How to Stay Relevant in Tech (25+ Years of Lessons)

The question I receive most nowadays is how do you stay relevant within tech, especially since tooling and AI keeps evolving. Next to that, it's also how to get a promotion or negotiate a higher salary. And that's exactly what we talk about. In essence, you need to take control over your career. You work 13% of your total lifespan, which is a lot. And joining me today, he has over 25 years of experience in this industry, is Iskan Gungu, currently fractional CTO and

also working on his own startup. It was a real blast, so enjoy. I put up a poll last week and it was about the biggest challenge people are currently facing within their career and within tech. And the biggest answer was

staying relevant, especially with new emerging technologies, tooling and AII get bombarded with new tooling. Like from a marketing and ads perspective, you've been in tech longer than me and likely longer than the audience. How do you stay relevant or how do you keep up to date? Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry to admit the. I didn't want. To I'm a dinosaur.

Yeah, I I've, I've been I was there in the second AI winter like Gandalf. So yes, I think it, it is about like when I find myself in a very difficult sort of problem set, I always say, what is the Super set for this? Step back and look at the bigger picture, if you will, and then dive back in. So for engineers right now, like

we have so many things to keep up with, but essentially what you're doing is taking an idea and turning that into code with certain conditions, assumptions and prerequisites and then maintainability etcetera like also maintenance of it. So that is not changing. So wherever you're strong, look at the tools that will sort of amplify your strengths. And when, whenever, wherever on this journey you're lacking things, invest in them. And sometimes it's a tool.

For example, I recently advocated in my writing as well for engineers. Now there is, there has never been a great time to look into like how product specifications are written because that is upstream from your work, but it defines the quality of your work as well, right? So this we have this thing with like cost of an error. If it happens on production, it's highly costly and in the value chain, if you catch it sooner, better, right? So now we have, we spend less time typing code.

That means maybe we have more time thinking, reasoning about the product, talking to the product manager or customers and understanding the context even better because you can create something that is even more maintainable and it's grounded on its utility, not just a specification you've received. So being intentional, I guess the short answer, like there's a lot of things being thrown at you, It doesn't mean that you

have to respond to all of them. Look, you look at yourself, what kind of an engineer you want to be or what type of an organization you are in and what creates more value and then invest in those things, experiment with it to see if it will amplify your value contribution or not. In my case, at a start up, definitely like code generation amplifies my contribution because I can test things, I can tweak them independently and I can sign up on them myself.

Maybe in a different organization is, yeah, just generating more tests so that the quality can keep up.

I feel like you have the experience to make sure that you feel in control with whatever tooling comes up. And my assumption is that the people that answer this, how to stay relevant with new technologies and AI, maybe they identify with what they do. And then if something comes along that speeds up that whole process, it's like, yeah, but this is what I was good at. So what do I do now then?

Do I go wide and indeed go more towards product or talk to customers because maybe I've never done that before? Or do I still go deeper and try and find an edge which AI can't solve yet? Both, I guess should be strategies to evaluate. I think we are seeing a very rapid and mass commoditization of coding and for justified reasons as well, like it can be repetitive, it can be wasteful,

right? So I understand if organizations and people feel like this is a, this is a right way to approach it. So that's why we are seeing all this push. But there are things where there are areas, domains, where maybe this is still not the case, or the risks of generated code could be very high. Then you might still, yeah, have more leverage as an individual.

But it would be foolish not to accept this as the reality and open your thinking to it. Like can I do more of what I do with the new technologies and maintain the quality or have more time to go deeper right that what I'm doing now being

more hands on now I can actually, I can create an architect, I can create a documentation engineer persona and then use all of them to do a reasonable job that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do. For my context, it makes sense. I'm not saying that is the way to go for every organization, but for a 2 two people start up, it makes a lot of sense to go faster and wherever you can make the differentiation.

In my case, for example, I have quite a bit of experience developing products, rolling out products, and I like being customer oriented. So now I can do more of that and still do a reasonable job in terms of the code I create and roll out. And I like that because then I can sort of move across this value stream and do what's important, right? I'm talking to customers, I'm doing research, I'm writing PR DS for myself.

I'm reviewing my PR DS also called as generation assisted and then feeding them into ER DS. So I'm running the full life cycle, maybe lighter than other organizations. They need more engineering rigor. But in my case, I can move up and down for everyone. I think it will be the same like if you're ignoring the rest and just trying to silo yourself into one step of the value stream, that's going to be challenged whether you like it or not.

I mean, I think I do fear as well that we might lose the human touch in certain things. So there's a maybe dystopian angle to this always in in the back of my head, but I don't think we can put the cat back in back in the bag. Oh, no, no, I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. If you're thinking of people that are then either early in career or mid career that see this new technology pop up and that reflect and say, OK, how do I stay relevant? What what steps can they undertake within their own

career really be intentional to make sure that they will stay relevant in the end. So I think the first job you get in in an industry is always something of a learning experience. So for new starters, I would say just be as open as possible. Open your mind and you're you've been lucky enough to find a job. Take whatever you can from that experience, learn with it, evolve with it, and then you can be a lot more intentional and informed about the next step you're going to take. Right?

