Career Progression in Software Engineering - For Aspiring Tech Leaders

In February 2018 software engineers began answering 2 questions from me. Fast forward to July 2018 and more than 700 people have contributed to this mini-research project, yielding some interesting opinions that I think we can all learn from.

The questions I asked those 700+ people were:

What do you want more in the future; team leadership & management, or to continue coding?

Why do so many engineers want progression into team management instead of continuing to code? Is it just about the money?

Most of the engineers I spoke to wanted to progress into leadership. If you are one of those people, that presents a challenge. Lots of competition.

How do you successfully make the transition from Engineer, to a position of leadership?

Firstly you should understand yourself. Why do you want a position in leadership?

• Greater influence and decision making power
• A new challenge or experience
• Writing code is boring
• "My management team is incompetent and I could do a better job"
• Do you feel like a natural leader?
• A higher salary
• Is it simply your ego driving you?

It could be any of the above, but your motivations will impact how fulfilled you truly are once you reach a leadership role. Maybe this "I want to be a leader" objective, is not the fastest route to career fulfilment. It will also impact how you achieve your path to leadership.

More importantly the strength of your motivations will decide if you can commit to achieving leadership. Whilst an ego is not the 'best' motivation, it's probably a stronger motivation than simply wanting a new experience.

Look inside yourself and decide if you are ready, willing and able. Because the best advice is not the easiest.

Let's examine the common opportunities to progress into management:

• Your manager leaves, the position above you becomes vacant
• Your employer grows, management opportunities are created
• You change employers for a leadership position

Common, but none are ideal. In all 3 scenario's you invite huge competition from other people or rely heavily on circumstance to open a door to you.

A better way of reaching leadership

Most engineers I talked to who had successfully progressed into a leadership capacity did so organically and over a long-term period. Some deliberately, some accidentally through passion and motivation.

Those leaders had displayed all of the right traits required for the job way before they had the job title. Virtually assuming a leadership position until eventually it was handed to them.

If you want greater autonomy and decision making power, start making decisions or at least contributing to how decisions are made. Of course your input needs to be valuable, telling your whole team to go home at 1:00pm because you said so is not a good decision....

Start contributing value to decision making processes. Add something to you senior colleagues, make them feel them see value you in. Go and educate yourself outside of your organisation and bring that knowledge inside, "pollinating" your team members and seniors with new ideas.

Providing you work for an organisation where career progression and organic growth can be facilitated, these kinds of acts will crack open a gap in the organisational structure for you to grow into. Over a long period of time, you can wedge the gap open and eventually break into a leadership role by continuously adding value to decision making, ways of working and better daily habits within the team.

Environment is key

This long term strategy is subjective to already being in an environment where there is room for future growth or a clear career framework that facilitates this.

I wouldn't advise moving employer for an immediate step into leadership, but I would highly recomend moving employer if you are currently missing the future progression opportunities required for a step into leadership.

To be continued...