will have run
out of time eventually. So to be able to decide who gets
promoted, you need to run a process.
And you cannot put all your engineering hours of all your
like yourself and the engineering managers and team
leads into this process. It has to be a part of
everything you do, but it needs to be done within a within a
month, right? Like when you start the process
and review everyone, etcetera. So I think I'm trying to caution
people against expecting too much or being too idealistic
about these processes because I've tried my damn hardest to
make it and it you have to stay pragmatic.
So there's always error in that process.
Don't expect otherwise. The other big call out I make in
my writing as well is no one cares more about your career
than you. No one ever, ever will.
Not your mother, not your partner, not your dog.
You are the owner of your career.
You are the DRI of your career. The sooner you embrace it, the
better. Because then you can be more
planned, organized around it. If the organization you're
working in has a certain methodology, understand it.
You don't have to like it. You don't have to subscribe 100%
to it, but you should know how it affects you and your career
progression in the direction you want to go.
So if if getting promoted in that organization means a lot to
you financially, situationally, or like you want that title,
then you need to know how to work with that system.
You people sometimes get manipulative.
It's up to them. I'm not judging their character,
I try not to be, but I try to understand the mechanics around
me and use them, work with them, right?
And of course not harm anyone else in the process, right?
But this, the system will never be 100% fair.
So you have to fend for yourself.
You have to understand how to work with the system.
And there's a part of this whole thing, and I think you've
mentioned in your last Q&A as well, politics is a very human
thing. So I think you were looking at
it a bit more like in a toxic way, right?
You framed it as a toxic I, I see it differently.
I think politics is very human. Again, being manipulative or not
is up to the individual, but building relationships and
leveraging them to understand or showcase, like understand what
can happen and showcase your work is fine.
You choose how you're going to do that.
And I think in an earlier episode there was something
about that too about like you can say whatever you want as
long as you have like good intentions.
I think it was about feedback, but the same applies to
promoting your work. You, if you're honest about it,
if you know it's grounded on facts and you're proud of what
you've done and you want people to know it, that's fine, right?
If you're exaggerating the value or stealing credit, it's up to
you. And if you get caught, don't
cry, right? So I think it's perfectly fine
to showcase your work. And if you're, if you're really
after that promotion, work for it.
But be careful, be smart about what that means.
For example, if just to get a promotion, you go on a project
and that project gets cancelled, yeah, it was your choice to be
on that project because you were so motivated about the
promotion. Learn from it and try to maybe
have a different blend of priorities, not just driven by
promotion. Because I think if people are
only driven by promotion, then I've seen that to backfire a lot
more frequently than other things, right?
If people are focused on, I'm going to be good at what I do,
I'm going to add so much value to my team, my organization, I'm
going to make it better. And I think in your podcasts,
I've seen a lot of these details as well.
That lifts you up, right? Because people look at you and
like, OK, this person is not only contributing, they are
trying to make it better. And that starts to compound and
that gets you a promotion maybe six months later than you had
imagined, but you still get there.
If you're only after promotion, you start fighting with people.
So that can backfire. But if you, if that's the person
you want to be, be it, right, it's fine.
I'm not saying the system is perfect.
I'm not saying you won't get that promotion if you're only
motivated about promotion. People do that.
I've seen it. And I'm also telling confessing
people designing and running these processes, they cannot
guarantee 100% fairness. So you have to take take care of
yourself. One thing I've been recommending
very strongly, and I know this might not resonate with you so
much, is that brag dog. Write it down.
Write your accomplishments down because you'll forget about it.
Especially this hurts people who are humble because you think
people will see it. Your manager will be too busy
with other things sometimes. And I've done that.
And for people who've been exposed to my shortcomings, I'm
sorry. But yeah, I did it with good
intentions. I was working a lot of things.
Maybe I didn't pay enough attention, but it happens.
But if you write it down, you have it written down, and you
can always present it in the right context at the right time.
You choose, right? You can say, you can just dump
like 100 pages on a, on a on the table and say this is, these are
all the things I've done. Or you can say I'll choose five
important things, right? And just talk to my manager
about those things or my colleagues about those things so
they know because it means something to me.