So the first one is always a bit of a throwaway, OK, It's OK, right? You also, yeah, hit the wall a few times in your first job. That's also fine. In the second one, then you take the learnings and then you step back and say, OK, these are the parts of my job that I really

enjoy doing. These are the parts of my job I don't enjoy so much doing, but I can tolerate and these are the things I don't want to do. If you can create those buckets very loosely, then you have something to iterate from. And that's what I did repetitively actually in my career. And about five years ago I said, I want to end up doing my own thing. I knew that like this is, this has been in the works for five years for me where I am right now.

And that helped me a lot because then I made a few decisions along the way that would sort of tweak my position and bring me to this exit, right, or to this new branch of my career. So I recommend the same, but the first one, yeah, you have to be open and roll with the punches. Then you iterate from there and then you say, OK, these are the things that really work for me, that give me energy and motivation and satisfaction,

right? And that's what I want for all the engineers. That's why I wrote all the things I I did like. I think it would be a shame to waste this opportunity of being alive and doing things. So the next thing to do is you have a long term plan. How do you break it into chunks? Like the engineering work we do, right? You don't try to code the whole thing in one night. You break it up and you think about how you're going to bring those pieces together.

I'm a big fan of Legos. Like people who know me know that and like reusable parts and thinking ahead, like, OK, I want to make a part that will be able to move.

So you set it up like that. So smaller chunks and that's the shorter term, like you have a long term vision for yourself, then you learn the experience to as a mirror to see where you are, where you want to go. And then you create the next step, next iteration in for me. For me a A1 year horizon was usually good enough, but things might have changed a little bit recently, like maybe six months re evaluation is good. That's what I feel, yeah. Things.

Are moving so fast and beyond our control as well. So but having a feedback loop on your short term progression as well, I think is is important. And then and that doesn't change if you're mid career or early career, like just create a system for short term feedback loops so that you can check if what you're doing still makes sense for you and in the industry. And that's the other thing, like wherever your career takes you, it doesn't mean that that's the

only option, right? When I designed competency framework at the large organization, for example, we tried to make that as industrial line as possible. So not hyper focused to the organization we were creating and managing, but to the industry. So if when people move out of the organization, they are still compatible with the rest of the industry. If the organization doesn't do it for you, you should do it for

yourself for your career. And that takes me all the way back to like our limited time on earth and why we do the things we do. I made the calculation when I was creating that presentation. It's about 13% of our existence

that we pour into our work, if not more, right? I, I think for me, definitely more. I get hooked into something and I, I can't let it go. I want to get it done. I want to see their end result. So I've definitely poured more hours in, Yeah. So it's good to be intentional about like creating your road map and then chunking it and iterating on it and getting feedback. And 13% that's is that of waking hours or of just hours total? Hours total. OK, so sleep is like a big chunk.

Absolutely, of course. Everything else, yeah, it should be. At least you have sacrifices somewhere. But 13 percent is more than I thought, yeah. Yeah. And this doesn't even include like commute and other things. Maybe it's now less, right? That's another big shift that we have seen in commute less. But back in the day when I started, commute was a big chunk of my life as well. And I was doing learning and development during commute so that I wouldn't waste those hours.

For me, the the hard part when you mentioned like long term plan, I've mentioned many times on the podcast, I'd love to start my own business, have a startup, be self-sufficient with regards to that. I really create something that I own and get pleasure out of doing. That's one track. Then I have, I love personal development, talking to people, figuring out what makes them take and how they can thrive. Also within an organization, be kind of an advisor or a mentor in that aspect.

And I feel like engineering management fits more within that. And then I also like doing a podcast and then standing on stage and actually sharing knowledge, creating docs, making content for people to learn and to thrive off of. And that's more the developer advocacy role. So then I have a lot of branches, and that's not just doing software engineering.

I also love more the product sense, like you talking to customers, figuring out what actually is of value, experimenting with that, throwing things away that don't make sense, and then thriving through that. I don't have to be the person that executes necessarily. So they have many options and then I have a very hard time picking and choosing, especially when we're talking about not just a one year plan, but on a longer term horizon.

What I want to do is really what I struggle with when it comes to being more intentional with my own career path. Yes, you and I seem to have a lot in common start up advocacy. Like maybe not on the very technical things, but I've been writing about like career management and skills development, collaboration, teamwork, all of those things, sometimes more philosophical and maybe like tangential, but I'm interested in helping others as well.

