As a Senior engineer, how do I motivate my teammates to work harder?
If you’re an engineer motivated to maximize your impact, or if you’ve come from a company that had a faster delivery pace, it can be frustrating to see teammates that don’t deliver as quickly as you. You might try picking up their slack or checking in with them often to see how they’re progressing, but those are dangerous tactics. The key skill you need to develop is leveraging others.
Your teammates will work as slowly as the culture allows. If slipped timelines or vague status updates are accepted, that’s what will happen, on average. The engineering manager (EM) of your team is accountable for the environment: they’re accountable for correct and timely deliverables in an environment that allows everyone to do their best work as a team unit.
Channel your frustration into a partnership with your EM. Give them examples to justify your hunch that work is taking longer than you think it should. They may provide context you aren’t aware of (like these folks might be going through personal issues at home). At the very least, the EM will appreciate your care and insight into the team’s operation. They will pay more attention to timelines and may refine team rituals (like standup or retro) to surface issues.
Let the team fail to meet timelines if necessary. As in, get your work done, but don’t pick up the slack. Failure is a learning opportunity for the team. Let the EM dig deeper into what went wrong; after all, their job is on the line for shipping on time. You “saving the day” by working longer hours hides the problems, is not sustainable, and makes you resentful.
If your EM informally delegates you as the “tech lead” that’s responsible for the delivery of a large team project, then make sure the EM tells that to the team. As a “tech lead” you have a little more cushion to ask your teammates for updates, but it’s still risky. Overstep and your teammates may lash out (“you’re not my manager!”), or they’ll feel like you’re micromanaging, and they may actually complain about you to the EM. Hurting your relationships with your teammates will make it harder for you to leverage them for projects in the future. So even as the tech lead, I’d still work through the EM of the team to resolve delivery issues.
When you get to the Staff+ level, you have to be good at leveraging the skills and roles of others. Your projects will span many teams and you’ll often need help on a variety of issues: interpersonal issues, needed systems improvements, project management, and more. If you try to solve all of those issues yourself, you’ll become overwhelmed quickly and burn out. Instead, you need to leverage folks whose job it is to fix these issues. So for interpersonal issues, staffing/resource issues, or delivery issues, you should leverage engineering managers.