Yeah, the the brag dog is interesting because like I, I
consider myself humble and then writing down the things that
I've done or the impacts and trying to make them measure
measurable. Like even in a resume, I feel
like it's, it's weird for me to do so, even though they might be
objectively facts and something I've contributed to it.
I feel like most of the time I'm taking more credit than I should
because I'm just a piece of the puzzle and I might be an
individual contributor, but definitely the whole team and
the organization, they play a factor in that.
To then write it down and to own it either, whether it be in our
resume or in a promotion process, it just doesn't sit
well with me. All right, let's tackle resume
first. It's kind of your interface
document, right? People are trying to choose the
right person for the right job. So without the resume, you're
not really giving them a chance to assess if you're the right
fit. Again, how, how honest you are
with what you put in your resume is up to you, but if you want
people to understand how you fit in an organization, what you can
do within that organization, it's it's how you document it.
It's maybe not the best platform, but yeah, it, it
works. We've been using resume for.
A long time. You can be factual, especially
to prevent misunderstandings. You can say I've worked in this
organization, I've done these things, I've been a part of the
team, right? The words you use will help you
set the right context, right expectations.
And in the interview process, based on your CV, you can always
reveal more of yourself. But we are trying to optimize
the selection matchmaking process right between the
individual and the organization. And CV is the interface
documentation we use. So I see it in that way.
I'm very neutral to it. I want people to know what I'm
doing so that they can talk to me about the right things and I
can help them, so I see it as a helpful thing to do.
I, I agree, I'm trying to bypass that system because the whole
interface document and especially with AI tooling
nowadays, if I give my resume to ChatGPT, it will say make
everything measurable, how much percentage that you impact.
And and that's like, I, I understand the organization.
I try and understand how the organization makes money or
reduces costs and then how the project that I'm in plays a part
in that. But to completely own that and
put that on my resume, for me that's like a step too far.
So me bypassing the system is basically trying to figure out
who does the recruitment process and then see if I can have a
conversation with them and show how I can value add value other
than this resume interface talk. It's not perfect, but that's
kind of my solution to the problem.
Again, use the right phrasing, like you can say.
I mean, I worked at Big Tech. So everything we did in that
team and we were in payments for a very large organization, every
little thing, every feature we did was millions, 100,000,000
billions even, right? So if you put that on your
resume, I worked on this 5 billion thing, you might be
exaggerating, right, because it is currently amplified with the
size of the organization. Economies of scale.
And the person interviewing you for that role should also do
their job and ask your contributions to it.
So again, you can exaggerate it and people can buy it, but it
doesn't make you better at your next job.
So be honest as at least for me, yeah, being honest is very
important so that I also don't end up wasting my time.
And I've made enough mistakes to know.
Yeah, sometimes you figure that out like 6 months or a year into
the job that yeah, I shouldn't have like given that impression,
this is not what I want to do. I.
Think it's a good. Revelation.
Yeah. And try to express your
expectations and contributions in a way that is sort of
bringing the right type of interest to you.
So that's why CV is an important front.
You're showcasing the right things in the right way.
But you choose right. You don't have to say or you
don't have to own everything that your team did.
You can put it in the right light.
Yeah, the problem that I see, and this is also in the
promotion process, is if everyone is playing that game
and owning everything, like the single part of what a team has
achieved in their own resume, then I feel like, yeah, I, I do
have to play that game. Otherwise you stay behind.
Like maybe within the resume, it's it's less likely that you
have the same people applying for the same job that have the
same background. But when it comes to a
promotion, if everyone plays the game and has kind of a bragging
talk or at least they have written down their impact and
their contribution, I feel like I would be behind if I don't do
that. And I've never worked in big
tech but it wouldn't make me comfortable because I I already
have trouble doing that on a resume basis basically.
Yes, people play the system game system.
It happens. We've had that as well.
And when that is that is happening, you usually introduce
countermeasures for those things like what you track which
projects and if multiple people take credit for it, then you
start asking more questions. And if you get, if you catch
someone exaggerating their contributions during a promotion
review, yeah, that's going to backfire big time.
So the system evolves eventually.
That's why being honest is a long term strategy always a
winner, right? You can say, for example, in my,
in that team, we had high stakes, right?