And then also I've enjoyed every other job I, I've done. Like yourself, I guess. Like it doesn't mean that you don't like what you're doing today, but you might want to end up doing something else in a few years that's also perfectly compatible. So I totally resonate with that statement. And now also, I don't have any other forcing function. So I am dictating my calendar and I I'm more more and more faced with that reality. But I think that the then the start up experience is helping

me out here in a weird way. Like what is the one thing you can not not do that you want to make sure it it has evolved even a little bit today. I think that should be the first priority that you invest in first and other things then fall into place, right? So, but it's a tough question to answer. It's a very deeply personal thing to answer as well. I think it takes a while to be

also to learn how to be honest with yourself. Like it takes experience to know what you like and don't like. That's why I said like the first job, just do and learn from it because that's your step zero. And then that's why I recommended engineers to take stock of things that they've done and they enjoyed and that is differentiated for them as well As for the industry, so they can leverage that and turn it into earning. And then you still have to look

at the long term plan. And in my case, I've been investing in being able to set up a company. I didn't get the financial returns I hoped from like exiting with companies etcetera. But I still had the intention to end up where I am not right now. And all I had to do was like, OK, everything else is in place. I don't have the financial cushion. Can I do it not and for how long

That was the decision. So again, like the biggest decision was already like made for I made it for myself five years ago that I would do this and what type of a startup founder I would want to be. And I've been investing in that everyday with everything I do, I try to also gain something that contributes to this, right? So maybe on the local maximum, it's not the investment. But then when you zoom out and look at the global maximum, I was, I was investing in that.

The type of challenges I jumped into at work, outside work, the things I've read, these are always like in the backdrop contributing to me positioning myself to do the one, at least one company that I I was designing and running. Here I am now. So that's very interesting. But yeah, that doesn't like your biggest priority being something longer term doesn't mean that you don't enjoy today, right? It's just what is it superimposing those so that they

you get like multiple wins? Yeah, I feel like what you mentioned with regards to early in career, that's really what I had. I joined in operations and my idea was to learn as fast as possible. Then I joined consultancy and I had experience in the back end and it was a front end project. They would like, do you want to do this? And I had no clue to be honest, if I think back, but I I wanted to experience as much as possible and as fast as possible.

So I said yes. I said yes to a lot of things where I thinking back now, now it doesn't make sense, but back then it did because anything was kind of new ground and new exploration. Now I do have a lot of learnings with regards to the things I don't like and that I feel like gets me closer to eventually what I will want to do on the long term horizon. I think maybe in the grand scheme of things, it's just very odd for me. Maybe this is who I am to think of something I'm going to do for

the longer term. Right now I'm having fun doing a lot of things. I'm quite, I'm very happy with what I do nowadays and the only thing I, I don't want to like give up is this feeling of growing and learning continuously with the things that I've dropped. It's usually been the feeling of, I don't feel like I add value. I don't feel like I have anything personally that I can learn from.

There might be impact for the organization, but if it's not in there for me necessarily, then I will have to make sure that, OK, the impact for the organization can stay, but I can take myself out of that situation. That's usually what I found myself in and I feel like that's OK in the end. There's multiple tracks, there's multiple paths. I try and be more and more intentional.

I feel like I've I've gone from that first phase where everything is kind of green and fresh to being more intentional. But then what I want to do with that intent, or what that intent is even going to be, I don't know yet. Yeah. Well, one thing I can recommend I've done myself, I've recommended a lot of engineers is to really ask yourself like, why am I enjoying this or why am

I not enjoying that? Right. We've all done the five wise exercise at one point in her career. You can apply it to your career as well. That helps you. And you should take some time aside for this and find yourself or immerse yourself in a, in a setting where you can think freely, could be complete. Like for me, it's pen and paper and a cup of coffee or something. Definitely not a laptop. I don't want to follow each rabbit hole of my thinking. I just want to take stock.

And I ask myself, OK, how did this go? What did I learn from it? Why did I enjoy this more than other things? And also, surprisingly, it's liberating because then you can tell people about it. And that helps them help you. Even your manager could be your ally. And I have a very good example not from me, but and someone I worked with, they had a, they had someone who wanted to switch careers completely, become a chef or ABM bed and breakfast host or something.

But they won't, they didn't have money to do it. They were good at what they did today, which was coding. So they made a plan to be able to end up in that position in a few years, and they did. And their manager knew about it. They could manage their team, they could plan for the

transition and everything. It was mutually beneficial that they could establish a general direction and then slowly move towards it. It doesn't mean that like if they want to leave in three years, you have to ask them to leave the organization today. And they are very motivated to be where they are that day. So there's no problem. And we are all professions, we are all grown-ups.

We can do that. So I think that kind of thinking also helped me a lot when I was really getting frustrated about certain things in my career. I was asking myself why? Why is this bothering me? Because it's limiting my ability to contribute. It's giving, putting shackles, right? And OK, then I need to change it or like I'm getting super excited about this, but I won't have the returns. OK, then I will pace myself. It's it's not going to give me my energy back if I pour it in.

