Team

The Senior Shift

It’s now about your impact, not just your abilities.

You need to develop your best practices and have evidence that your code is of high quality. You build and eventually take ownership of bigger and more complex things, and show that you are capable, independent, and trustworthy.

Project management, broader influencing skills, often some product sensibilities. But the real difference that companies are looking for is not that you are capable, but that you have demonstrated those capabilities by delivering impact. It’s not enough to have the skills, you have to deploy them to produce something of value to the wider group. In fact, while companies may put language about increasing expertise in their engineering levels, the real lens that they use to evaluate that expertise is through increasing scope of ownership, delivery, and impact.

True Seniority in Software Careers

Tribal Leadership is a model that describes company culture in five stages, a rough overview:

Stage 1

Theme: “Life sucks”
Relationships: “Alienated”
Behaviour: “Desparingly hostile”

Stage 2

Theme: “My life sucks”
Relationships: “Separate”
Behaviour: “Apathetic victims”

Stage 3

Theme: “I am great (and you are not)”
Relationships: “Personal superiority”
Behaviour: “Lone Warrior”

Stage 4

Theme: “We are great”
Relationships: “Stable partnership”
Behaviour: “Tribal pride”

Stage 5

Theme: “Life is great”
Relationships: “Teams”
Behaviour: “Innocent Wonderment”

The important part for getting into gaining impact is between Stage 3 and Stage 4. There are relevant changes to behaviour, perception and habits.

Stage 4 is the first stage where the more you give to others, the more you get back. The epiphany is seeing that. Seeing that the real goal is beyond personal success. It is about the impact of a bigger scale. The betterment of the tribe.

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