All the engineers working on those features felt the
pressure, the significance of the things we we were building,
right. We had a nine month project.
It started as a small thing and it it exploded into ten team
contribution 3 continents. And we felt the pressure of that
project, everyone and I wasn't contributing, I wasn't after
promotion as an engineer through it.
I was managing the team that took part of it.
And I think they engineers in that team should be able to take
credit for handling such a big project, not the bottom line
impact directly, right? I think you can still find the
right sweet spot of expressing that like you've designed the
ERD for that project and you got sign up from 10 different teams.
That is an accomplishment. You should take credit for it,
but you didn't do the front end of it.
You didn't do that part of it, and you can still be honest
about that. Yeah, right.
That's your contribution and own that.
Yeah. And like that people reading
that, checking that evaluating you will hopefully look at it
and say, OK, this person did this and this is actually a part
of what we expect for someone to get promoted, right?
And 11 big call out promotion is always after the fact.
You've been operating at that level long enough, sustained
that performance long enough that you get recognized and get
the new title, right? So I want to manage expectations
with everyone here. Promotion is not something you
showing multiple like small signals of everything and then
people say, Oh yeah, you might be able to do this next job.
We've seen that also hurt careers, right?
Like what is that called? There's a name for that.
Like you get promoted until you cannot be successful, right?
I forgot the name. But anyway, So good
organizations will usually evaluated based on sustained
signal of you operating at next level.
So your focus for promotion should be operating at the at
the next level. And that means you need to
understand what's expected at the next level, get there and
hold it. And that's where our competency
frameworks come in. That's another big, big, big
factor to how you manage your career.
And I've advocated if your organization doesn't have it,
it's not an excuse for you not to have it.
You can always have your own competency framework and then
discuss with your manager, hey, how do I perform at the next
level in this organization? This is my take, this is my
research. Does it make sense to you If I
do these things, will I be adding more value and get
recognized for it? You can have that conversation
at any time. If the organization has a
competency framework, understand it.
It can also be gained. It's also not 100% fair, but you
at least have a target and if those things don't resonate with
you, you're in the wrong organization.
Can you give an example of what is typically in a competency
framework? What?
What do I think? I've designed 1 so I have some
experience for engineering for for us it was of course
technical skills at certain levels.
Your impact radius defined your level quite a bit, right?
Are you able to design A feature by yourself and have high
success rate in implementation and also on board other
engineers to get it done? Then your impact radius is
increasing, right? When you're a junior fresh out
of uni, you get a task. When you are a staff engineer,
you get a wide scoped, maybe not well defined challenge.
So that's the sort of scope change and radius change on your
impact that's expected. If you're a staff, staff plus
engineer that you can take that idea, talk to right people,
scope the problem, validate the problem and turn it into an
implementation plan and help the teams implement it, right?
So that's sort of the scope. So technical chops, scope,
stakeholder management, domain expertise, right?
You cannot be extremely successful if you don't
understand what the what business problem you're solving
with your contributions. So you need to spend more time
understanding we had those. And if it, if the organization
is big enough, contributing back to the community, your
organization becomes an expectation, leading the
culture, investing in others, lifting everyone up, mentoring,
for example. So those are the bigger.
Segments. But if you want simplistic, I
think technical chops and contribution collaboration are
the two big ones and you can divide them further.
And you would then layer out kind of the the levels in there,
OK, and plot yourself on there as well as in this is this is
where I'm at and this is what I want to grow into or.
So when I designed the competency framework for the
organization, I actually did design the engineering
leadership part as well. So included my job too.
But then my manager had to of course, validate the
expectations I was putting for my level and my level and above
so that we we would be able to sort of lift the organization up
through that. Yeah.
And the guidance we gave to engineers was like, look at this
and then assess yourself against these things and then you'll get
an assessment from your manager. That's how we are going to
calibrate and do this before the promotion discussions.
So that actually all the managers were asked to do it
well ahead of the cycle continuously so that we would
guide growth and we would be able to capture it at the right
time. We would know that, oh, this
person already reached this level.
They're meeting all the expectations already.
Then they would be natural candidates for promotion.
But those conversations during one on ones were the secret
sauce. And if you're not having them,
you're just waiting for the promotion cycle to kick in and
then evaluate. You will have a lot of
frustration as a manager as well.
