My company's levelling doc for software engineers has, like, 500 lines, and references, like, 200 different competencies. The doc might be helpful for managers, whatever the process they're following for putting people up for promotion, but it is useless to me. I can't tell what I _really_ need to work on to level up. Focusing on everything takes me nowhere. I don't believe everything is equally important. What skills are the core ones? What do I focus on? To clarify, I don't care about tactical vanity promotions. I'm talking about strategic professional growth, which will put my career onto an exponential trajectory. Thanks!
get gud
At what specifically? What does it look like?
find asses kiss asses
I'm not at MS.
getting shit done is right. Paysa has a lot of info on top skills for tech folks.
This is actually an extremely good question. Disclaimer: I am a nobody. I feel these are the most important skills: good architectural ideas (hardware, software choices, software design), ability to break down a complex problem into constituents. Ability to quickly turn a small constituent into code that runs fast, is easy to read and modular and has few errors. (TDD or a soft-TDd where you think of all edge-cases, whether you actually write tests or not). Ability to communicate ideas to people. Ability to build accurate mental maps of concepts being shared by other people. Emotional stability (keep your cool, don't get flustered when things go bad). Honesty and integrity. I honestly think that the tech industry is constrained more by internal corruption than by the abilities of people in the industry.
Why don't you sit down with your manager and discuss this? Blind has zero insight into your role and responsibilities. We have no idea about your strengths or weakness. More importantly, we have no clue who you are. If anything you lack soft skills. Resorting to blind for this answer.
But... but isn't there a set of core, defining skills possessed by all successful software engineers, irrespective of current role and general 'strengths and weaknesses'? I do believe there is such a set. I just don't know what it is.
The core skill is: gets shit done that makes a difference.