So I have to, yeah, just for that. So asking yourself what makes you tick? Why gives you some ideas on like where you want to end up as well. Yeah, The poll that I alluded

to, the second point that people voted on the most was negotiating a higher salary and promotions, which is going to tie to that has actually been third. I've never worked in big tech organizations, but some of the feedback that I've heard or some of the signals is that the promotion process is kind of broken, where it's not just on merit, but it's actually about kind of showing other people what you do compared to actually providing value for the

organization. It's not just what you do, it's also who knows what you do, which is an interesting tidbit. I haven't faced it too much, but I know you've worked in big tech. What would be your advice on kind of negotiating a higher salary or even getting a promotion on that aspect? I've operated in big tech and I've seen the bigger machinery behind it, and I've worked at a somewhat smaller organization where I had to run this for the

entire engineering organization. And I'll confess, I know who I am, what my values are, and people who know me can attest to that. You can try your damn hardest and only make the process so much unbiased. Like it's just an emergent property of things, right? You can design counterfactor processes, but you will have run out of time eventually. So to be able to decide who gets promoted, you need to run a process.

And you cannot put all your engineering hours of all your like yourself and the engineering managers and team leads into this process. It has to be a part of everything you do, but it needs to be done within a within a month, right? Like when you start the process and review everyone, etcetera. So I think I'm trying to caution people against expecting too much or being too idealistic about these processes because I've tried my damn hardest to make it and it you have to stay pragmatic.

So there's always error in that process. Don't expect otherwise. The other big call out I make in my writing as well is no one cares more about your career than you. No one ever, ever will. Not your mother, not your partner, not your dog. You are the owner of your career.

You are the DRI of your career. The sooner you embrace it, the better. Because then you can be more planned, organized around it. If the organization you're working in has a certain methodology, understand it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to subscribe 100% to it, but you should know how it affects you and your career progression in the direction you want to go.

So if if getting promoted in that organization means a lot to you financially, situationally, or like you want that title, then you need to know how to work with that system. You people sometimes get manipulative. It's up to them. I'm not judging their character, I try not to be, but I try to understand the mechanics around me and use them, work with them, right? And of course not harm anyone else in the process, right? But this, the system will never be 100% fair.

So you have to fend for yourself. You have to understand how to work with the system. And there's a part of this whole thing, and I think you've mentioned in your last Q&A as well, politics is a very human thing. So I think you were looking at it a bit more like in a toxic way, right? You framed it as a toxic I, I see it differently.

I think politics is very human. Again, being manipulative or not is up to the individual, but building relationships and leveraging them to understand or showcase, like understand what can happen and showcase your work is fine. You choose how you're going to do that. And I think in an earlier episode there was something about that too about like you can say whatever you want as long as you have like good intentions. I think it was about feedback, but the same applies to

promoting your work. You, if you're honest about it, if you know it's grounded on facts and you're proud of what you've done and you want people to know it, that's fine, right? If you're exaggerating the value or stealing credit, it's up to you. And if you get caught, don't cry, right? So I think it's perfectly fine to showcase your work. And if you're, if you're really after that promotion, work for it. But be careful, be smart about what that means.

For example, if just to get a promotion, you go on a project and that project gets cancelled, yeah, it was your choice to be on that project because you were so motivated about the promotion. Learn from it and try to maybe have a different blend of priorities, not just driven by promotion. Because I think if people are only driven by promotion, then I've seen that to backfire a lot more frequently than other things, right?

If people are focused on, I'm going to be good at what I do, I'm going to add so much value to my team, my organization, I'm going to make it better. And I think in your podcasts, I've seen a lot of these details as well. That lifts you up, right? Because people look at you and like, OK, this person is not only contributing, they are trying to make it better. And that starts to compound and that gets you a promotion maybe six months later than you had imagined, but you still get there.

If you're only after promotion, you start fighting with people. So that can backfire. But if you, if that's the person you want to be, be it, right, it's fine. I'm not saying the system is perfect. I'm not saying you won't get that promotion if you're only motivated about promotion. People do that. I've seen it. And I'm also telling confessing people designing and running these processes, they cannot guarantee 100% fairness. So you have to take take care of

yourself. One thing I've been recommending very strongly, and I know this might not resonate with you so much, is that brag dog. Write it down.

Write your accomplishments down because you'll forget about it. Especially this hurts people who are humble because you think people will see it. Your manager will be too busy with other things sometimes. And I've done that. And for people who've been exposed to my shortcomings, I'm sorry. But yeah, I did it with good intentions. I was working a lot of things. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention, but it happens.

But if you write it down, you have it written down, and you can always present it in the right context at the right time. You choose, right? You can say, you can just dump like 100 pages on a, on a on the table and say this is, these are all the things I've done. Or you can say I'll choose five important things, right? And just talk to my manager about those things or my colleagues about those things so they know because it means something to me.

Yeah, the the brag dog is interesting because like I, I consider myself humble and then writing down the things that I've done or the impacts and trying to make them measure measurable. Like even in a resume, I feel like it's, it's weird for me to do so, even though they might be objectively facts and something I've contributed to it.

