Recently a coworker shared this blog post in our departmental “Blogroll” slack channel. It struck a cord with me and helped me to understand some of my struggles with imposter syndrome over the years.
In the article he defines 4 different types of Software Engineers. As I read his descriptions I realized that I have spent my career feeling inferior to other Engineers because I am weakest as a “Technical” engineer. I always knew that my skills lay in other places but always had a hard time defining them, and felt like a failure because I didn’t have the “Technical” skills my coworkers did.
As a fulltime Software Engineer I often struggled with learning new technologies quickly, understanding how all the pieces fit together, determining the best engineering solution for the problem in front of me, and knowing the proper terms for the tasks I undertook. While my code was always solid, I would go into interviews and say things like “I don’t know the correct term, but here is how I solved the problem.” Thankfully I got hired anyway!
After reading his article, I realize that I fall in the “Product/Business” and “People” categories. It explains why my shift to be an Agile Lead to aid other Engineers in building better software feels so right. A few years back I rose up to a Team Lead position and quickly my team became the highest performing in our department, not because I was strong technically, but because I knew who was and cleared their slate so that they could solve our problems. Eventually I was moved into the position of “Agile Delivery Lead” so that I could take what I was doing that was working and apply it across our department. I’m still in that role today and loving it!
Imposter Syndrome is a real thing, and I have spent a good part of my career feeling that way. Finally after 20+ years I have my feet under me and feel like I am contributing to our Engineering department in a valuable way. Thanks Robert for helping me understand.
Last November a change was made to the composition of our development teams. I had been working as a team lead since the previous March and things were going really well. But a gap in the department was identified and I was asked to change roles to fill it. My new title became “Software Engineer – Agile Delivery Lead”, yes it is a mouthful but it encompasses what I do. Almost 6 months later I have settled into my new role and we have been slowly defining what that means for our teams, department, org, and myself. I’m still working on what my duties entail. For right now I have identified a list of responsibilities that are on my plate and we prioritized them based on how much I can help by performing each role. As with anything, it changes constantly.
#1 Team Support: Keeping the teams moving and the work steadily flowing onto our production systems is the first priority that I have on my plate. I currently work directly with 2 development teams and keep my ears open for what 3 others are working on. This includes activities such as Daily Standups, Weekly retrospectives, quarterly retrospectives, team velocity reporting, and managing the “Coming Soon” part of the team backlogs.
#2 Product Manager Support: Working with the product managers to help to research potential improvements to the systems and start scoping out the work. Research, reporting, epic/ticket creation, determining order of the work to get done, backup for the team when the PMs are out, and reviewing the work completed.
#3 Senior Software Engineer: Utiliziing my skills as a Sr. SE in the department to help move the platform forward. Estimating, documentation, cross-training, code reviews, backup for Engineering Leads, architecture, and special projects.
#4 Department support: Helping upper management with keeping a pulse on the various teams and making sure things are flowing smoothly. Team velocity reporting, department velocity reporting, process research & implementation, and help to manage engineering needs backlogs.
#5 Personal Projects: Continue to grow my own skills and knowledge by doing projects that will help the team, department, and company work more smoothly.
My mission is to create teams that change the world.
I began this mission as a software developer. I saw in myself and other teams a passion for creating products that people would use and love. I saw that same passion dashed over and over again when the products fell flat. I knew there was more out there.
I have sought for years to find ways of enabling teams and organizations to have a different story. One where the hard work pays off. One where people take pride in a job well done and a product that people love.
I’m a long way off still from saying my mission is accomplished, but I’m here to share what I’ve learned and to help people find that new story.
A few weeks back I came across a book called Soft Skills. I’m a sucker for these kinds of books and before I realized what I was doing I had splurged and purchased it. It is a fantastic book by John Sonmez of Simple Programmer. With these kinds of books I usually skip around reading what interests me that day. I make a note on the chapter to indicate that I have already read it. After a week when flipping through it to find an unread chapter I realized that I was already more than half done with it, which is impressive since it is a 500+ page book. It is very refreshing to read a book like this that talks to me as an in-the-trenches software developer with no aspirations to become great. So many of these books talk about how to become an expert in your career and take things to the next level. This book has some of that but more of it is just tips and tricks on how I can refine what I am doing now to be just that little bit better than I was before. It’s definitely worth picking up a copy.
Amy's Tech Notes 