Walls and The Turrets Summary

Shape

What How How

Key jobs to make it happen

Breakdown

1. Supporting Beginner Engineers to Competency

Deep dive: Three steps to successfully onboard junior engineers | LeadDev

Direct Beginners to build Solid Foundations

On a growth oriented landscape of a team that can support their growth

Lay the foundations stones

• Stone 1: Strong onboarding

• Stone 2: Engineering foundations

• Stone 3: Delivery & shipping code

2. Supporting Competent Engineers to Fluency

Deep Dive: 4 ways to technically upskill mid-level engineers | LeadDev

Guide toward a wall of engineering skills

1. Give them routes to guide their progress

2. Put them in the driving seat

3. Encourage practice and reflection

3. Supporting Fluent Engineers to Mastery

Deep Dive: 4 ways to help senior engineers grow toward mastery | LeadDev

Sponsor tall towers and elegant designs

1. Ask big questions

2. Sponsor their growth / mission

3. Coach the gaps

4. Guiding Post-Mastery

Reorient to build leadership scaffolding and run site safety

1. Provide Straight talking and clarity

2. Ask them how they should scale themselves

3. Acknowledge doing everything isn’t possible

4. Focus on developing leadership skills

Supporting Links

Motivated employees

Statistics

• 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey

• Gallop: U.S. Engagement Hits 11-Year Low

• 2023 HR Trends: A Look Ahead

more reading

• Why do employees leave?

• Want Motivated Employees? Offer Ample Opportunities For Growth

Career growth

perspectives

• Sara Dolganov: Rethinking collaboration: LLMs, teams, and cognitive load

• The Engineer’s Guide to Career Growth — Advice from My Time at Stripe and Facebook

• The Myth of the T-Shaped Developer - Kill All Defects

• Of Software Designers & Broken Combs

• People capabilities as outcomes

Mentoring and sponsorship

• What does sponsorship look like?

• A coach, a mentor and a sponsor

Mastery

• The Five Levels Of Mastery (And How Good Is Good Enough?)

• What Does Mastery Look Like in Software Engineering?

• Experiential Education: Analysis and Synthesis

Post mastery

• Being Glue

• The Staff Engineer’s path

• StaffEng - Leadership beyond the management track