It's very frustrating to to do it to try to retrofit those
discussions that you didn't have.
Yeah. So it's all about like, OK,
these are the expectations this organization has.
This is how you're performing. And on the individual level, you
look at those expectations and you ask yourself, am I really
interested in doing these things as a part of my growth?
Because this is what the this organization is asking.
You can also challenge them. You go into your manager and say
this is actually not a good expectations.
And I'm sure a lot of organizations right now are sort
of in that messy stage where they're trying to understand how
to put AI into the those competencies so that they can
encourage people, motivate people the right way.
And some people are feeling like, oh, they're just.
You know, pushing AI. Yeah, yeah.
But those conversations need to be had and then you can reflect
on those conversations and say, OK, this organization helps me
get to my destination, whether in that organization or not,
right? You're growing in the right way.
And that's why in in the one eye designed, we try to keep like
technical and collaborative skills in a way that that would
just make you a good engineer wherever you go.
Yeah, the thing I love about this is it will show you not
just where you are, but also how to level up where growth is for
you. In the positions where I've been
where I was like I don't see any growth from me anymore.
It's the part where it really demotivated me.
Like there's a few factors where I get a lot of energy and I
where I get a lot of motivation to money.
Autonomous. How do you say being autonomous
is one of them? Being able to be curious is one
of them. Having people around me that can
actually share knowledge and take the time to do so as one of
them and seeing enough growth for me, I think it like
contributes towards that. Mastery Autonomy challenge.
Yeah, it's it's a good combination of all of that and
motivated engineers might be the most underrepresented thing we
talk about. It's like almost non existent
and it's a very personal thing, but a lot of factors can
influence that and seeing growth is a big factor in that as well.
Yeah, I've done some research on this one as well.
Motivation in knowledge work more broadly is an interesting
factor. I think it is the silent factor
that's all often under represented or not really paid
attention to. But I know myself, I've worked
with enough engineers to know that if someone, and if an
engineer, if a knowledge worker broadly, is motivated to do the
job, they will do a great job. If someone is not motivated or
worse, demotivated to do a job, they will make you regret they.
Will make you regret. Because they are smart people,
right? They're educated, they're
experienced knowledge work is not easy to it's not we are not
producing widgets. So if someone is not motivated,
you will not get the outcomes you expect from a motivated
person. And it's just that simple.
And the factors could be almost three times high, right?
Like a motivated engineer will get to the finish line.
I know that I've done that. And when I was not motivated, I
delayed it or like postponed it or like put it in the backlog.
Whatever you do, you try to avoid that thing because you're
you're not excited about it or you're not properly motivated
about it. You don't know why it's there,
whatever the reason, right? And this is not necessarily
malicious behavior. It's just like friction.
It's very human. Yeah, you get it, get to it.
In the end you do it. But yeah, instead of doing it
the first thing, maybe you do that the fifth thing of your day
and then the next person does the the same, then you have a
compound of delay. So motivation is important and
you cannot motivate people. You cannot.
No, you cannot motivate them directly.
You cannot make it happen. No, exactly.
You create the conditions that people find joy, excitement,
challenge, and then they feel. So it is an emergent property of
humans. Like we, we find ourselves
motivated. OK, extrinsic motivation, yes,
right, Let's touch on that. Pay, definitely, but that is
very short term. That's why I'm bold enough to
say like you cannot motivate people extrinsically.
It only goes so far. Yeah, this I really had to
learn. And it was when I was more in a
people management role where I would see a lot of potential in
the person sitting across from me and I could see them doing
and making an impact, the impact that I wanted and that I thought
would be good for the organization.
And I would communicate that I would try and inspire, but I
cannot influence someone to act, right.
I can try and make a fire, but in the end as the flame on its
own. And that for me, when you say
you can't motivate people, that's where I, I thought of I,
I couldn't motivate this person to do it because probably it
wouldn't make them happy. So they didn't act.
I was really trying to inspire, but not everyone is like me.
I cannot force someone to act because I'm not that person.
Yeah, you cannot make people happy.
You cannot motivate people directly.
There are so many indirect factors to that.
For example, you can tell them, hey, this will make your
promotion. But if your organization has a
history of yeah, abusing promotion.
