Evolve as a leader in Software Engineering
Software Engineering is a vast field and things move very fast over a period of time. If your goal is to become a CTO, VP, Head of technology or any leadership position in tech then this story focuses on steps which are building blocks towards those positions.
To reach a position where we can manage top-talent, fulfill their hunger for technology, earn respect and produce the good result we need to follow 3 steps which I believe are essentials in career. These 3 steps can be achieved in 5 years or may take up to 10 years varies from person to person.
Step 1 (Starting years of a career junior): Say you just graduated and land yourself in a job. In starting years try to learn as much as you can, grind yourself to the depth of knowledge, various technologies, don't forget to make mistakes and innovate. Ask yourself a lot of questions and try to solve complex problems. Making sure you always surround yourself with more talented people and mentors who can push you to your limits. Work hard and learn fast.
At this stage, you will grasp multiple programming languages, different domains front-end or back-end. Understand the influence and usability of each technology which you face and understand when or why they are used.
Step 2 (Midyear experience ): Now you just completed a few years of career. In this part of your career, you will focus on adding maturity in your work and your attitude. Understand and implement system design and architecture, test cases are essentials, collaborating with other engineers, diving deep into a complex problem and making sure code is complete. Map problems to design patterns and focus on scalability. You should be breathing in GOF design patterns, software architecture, and scalability.
Step 3 (Senior year experience): Focus on business needs, learn processes and leadership. Help your colleagues to produce better quality work. Lead by example by solving business-related problems and mapping them to tech solutions. Document more than coding itself, focus on the customer or business needs and try to find a fit tech solution not a best tech solution. Collaborate with other domain people, build business requirements, tech documents, code reviews and help others to grow. Organize and participate in tech discussion, retros, and sprint planning. Last but not least train yourself to be emotionally intelligent and work on communication skills.
https://www.oreilly.com/business/free/files/build-to-lead.pdf
Outcome: After all these 3 steps you are now ready to lead a team effectively. Definitely, everyone has its own style of leadership but above-mentioned steps will make you lead well. Grind yourself before accepting any leadership position and rest will be history.