I feel like most of the time I'm taking more credit than I should because I'm just a piece of the puzzle and I might be an individual contributor, but definitely the whole team and the organization, they play a factor in that. To then write it down and to own it either, whether it be in our resume or in a promotion process, it just doesn't sit well with me. All right, let's tackle resume first. It's kind of your interface document, right? People are trying to choose the

right person for the right job. So without the resume, you're not really giving them a chance to assess if you're the right fit. Again, how, how honest you are with what you put in your resume is up to you, but if you want people to understand how you fit in an organization, what you can do within that organization, it's it's how you document it. It's maybe not the best platform, but yeah, it, it works. We've been using resume for. A long time. You can be factual, especially

to prevent misunderstandings. You can say I've worked in this organization, I've done these things, I've been a part of the team, right? The words you use will help you set the right context, right expectations. And in the interview process, based on your CV, you can always reveal more of yourself. But we are trying to optimize the selection matchmaking process right between the individual and the organization. And CV is the interface documentation we use. So I see it in that way.

I'm very neutral to it. I want people to know what I'm doing so that they can talk to me about the right things and I can help them, so I see it as a helpful thing to do. I, I agree, I'm trying to bypass that system because the whole interface document and especially with AI tooling nowadays, if I give my resume to ChatGPT, it will say make everything measurable, how much percentage that you impact. And and that's like, I, I understand the organization.

I try and understand how the organization makes money or reduces costs and then how the project that I'm in plays a part in that. But to completely own that and put that on my resume, for me that's like a step too far. So me bypassing the system is basically trying to figure out who does the recruitment process and then see if I can have a conversation with them and show how I can value add value other

than this resume interface talk. It's not perfect, but that's kind of my solution to the problem. Again, use the right phrasing, like you can say. I mean, I worked at Big Tech. So everything we did in that team and we were in payments for a very large organization, every little thing, every feature we did was millions, 100,000,000

billions even, right? So if you put that on your resume, I worked on this 5 billion thing, you might be exaggerating, right, because it is currently amplified with the size of the organization. Economies of scale. And the person interviewing you for that role should also do their job and ask your contributions to it. So again, you can exaggerate it and people can buy it, but it doesn't make you better at your next job.

So be honest as at least for me, yeah, being honest is very important so that I also don't end up wasting my time. And I've made enough mistakes to know. Yeah, sometimes you figure that out like 6 months or a year into the job that yeah, I shouldn't have like given that impression, this is not what I want to do. I. Think it's a good. Revelation. Yeah. And try to express your expectations and contributions in a way that is sort of bringing the right type of interest to you.

So that's why CV is an important front. You're showcasing the right things in the right way. But you choose right. You don't have to say or you don't have to own everything that your team did. You can put it in the right light. Yeah, the problem that I see, and this is also in the promotion process, is if everyone is playing that game and owning everything, like the single part of what a team has achieved in their own resume, then I feel like, yeah, I, I do

have to play that game. Otherwise you stay behind.

Like maybe within the resume, it's it's less likely that you have the same people applying for the same job that have the same background. But when it comes to a promotion, if everyone plays the game and has kind of a bragging talk or at least they have written down their impact and their contribution, I feel like I would be behind if I don't do

that. And I've never worked in big tech but it wouldn't make me comfortable because I I already have trouble doing that on a resume basis basically. Yes, people play the system game system. It happens. We've had that as well. And when that is that is happening, you usually introduce countermeasures for those things like what you track which projects and if multiple people take credit for it, then you

start asking more questions. And if you get, if you catch someone exaggerating their contributions during a promotion review, yeah, that's going to backfire big time. So the system evolves eventually. That's why being honest is a long term strategy always a winner, right? You can say, for example, in my, in that team, we had high stakes, right? All the engineers working on those features felt the pressure, the significance of the things we we were building,

right. We had a nine month project. It started as a small thing and it it exploded into ten team contribution 3 continents. And we felt the pressure of that project, everyone and I wasn't contributing, I wasn't after promotion as an engineer through it. I was managing the team that took part of it. And I think they engineers in that team should be able to take credit for handling such a big project, not the bottom line

impact directly, right? I think you can still find the right sweet spot of expressing that like you've designed the ERD for that project and you got sign up from 10 different teams. That is an accomplishment. You should take credit for it, but you didn't do the front end of it. You didn't do that part of it, and you can still be honest about that. Yeah, right. That's your contribution and own that.

Yeah. And like that people reading that, checking that evaluating you will hopefully look at it and say, OK, this person did this and this is actually a part of what we expect for someone to get promoted, right? And 11 big call out promotion is always after the fact. You've been operating at that level long enough, sustained that performance long enough that you get recognized and get the new title, right? So I want to manage expectations

with everyone here. Promotion is not something you showing multiple like small signals of everything and then people say, Oh yeah, you might be able to do this next job. We've seen that also hurt careers, right? Like what is that called? There's a name for that. Like you get promoted until you cannot be successful, right? I forgot the name. But anyway, So good organizations will usually evaluated based on sustained signal of you operating at next level.

