Recently at work, I started a recurring monthly session focusing on growing engineers, especially younger engineers. These sessions are mostly focusing on career advice, principles, and tools to make engineers more effective.

This session focused on how to increase impact and demonstrating that impact.

A small disclaimer before we continue, (good) advice is fuzzy because it entirely depends on the person receiving it.

Four disciplines

In software engineering, there are four disciplines:

  • Technical skills
  • Product thinking
  • Project execution
  • People skills

At the start, technical skill is usually enough but every successful effort usually requires all four. Imagine an endeavor that wouldn’t benefit from improving in these areas.

Together, all these mean one thing, shipping what matters and that is how you increase your impact.

Shipping -> impact

How do you grow each discipline then?

Of course, with time, you will grow.

However, I care about learning quickly.

High agency

By trying things, making things happen, embrace curiosity, volunteer, take risks, explore, etc., you invite more opportunity to fail quickly.

In times of failures is where we can embrace learning and growth.

High agency -> fail fast - strive to fail fast to learn fast.

Constructive criticism

Of course, failure does not immediately result in learning and growth. We need constructive criticism to extract learning and growth from failure. Feedback shows you what to work on, and humility lets you actually hear it.

Screenshot of slides from the session

How do I demonstrate the impact?

Keep a brag document. Important work can be invisible by nature, and people can’t read minds. Don’t assume others see or interpret your thinking the way you do. A brag doc helps make your impact visible, reveal patterns over time, and guide constructive self-reflection. Highly recommend reading https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/.