Growing Engineering Career: A Guide to Setting Expectations

How do you understand your company’s context?

First, when you’re trying to understand how to get ahead and making sure you’re aligned with your manager, you really need to understand the context in which you’re working. What does your organization look like? What does your manager look like? Is there a framework and how do you set one up? Organization matters here in terms of the size, reporting structure, and flat or hierarchical structure. If you’re starting at a startup, they may not have spent any time thinking about this priorly. Once you get to around ten engineers, generally, there has been some investment made to create some consistency. Understanding whether there’s something in place already for creating consistency in how group progression looks.

In some cases, like documentations, there may be something someone created that’s out of date. Career frameworks and ladders are no different to documentations. They may not have been updated for a long time. Another case is that someone created a set of system, framework, or structure a while ago but hasn’t been applied consistently. Find out if your manager knows and whether they can help you in direct and indirect ways. If there is a clear career progression ladder, you can begin to do gap analysis on your own skills to see how you can fit yourself into that.

How do you come up with the right framework for growth?

How do you hack a framework? As an engineer, you understand there are multiple focus areas you need to grow in. These are the ones that tend to show up, more or less, on any version of a career ladder or career path documentations you’re going to see. There’s technical competency, project management, and leadership for self and team. Being able to understand the environment you work in, how to make yourself more efficient, understand how to communicate in the organization you’re operating in, how you’re making your team better, all of these things are related to leadership and your career development.

Articulate the things you think are really important, and ask for feedback on that. That’s already showing your ownership of your personal growth, and trying to align that with what the organization and your manager need is critical. Know that one on ones are great for ongoing feedback.

How do you own your one on ones?

Identifying the gaps in your own framework, you need to identify your skill levels, and the skills you need to work on. If it’s a well laid out career plan, you should have some sort of levels, and see what non-technical skills you need to get better at. You can also say that you’re good at doing something for yourself but not so much with others. These are all areas of improvement you can bring up during your one on ones with your manager.

The next part is to share your plan. If it’s a functional or technical thing, you can tell your manager about the stuff you’re working on, the Udemy course you’re taking, or a book that you’re reading. You can also be straightforward with your manager and say that you’re looking for special projects that’ll expand your scope of impact. As you progress through your career, you always want to be looking for things that expand your scope of impact. Be realistic about how long it might take you to do something. Build SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—, and set a realistic timeline with your manager.

One of the things successful people have in common is their ownership over their one on ones. Make sure you consistently share a summary of progress, ask for feedback in relation to career progression, and own the execution of your primary function while seeking new opportunities for impact with your manager during 1-on-1s. For effective 1-on-1s, you should always be prepared.