So your focus for promotion should be operating at the at the next level. And that means you need to

understand what's expected at the next level, get there and hold it. And that's where our competency frameworks come in. That's another big, big, big factor to how you manage your career. And I've advocated if your organization doesn't have it, it's not an excuse for you not to have it. You can always have your own competency framework and then discuss with your manager, hey, how do I perform at the next level in this organization? This is my take, this is my

research. Does it make sense to you If I do these things, will I be adding more value and get recognized for it? You can have that conversation at any time. If the organization has a competency framework, understand it. It can also be gained. It's also not 100% fair, but you at least have a target and if those things don't resonate with you, you're in the wrong organization. Can you give an example of what is typically in a competency framework? What?

What do I think? I've designed 1 so I have some experience for engineering for for us it was of course technical skills at certain levels. Your impact radius defined your level quite a bit, right? Are you able to design A feature by yourself and have high success rate in implementation and also on board other engineers to get it done? Then your impact radius is increasing, right? When you're a junior fresh out

of uni, you get a task. When you are a staff engineer, you get a wide scoped, maybe not well defined challenge. So that's the sort of scope change and radius change on your impact that's expected. If you're a staff, staff plus engineer that you can take that idea, talk to right people, scope the problem, validate the problem and turn it into an implementation plan and help the teams implement it, right?

So that's sort of the scope. So technical chops, scope, stakeholder management, domain expertise, right? You cannot be extremely successful if you don't understand what the what business problem you're solving with your contributions. So you need to spend more time understanding we had those. And if it, if the organization is big enough, contributing back to the community, your organization becomes an expectation, leading the culture, investing in others, lifting everyone up, mentoring,

for example. So those are the bigger. Segments. But if you want simplistic, I think technical chops and contribution collaboration are the two big ones and you can divide them further. And you would then layer out kind of the the levels in there,

OK, and plot yourself on there as well as in this is this is where I'm at and this is what I want to grow into or. So when I designed the competency framework for the organization, I actually did design the engineering leadership part as well. So included my job too. But then my manager had to of course, validate the expectations I was putting for my level and my level and above so that we we would be able to sort of lift the organization up

through that. Yeah. And the guidance we gave to engineers was like, look at this and then assess yourself against these things and then you'll get an assessment from your manager. That's how we are going to calibrate and do this before the promotion discussions. So that actually all the managers were asked to do it well ahead of the cycle continuously so that we would guide growth and we would be able to capture it at the right

time. We would know that, oh, this person already reached this level. They're meeting all the expectations already. Then they would be natural candidates for promotion. But those conversations during one on ones were the secret sauce. And if you're not having them, you're just waiting for the promotion cycle to kick in and then evaluate. You will have a lot of frustration as a manager as well. It's very frustrating to to do it to try to retrofit those discussions that you didn't have.

Yeah. So it's all about like, OK, these are the expectations this organization has. This is how you're performing. And on the individual level, you look at those expectations and you ask yourself, am I really interested in doing these things as a part of my growth? Because this is what the this organization is asking. You can also challenge them. You go into your manager and say this is actually not a good expectations.

And I'm sure a lot of organizations right now are sort of in that messy stage where they're trying to understand how to put AI into the those competencies so that they can encourage people, motivate people the right way. And some people are feeling like, oh, they're just. You know, pushing AI. Yeah, yeah.

But those conversations need to be had and then you can reflect on those conversations and say, OK, this organization helps me get to my destination, whether in that organization or not, right? You're growing in the right way. And that's why in in the one eye designed, we try to keep like technical and collaborative skills in a way that that would just make you a good engineer wherever you go.

Yeah, the thing I love about this is it will show you not just where you are, but also how to level up where growth is for you. In the positions where I've been where I was like I don't see any growth from me anymore. It's the part where it really demotivated me. Like there's a few factors where I get a lot of energy and I where I get a lot of motivation to money. Autonomous. How do you say being autonomous is one of them? Being able to be curious is one

of them. Having people around me that can actually share knowledge and take the time to do so as one of them and seeing enough growth for me, I think it like contributes towards that. Mastery Autonomy challenge. Yeah, it's it's a good combination of all of that and motivated engineers might be the most underrepresented thing we

talk about. It's like almost non existent and it's a very personal thing, but a lot of factors can influence that and seeing growth is a big factor in that as well. Yeah, I've done some research on this one as well. Motivation in knowledge work more broadly is an interesting factor. I think it is the silent factor

that's all often under represented or not really paid attention to. But I know myself, I've worked with enough engineers to know that if someone, and if an engineer, if a knowledge worker broadly, is motivated to do the job, they will do a great job. If someone is not motivated or worse, demotivated to do a job, they will make you regret they. Will make you regret. Because they are smart people,

right? They're educated, they're experienced knowledge work is not easy to it's not we are not producing widgets. So if someone is not motivated, you will not get the outcomes you expect from a motivated person. And it's just that simple. And the factors could be almost three times high, right? Like a motivated engineer will get to the finish line. I know that I've done that. And when I was not motivated, I delayed it or like postponed it or like put it in the backlog.

