Last week, I had a conversation with a technical director. We were discussing the general stuff about software engineering. This guy really knows how all this work because is a very clever director with great leadership skill. So I decided it would be useful for you to learn some insights from him as well.

Even senior specialists cannot avoid imposter syndrome

During this conversation, I decided to complain that sometimes I’m not confident about my engineering knowledge and think that everyone around me knows something better than me. He also recollected a situation of failing a coding interview and getting anxious about this. Actually, there’s nothing strange in it because hesitation and anxiety can be quite powerful motivation boosters. Even though I have been working in my company for many years, I still cannot avoid comparing myself with others. He explained that this is normal, even if you have many experiences in the industry. You shouldn’t think that the company that hired you expects you to show the highest-quality performance on the very first day. This is because companies understand that specialists need some time to get used to a new working environment. You shouldn’t be afraid of consulting with people, instead, it’s better to show your complete commitment to learning something new in a new company.
The fact that the senior engineer can digest a piece of code more precisely than the junior, doesn’t mean that this specialist doesn’t use additional tools. When creating a code, seniors also google some basic things, such as the implementation of a hash map in JavaScript. Nevertheless, thanks to the big experience in engineering, a senior can spot the crucial piece regarding the root cause by just taking a look at a block of code. This skill can be gained through experience, so the desire to learn and grow is one of the best methods to deal with imposter syndrome, even if you already have a lot of knowledge to perform stably.

Don’t think that soft skills are useless on your way to promotion to senior

One more thing I understood during this conversation is that technical skills aren’t the only features that determine whether you will be promoted to senior. You need to be able to establish efficient cooperation with other team members. This is what differentiates juniors from seniors. Senior specialists have more advanced soft skills that help them to solve different issues more quickly.
Considering this, I realized that engineering managers pay a lot of attention to the personal well-being of specialists. Indeed, he explained to me that if an engineer is in a good mental condition, he can unlock new skills and knowledge faster, which helps to grow professionally and boost performance efficiency. That technical director suggested that engineering managers shouldn’t be too formal when communicating with engineers because casual communication helps to understand whether there are some issues that bother the performance of a specialist. Besides, an engineer will feel a friendly attitude and will understand that he can work without any pressure.

To get promoted to a technical director, help specialists under you get promoted

One more interesting insight he shared with me is that a good technical director should care not only about their own personal well-being. It’s necessary to make sure that the things you do can positively impact your team or even the entire company. It’s better to avoid things that are too complicated and have a small impact on the company's performance. This is a basic rule of time management for productive technical directors.
You also need to understand that the more good things your team does for a company, the more chances you have to get promoted. That’s why as a manager, you should pay attention to the professional and personal growth of people under you. If they show great performance and get promoted, you will move a level higher together with them. Actually, this is a way how you can grow to the position of a technical director from a position of a project manager.

Focus on learning best practices on code structure, and writing tests

I was also wondering about the most important things at this stage of my career. The technical director suggested that I should sharpen my current skills. This means that I don’t need to spend my time learning new programming languages unless I totally master the skill of code writing and composing its structure. One more thing he shared is that I should always pay attention to unit testing. These are the most important skills to develop at the current stage of my career.

Don’t be afraid of working really hard

Some specialists give up the idea of working for a certain company if they think that it cannot provide a “work-life balance”. Frankly speaking, “work-life balance” isn’t the thing you should be looking for in your 20s. You are a healthy young man who can endure such difficulties, especially, if there are great career prospects. Foremost, you should pay attention to the thing that you can gain from this company. Even though you can feel sometimes that you are missing out on your routine life, this is the way to acquire a great reputation in a company and master new technical and soft skills. If it’s too hard, you can always give up, but it would be silly not to try working without considering “work-life balance”.

Final thought

To summarize, he suggested that software engineering is the same as vehicle engineering. I took some time to reconsider what he meant and now I can say that I fully agree with it. Similar to a vehicle engineer, you should focus more on a well-defined structure and the process itself rather than different changeable components. Software engineering is all about working on the process and trying new methods. Keep this in mind and you’ll be able to focus on what is really important!