Senior Engineer Skills Beyond Programming (non-exhaustive list)
- How to hold a meeting. And no, not to chat more than anyone else in the meeting, namely to hold it.
- How to write project documentation, get feedback and bring it to a solution within a reasonable time frame
- How to mentor a “junior” teammate, a mid-career engineer, a new manager who needs technical advice
- How to please a senior manager who wants to talk about technical things he doesn’t really understand without rolling his eyes or making him feel stupid
- How to explain a technical concept behind closed doors to a dignitary too embarrassed to openly admit that he does not understand it
- How to convince another team to use your solution instead of writing your own
- How to get another engineer to do something for you by asking for help in a way that makes them feel appreciated
- How to lead a project, even if you are not managing any of the people working on it
- How to get other engineers to listen to your ideas without making them feel threatened
- How to listen to other engineers’ ideas without feeling threatened
- How to give up your brainchild, from that project that you turned into something great, so that you can do something else
- How to teach another engineer to care about what you really care about (operations, correctness, testing, code quality, performance, simplicity, etc.)
- How to communicate the status of a project to stakeholders
- How to convince management to invest in a non-trivial technical project
- How to create software while bringing added value in the process
- How to write a project proposal, socialize it and get support for its implementation
- How to repeat your thoughts enough to get people to listen
- How to choose a battle / How to prioritize
- How to help someone get promoted
- How to get information about what’s really going on (how to gossip, how to communicate)
- How to find an interesting job on your own, and not wait until someone brings it to you
- How to tell someone they are wrong without making them feel ashamed
- How to take negative reviews gracefully