Whatever you do, you try to avoid that thing because you're you're not excited about it or you're not properly motivated about it. You don't know why it's there, whatever the reason, right? And this is not necessarily malicious behavior. It's just like friction. It's very human. Yeah, you get it, get to it. In the end you do it. But yeah, instead of doing it the first thing, maybe you do that the fifth thing of your day and then the next person does the the same, then you have a

compound of delay. So motivation is important and you cannot motivate people. You cannot. No, you cannot motivate them directly. You cannot make it happen. No, exactly. You create the conditions that people find joy, excitement, challenge, and then they feel. So it is an emergent property of humans. Like we, we find ourselves motivated. OK, extrinsic motivation, yes, right, Let's touch on that. Pay, definitely, but that is

very short term. That's why I'm bold enough to say like you cannot motivate people extrinsically. It only goes so far. Yeah, this I really had to learn. And it was when I was more in a people management role where I would see a lot of potential in the person sitting across from me and I could see them doing and making an impact, the impact that I wanted and that I thought would be good for the organization.

And I would communicate that I would try and inspire, but I cannot influence someone to act, right. I can try and make a fire, but in the end as the flame on its own. And that for me, when you say you can't motivate people, that's where I, I thought of I, I couldn't motivate this person to do it because probably it wouldn't make them happy. So they didn't act. I was really trying to inspire, but not everyone is like me. I cannot force someone to act because I'm not that person.

Yeah, you cannot make people happy. You cannot motivate people directly. There are so many indirect factors to that. For example, you can tell them, hey, this will make your promotion. But if your organization has a history of yeah, abusing promotion. Yeah. Then they won't be motivated. I know it's all bullshit. Yeah. And then if you know that it is, there's not more you can say about it. So you can try to improve the

system. And then they might feel like, oh, this person is actually trying to improve the system. I'll follow them. And that's another thing I've also noticed discussed in on your podcast, like leadership. I think motivation and leadership are tied in that way, that whatever you do and how you do it creates that motivation in others, and that's when you become a leader. People choose you as their leader because you're they feel motivated by the things you do. It's just by having you there

even. Yeah, I agree completely.

One of the things that you mentioned that that really stuck with me and it's not something that I thought of very early on in my career, is that career transcends organization boundaries. So what you do is actually for you and the fact that you cannot get a promotion or you don't really like the processes maybe in big tech versus other organizations, it doesn't mean that your career ends or that you've come to a blocking standstill because your career

transcends the organization. You can take your learnings with you and apply them elsewhere and you are in control. I feel like a lot of the feedback that I get and some of the the questions that people ask are in this feeling of I'm not in control and there's too many external factors in this

feeling of hopelessness. And I think with at least the things that you've written about or the tools that you can offer people, not just from a management perspective, but even going beyond organizational boundaries, it is a framework to empower people when it comes to the career they have. Thank you. I couldn't phrase it myself better. I've been trying, but yeah, the well, we were waiting for this podcast to nail it. Yes, you phrase it very, very accurately.

I want people to own their careers and drive it themselves and not try to retrofit it into the organization there in necessarily. There will be overlaps. I hope so. And then it's win win, right? You're contributing to the organization. They give you money, they give you recognition, they give you other things that make your life joyful. Great. If it is, not, look where it's going wrong, what your expectations are and what the organization's expectations are and remedy those situations.

If they're not salvageable, move on. Your time is limited. They don't want you there if you're not happy and you're not a good fit anyway, right? But if you catch those signals early, you can play, play, plan your next move. Otherwise you become a victim of like, yeah, your performance is not meeting and then let's put you on the PIP and what not the whole thing. But sometimes you can see it a mile ahead and you can plan for it and make the right transition for yourself.

So you manage your career. That's why I've sort of tried to distill all the best tools I've seen into this framework. I called it a framework as well, or toolkit, so that it would also be interesting for engineers to think about because these are the things you can do. These are the hooks, These are the APIs that you can implement. And then they give you the structure to manage your career in a transcending way. And you get to where you, I hope you get to where you want to be

in life. Through that. I'll go back to the brag dog. I'm keeping the name so that it does invoke that feeling as well. I want to encourage people to also recognize their accomplishments, write them down before they forget the context of it as well. Actually, what I've caused people to do was don't just write the thing.

