Senior Engineer / Tech Lead difference making

PayPal / Eng
olal

Go to company page PayPal Eng

olal
Apr 17, 2021 3 Comments

As a senior engineer/ to be tech lead, how do you make difference in your team? Do you proactively take tech debts to make systems better? Do you proactively do refactoring? Do you continuously strive for developer productivity? Or you spend most of the time on sprint / product road map items?

My problem is I don't have any good project right now. So the manager is pushing me to solve shitty things and make a difference in the team. But the issues have been created since long time. It took them 7+ years to create these tech debts. How do I navigate in this scenario? How do I make a difference as a senior in the team to create path for tech lead?

Yor: 6+
TC: πŸ₯œ

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TOP 3 Comments
  • Google / Eng
    Morono🦠

    Go to company page Google Eng

    Morono🦠
    Regardless of the title, you progress as a senior engineer by switching from reactive work to proactive one.

    Fixing items created but someone else will not get you anywhere, you need to be able to see problems or opportunities noone else saw and propose solutions.

    First step would be to stop listening to what your manager tells you to work on and figure out how you can best move your team/org/company forward.
    Apr 17, 2021 2
    • PayPal / Eng
      olal

      Go to company page PayPal Eng

      olal
      OP
      I agree. But I see ongoing projects get more visibility since they are driven by product and cross team. But doing tech debt items proactively does not give that benefit. Do you think I am right?
      Apr 17, 2021
    • You are right.. most of the teams don't give enough credit or value to these kind of work especially if they are being done by someone without asking.. you can however try to raise awareness and even ask to allocate some resources to fix this. Also you are expected to support other tasks/features/projects as well so you do need some bandwidth for that.
      Most important thing is to make sure your priority aligns with your management.
      Apr 17, 2021