Yeah. Then they won't be motivated.
I know it's all bullshit. Yeah.
And then if you know that it is, there's not more you can say
about it. So you can try to improve the
system. And then they might feel like,
oh, this person is actually trying to improve the system.
I'll follow them. And that's another thing I've
also noticed discussed in on your podcast, like leadership.
I think motivation and leadership are tied in that way,
that whatever you do and how you do it creates that motivation in
others, and that's when you become a leader.
People choose you as their leader because you're they feel
motivated by the things you do. It's just by having you there
even. Yeah, I agree completely.
One of the things that you mentioned that that really stuck
with me and it's not something that I thought of very early on
in my career, is that career transcends organization
boundaries. So what you do is actually for
you and the fact that you cannot get a promotion or you don't
really like the processes maybe in big tech versus other
organizations, it doesn't mean that your career ends or that
you've come to a blocking standstill because your career
transcends the organization. You can take your learnings with
you and apply them elsewhere and you are in control.
I feel like a lot of the feedback that I get and some of
the the questions that people ask are in this feeling of I'm
not in control and there's too many external factors in this
feeling of hopelessness. And I think with at least the
things that you've written about or the tools that you can offer
people, not just from a management perspective, but even
going beyond organizational boundaries, it is a framework to
empower people when it comes to the career they have.
Thank you. I couldn't phrase it myself
better. I've been trying, but yeah, the
well, we were waiting for this podcast to nail it.
Yes, you phrase it very, very accurately.
I want people to own their careers and drive it themselves
and not try to retrofit it into the organization there in
necessarily. There will be overlaps.
I hope so. And then it's win win, right?
You're contributing to the organization.
They give you money, they give you recognition, they give you
other things that make your life joyful.
Great. If it is, not, look where it's
going wrong, what your expectations are and what the
organization's expectations are and remedy those situations.
If they're not salvageable, move on.
Your time is limited. They don't want you there if
you're not happy and you're not a good fit anyway, right?
But if you catch those signals early, you can play, play, plan
your next move. Otherwise you become a victim of
like, yeah, your performance is not meeting and then let's put
you on the PIP and what not the whole thing.
But sometimes you can see it a mile ahead and you can plan for
it and make the right transition for yourself.
So you manage your career. That's why I've sort of tried to
distill all the best tools I've seen into this framework.
I called it a framework as well, or toolkit, so that it would
also be interesting for engineers to think about because
these are the things you can do. These are the hooks, These are
the APIs that you can implement. And then they give you the
structure to manage your career in a transcending way.
And you get to where you, I hope you get to where you want to be
in life. Through that.
I'll go back to the brag dog. I'm keeping the name so that it
does invoke that feeling as well.
I want to encourage people to also recognize their
accomplishments, write them down before they forget the context
of it as well. Actually, what I've caused
people to do was don't just write the thing.
Also write how it made you feel. Because that part you don't have
to share with your manager or you don't have to share in your
promo package, but that is your reflection on your journey at
that moment. If you do this weekly, like look
at on a Friday, at the end of the day, look at your week and
say, oh, these are the things I've done.
This was actually quite unexpected.
I was even surprised, Oh, this was actually I could do better.
Keep those to yourself. But those are very insightful
observations. And if you don't do it at the
end of that week or at the end of the month latest, you will
forget about it. And then you're just floating,
you're drifting into your career, but you can be a lot
more observant on how things are going for you and decide what
you have, what you want to do. And I want to be an example of
it. Like I've been planning my
current move for five years. And because it was spread over
five years, it wasn't a lot of work, but it gave me the North
Star to make the right decisions, change the right
things over time. And also that stability helped
me to, yeah, feel OK with these things and not take a lot of
financial risk unnecessarily, not be super reactive to
whatever really annoyed me on on that day.
I could step back and say, OK, I'm trying to learn something
from this experience because it takes me to my goal.
I can tolerate it or this is actually the second time and
it's not getting me to my destination.
I'll start changing. It calms you down as well,
knowing that you have a destination you want to get to
and you're in charge of it. I'm curious then to hear your
perspective and, and you can be blunt with me, you can be direct
with me. I do not have a long term plan
and I don't know if I'm doing myself a disservice by not
having that, by not putting a lot of thought into that, or
maybe not as much intent as I should.
