TL-DR:

  • Senior+ Engineers should exemplify Statesmanship.
  • Baseline expectations for Senior engineers need to evolve from Unproblematic While Collaborating to Proactively and positively Collaborative.

Disclaimers.

This is my personal perspective: based on my 15+ years as an Individual Contributor and a subsequent 2-year stint as an Engineering Manager, primarily at large US based enterprise organizations with offices in India. Your mileage may wary.

What is the role of a Senior+ Engineer?

The role of a Senior+ engineer depends a lot on the organization. Matt Klein, the creator of Envoy Proxy, had a twitter thread, unrolled here where he made this distinction of Depth vs Breadth ICs.

Matt Klein on Depth vs Breadth ICs

I really like the depth vs. breadth distinction: but I feel that there’s additional nuance to consider.

Spectrum, not a dichotomy

First off, I personally like to think of this breadth vs depth IC distinction as two ends of a spectrum, as opposed to a dichotomy.

The “soft” skills, i.e. ability to acquire context, collaboration, influence without authority, building relationships, etc are always desirable in Individual Contributors, as are technical skills. A complete lack of proficiency in either dimension is never acceptable. In a role demanding deep technical specialization, a senior engineer could probably get away with less developed “soft” skills. But in a role where the most challenging problems involve business context and understanding the historical evolution of systems, soft skills are essential.

I am assuming there are more engineers who know how to build payment gateway integrations and CI/CD pipelines, than there are engineers who are working on developing new languages or new LLMs. Graph is merely indicative of the nicheness of the domain. Hope this does not land as disparaging.

Most companies are tech-enabled.

Most companies are tech-enabled, rather than deep tech companies. And I mean that in the most respectful, very non-pejorative way. Tech is rightly seen as a means to an end. Most companies do not produce tech for the sake of it, it is not the primary motivation. What they do instead is to deploy tech so that it would serve business goals in a scalable, cheap and sustainable manner.

And that means deploying commodity tech as much as possible. A business plan that relies on finding the best engineers that could leverage the most esoteric tech isn’t a very good business plan. The vast majority of companies strive to rely on widely adopted, well-established technology patterns: essentially, solutions to ‘solved problems’.

Even if a company does leverage deep niche tech for providing a differentiator initially, any reasonable success tends to attract more practitioners of the aforementioned tech. A lucrative deep-tech role is bound to attract talented engineers, thus widening the talent pool. Market forces ensure that most successful deep technologies become commoditized over time. So a lucrative niche deep tech role isn’t forever.

A photo from Ameerpet, Hyderabad. India’s unofficial IT training hub. For the “sexiest jobs of the 21st century”.

Deep tech roles are scarce

Also, the core differentiator of that technology is bound to be commoditised through Saas-ification. Saas-fication of deep tech has only accelerated and will continue to do so. Even at large deep-tech organizations, the hardest problems are solved by leveraging org-design and concentrating niche talent in a small ring-fenced team in a time-bound manner. These ring-fenced teams unlock the “core differentiator” for the company. The rest of the teams are mostly working on enabling and leveraging the deep tech core deep differentiators, again using commoditized technologies.

Commodity tech is the lever that generates business value. Deep tech is the differentiator.

Chesterton fences and historical context.

Considering that most companies seek solutions through commoditized technologies, the best practices and patterns for these technologies are either readily available or anticipated to emerge eventually.

Hence, the challenges within companies aren’t inherently technical; rather, they are organizational and contextual. Addressing these challenges demands a deep understanding of how systems originated and evolved: How a complex interplay of forces such as yearly roadmaps, quarterly plans, historical personalities, and time pressures shaped these systems into their current state.

Therefore, problem-solving at large companies require a deep understanding of context.

History is not a study of the past, it is about learning how we got here.

Upon changing jobs or orgs, an individual contributor would carry some of their expertise: their knowledge of architecture patterns, best practices, war stories of what worked well and what didn’t… But they have to shed ALL their context and start afresh. Because every company is different. So the most important skills that they can carry with them are their context acquisition and influencing ability.

Therefore, I believe that context acquisition and influencing skills are necessary for any Senior+ Engineer. A senior engineer cannot rely on their tech skills alone.

How to grow as an Individual Contributor

Often, a lot of context is not readily apparent or documented. Companies with comprehensive documentation are rarer than unicorns. The context isn’t immediately evident; it needs to be teased out and extracted by patient, technically skilled engineers adept at proactively collaborating across organizational boundaries.

So what do I expect from Senior Engineers?

An accomplished Senior Engineer is expected to exhibit STATESMANSHIP, complemented by a proficiency in Influence Without Authority.

A highly effective senior engineer should be expected to navigate org boundaries and acquire context. They are expected to build relationships, form personal networks, create win-win situations, pick the right battles, resolve conflicts, be an effective heretic…

In fact, I firmly believe that a senior engineer’s role should carry fundamental expectations of statesmanship: mentorship, collaboration, negotiation, creating win-win situations, and the exercise of influence without authority. These attributes should be assessed both in the hiring process and when considering engineers for senior+ positions.

How do companies get this wrong?

It’s not uncommon for companies to tolerate Senior Engineers with less-than-ideal “soft skills” solely because of their “technical prowess”. I hate the idea when a senior engineer role allows people to stay in their comfort zone, not have interactions with other teams and stakeholders. A senior role is not for those averse to engaging with people.

It is sad to see a lot of companies make this wordcel vs shape rotator distinction as if it were an immutable law of nature. A senior engineer should not be a recluse: they are not someone you summon only when faced with a highly technical problem that requires immediate attention.

What happens if you don’t have this expectation?

When companies lack a foundational expectation of influence, they not only set a lower standard for senior engineers but also discourage growth in this crucial area. The qualifying criteria for a senior engineer are diminished to merely being unproblematic while collaborating instead of proactively, positively collaborative.

Engineers who exhibit social skills and Influence without authority are perceived as exceptions, rather than the norm, and are often “rewarded” with managerial responsibilities. This not only does a disservice to the Engineering craft but also hinders progress by diverting the most influential engineers from where they are most needed: close to the code, interacting with other engineers.

Considering that most companies are tech-enabled rather than deep-tech, they often do not intentionally provide avenues for Individual Contributors to develop deep specialization in highly technical fields. Moreover, career options for breadth ICs who prefer not to transition into management are relatively limited. Thus, a senior IC aspiring to persist on the IC path encounters what is essentially a glass ceiling.