Also write how it made you feel. Because that part you don't have to share with your manager or you don't have to share in your promo package, but that is your reflection on your journey at that moment. If you do this weekly, like look at on a Friday, at the end of the day, look at your week and say, oh, these are the things I've done. This was actually quite unexpected. I was even surprised, Oh, this was actually I could do better. Keep those to yourself. But those are very insightful

observations. And if you don't do it at the end of that week or at the end of the month latest, you will forget about it. And then you're just floating, you're drifting into your career, but you can be a lot more observant on how things are going for you and decide what you have, what you want to do. And I want to be an example of it. Like I've been planning my current move for five years. And because it was spread over five years, it wasn't a lot of work, but it gave me the North

Star to make the right decisions, change the right things over time. And also that stability helped me to, yeah, feel OK with these things and not take a lot of financial risk unnecessarily, not be super reactive to whatever really annoyed me on on that day. I could step back and say, OK, I'm trying to learn something from this experience because it takes me to my goal. I can tolerate it or this is actually the second time and it's not getting me to my destination.

I'll start changing. It calms you down as well, knowing that you have a destination you want to get to and you're in charge of it. I'm curious then to hear your perspective and, and you can be blunt with me, you can be direct with me. I do not have a long term plan and I don't know if I'm doing myself a disservice by not having that, by not putting a lot of thought into that, or maybe not as much intent as I should.

I'm having a lot of fun living in the now, I'm experimenting with different aspects that I think are fun and I'm still evaluating because I don't think that much with regards to long term. I'm also a horrible planner, so probably a lot of personal factors play into that, but I don't know if I'm doing myself a disservice by not having that. I, I'll be blunt. I don't buy it for a second. I think you, you know, like you're just more sentimental about it than organized about it.

You know that you're, for example, I'm guessing from the things I've seen, you like sampling different things, learning different things to guide your process. So you're sort of experiment experientially evolving, but you're intentional about that. So you're trying to learn as much as possible so that you're maybe more experienced horizontally. And then you'll see the things that sort of you want to dive deeper. And so I think the only thing you're not doing is writing it

down. Like, I'll experiment with different things. And that only in my, in my mind has the risk of not knowing when to stop with experimenting with one thing or not. So being planning ahead gives you a checkpoint where you say like, OK, it's been 6 months I've been trying these new things. OK, some were a waste of time. If you close the loop, then I think it's better. But I think you know generally

how you want to evolve. I think you're investing in learning different things because you will build your own thing in the end and you want to have different experiences that feed into it. You just haven't written it down. Yeah, I also have this what if? Because what if I actually don't then take the next step because I, I am really enjoying the now and taking the next step is uncomfortable. It's scary. You can it can kind of move you away with what you are happy

now. So then there is a risk that is kind of the what if that I do not take a next step. Yeah, but the same applies to what if, right? Like what if you take the step and then it becomes? Except that's the chance. Yeah, that's the risk. Yeah, very philosophically speaking. Everything's a trade off, and sometimes you have good grasp of the trade off, sometimes you don't. Yeah, and that's the beauty of life. I like that, yeah. Let's round it off there.

Is there anything you still want to share before we round off with the audience? Any perspective? One thing we didn't have time to touch on to complete the picture

and also in my presentation about career tool, career management tools, I listed three things as essential. Brag dog is one of them. Do it for yourself. You don't have to share it with anyone. You just brag to yourself, right? If it rubs you the wrong way, the term brag, just do it for yourself. I think this will pay dividends. It will make your experience more enjoyable. The other one is this competency framework concept. Again, a lot of organizations don't have it.

It's not an excuse. You can say what is my next level? And in your case, for example, it could be like you'd create your own, right? Experimenting with multiple technologies at all times. It could be the next level for you. And then maybe this time you are trying two different things. Maybe next year you want to be able to do 3. That's growth for you as well. So just project your own growth, make your own ladder and try to climb it again.

Do it for yourself. You don't have to do it for anyone, but if it overlaps with the organization, perfect. The third one, which we haven't mentioned and very important is your peers, your coaches, your mentors, especially mentors are absolutely game changer. I've gotten so much value because having someone external, non judge, mental but opinionated giving you feedback about what you're doing, how you're doing things is super refreshing.

Right. We always look for supportive evidence of our thinking, but having someone unbiased and helping help trying to help you solve your challenges as an external contributor is very valuable and surprisingly people are open to it when you ask them. I've done it. I actually had an interview some years ago. In the end they had a better candidate, much more domain experience as well. But the person who was interviewing me for my for that job, if I had it, would be my manager.

I went back to that person and asked them to be my mentor because we resonated so much and they accepted. And that person mentored me for almost 2 years. I've learned so much and it helped me shape my thinking and also improve the framework I was using to manage my career. So I highly encourage people to reach out and also be mentors themselves. So I think we all enjoy working in this industry. It's very creative, very challenging. Like there's so much to learn

and that human connection. Maybe something that AI will not necessarily take away from us is that mentorship angle. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. It's been a an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Awesome. If you're still here, leave a like let us know in the comments section what you think. All the material that is again has been writing on will be in the description as well. So check that out and we'll see you in the next one.