I'm having a lot of fun living in the now, I'm experimenting
with different aspects that I think are fun and I'm still
evaluating because I don't think that much with regards to long
term. I'm also a horrible planner, so
probably a lot of personal factors play into that, but I
don't know if I'm doing myself a disservice by not having that.
I, I'll be blunt. I don't buy it for a second.
I think you, you know, like you're just more sentimental
about it than organized about it.
You know that you're, for example, I'm guessing from the
things I've seen, you like sampling different things,
learning different things to guide your process.
So you're sort of experiment experientially evolving, but
you're intentional about that. So you're trying to learn as
much as possible so that you're maybe more experienced
horizontally. And then you'll see the things
that sort of you want to dive deeper.
And so I think the only thing you're not doing is writing it
down. Like, I'll experiment with
different things. And that only in my, in my mind
has the risk of not knowing when to stop with experimenting with
one thing or not. So being planning ahead gives
you a checkpoint where you say like, OK, it's been 6 months
I've been trying these new things.
OK, some were a waste of time. If you close the loop, then I
think it's better. But I think you know generally
how you want to evolve. I think you're investing in
learning different things because you will build your own
thing in the end and you want to have different experiences that
feed into it. You just haven't written it
down. Yeah, I also have this what if?
Because what if I actually don't then take the next step because
I, I am really enjoying the now and taking the next step is
uncomfortable. It's scary.
You can it can kind of move you away with what you are happy
now. So then there is a risk that is
kind of the what if that I do not take a next step.
Yeah, but the same applies to what if, right?
Like what if you take the step and then it becomes?
Except that's the chance. Yeah, that's the risk.
Yeah, very philosophically speaking.
Everything's a trade off, and sometimes you have good grasp of
the trade off, sometimes you don't.
Yeah, and that's the beauty of life.
I like that, yeah. Let's round it off there.
Is there anything you still want to share before we round off
with the audience? Any perspective?
One thing we didn't have time to touch on to complete the picture
and also in my presentation about career tool, career
management tools, I listed three things as essential.
Brag dog is one of them. Do it for yourself.
You don't have to share it with anyone.
You just brag to yourself, right?
If it rubs you the wrong way, the term brag, just do it for
yourself. I think this will pay dividends.
It will make your experience more enjoyable.
The other one is this competency framework concept.
Again, a lot of organizations don't have it.
It's not an excuse. You can say what is my next
level? And in your case, for example,
it could be like you'd create your own, right?
Experimenting with multiple technologies at all times.
It could be the next level for you.
And then maybe this time you are trying two different things.
Maybe next year you want to be able to do 3.
That's growth for you as well. So just project your own growth,
make your own ladder and try to climb it again.
Do it for yourself. You don't have to do it for
anyone, but if it overlaps with the organization, perfect.
The third one, which we haven't mentioned and very important is
your peers, your coaches, your mentors, especially mentors are
absolutely game changer. I've gotten so much value
because having someone external, non judge, mental but
opinionated giving you feedback about what you're doing, how
you're doing things is super refreshing.
Right. We always look for supportive
evidence of our thinking, but having someone unbiased and
helping help trying to help you solve your challenges as an
external contributor is very valuable and surprisingly people
are open to it when you ask them.
I've done it. I actually had an interview some
years ago. In the end they had a better
candidate, much more domain experience as well.
But the person who was interviewing me for my for that
job, if I had it, would be my manager.
I went back to that person and asked them to be my mentor
because we resonated so much and they accepted.
And that person mentored me for almost 2 years.
I've learned so much and it helped me shape my thinking and
also improve the framework I was using to manage my career.
So I highly encourage people to reach out and also be mentors
themselves. So I think we all enjoy working
in this industry. It's very creative, very
challenging. Like there's so much to learn
and that human connection. Maybe something that AI will not
necessarily take away from us is that mentorship angle.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing.
It's been a an absolute pleasure.
Thank you so much for having me. Awesome.
If you're still here, leave a like let us know in the comments
section what you think. All the material that is again
has been writing on will be in the description as well.
So check that out and we'll see you in the next one.