In my career, I’ve gone through many challenges: Starting off, I struggled with writing functional and stable code, Later, I had problems following more complex conversations about architecture styles, scaling, automation, etc., After that, I had a hard time communicating with some team members who weren’t like me and whom I didn’t quite understand, And now, I find it hard to be a continuous source of inspiration to my team, to help them tackle new challenges with the right mindset. Through my personal career growth and that of my peers and mentees, I learned that growing professionally is always a hard challenge to face. Time and again, we go through a similar skill acquisition cycle, and understanding this process can help make the journey more enjoyable and less chaotic. I would separate the process of learning new skills into 3 phases: Adjustment phase — when starting in a new position, we obviously lack the experience and familiarity with best practices. That’s why we begin by learning rules that guide us, Intuition-building phase — as we learn by doing, acting on rules is replaced with acting on intuition. Be careful not to confuse intuition with overconfidence, though, Stagnation phase — once we’ve mastered our new responsibilities, do we push onward or move on to something new? In what follows, we’ll go through each phase, why it happens, and how to get the best out of it. Adopting the Growth Mindset We can describe the neurological process of learning like carving a new path in our brains. Neural pathways in the brain become more efficient with use, making them easier to access. But it takes a lot of effort to carve those new paths: in order to grow, we need to push ourselves outside our comfort zone and beyond our capabilities. When faced with such efforts, it is very helpful to adopt a growth mindset. This mindset helps us see our capabilities as expandable and our failures as learning opportunities that empower growth. By doing so, we can look positively at all the hard work that is required in order to master something new. No matter which phase of life we’re in, growing is always painful. But if we fuel it with the right mindset and keep pushing forward, things are bound to get easier over time. #1 Adjustment phase One of the hardest challenges I’ve faced so far — transitioning to engineering management — shook my perception of software engineering. I always loved solving hard engineering challenges and have tied much of my sense of professional self-worth to it. Transitioning to engineering management meant I would focus big chunks of my time on new types of problems. Although I had led teams before and mentored other engineers, making that my full-time job, together with project and resource management, meant I would have less (if any) time for my original passion. My key performance indicators (KPIs) needed to change. I used to evaluate myself based on my own contributions, but now I have to do it through my team. Is the team functional? Are the engineers happy? It was difficult to make that shift, and I struggled for months. I became frustrated and started to doubt myself — I suffered from a severe case of impostor syndrome. It took multiple cycles in my career progression to finally recognize that this is just a phase, that the struggle was normal, and I was going to get through it. , whether we’re just starting at our first job or shifting to a new position. All we need to do is keep pushing, let the new neural pathways start to form, and things will start going our way. Understand that impostor syndrome is a natural occurrence when taking on new responsibilities #2 Intuition-building phase At some point, we stop feeling as stuck, and things aren’t as hard. There will be challenges and some failures, but for many, this is the sweet spot — the dynamic that feels most empowering. But this is also a phase in which we might fall prey to overconfidence — where we overestimate our skills due to lack of expertise, as shown in the image below. . We start off by learning rules given to us by mentors, colleagues, and other people with relevant experience. But things are rarely straightforward, and those rules can’t cover all situations. Only by experimenting and collecting timely feedback can we train our brains to intuit solutions beyond given rules. To raise our level of expertise, we must build an intuition about the best ways to solve our new challenges When I started mentoring engineers and holding one-on-one meetings, I did a deep dive into the best practices: what questions to ask, how often to have them, for how long, etc. It was a great start that gave me solid foundations on which I could continue building my intuition. After many sessions, I learned to adapt to each individual’s needs. For example, some engineers would be very open about sharing what’s on their minds, while others were more reluctant to do so and needed more encouragement from my side. But it took me a while to build up intuition on recognizing if an engineer was not sharing something they struggled with, why they might be doing so, and how to approach it best. I’ve been wrong plenty of times. But by proactively looking for ways to improve, I kept the confidence of my mentees because they could see I was taking their feedback seriously. At times, it feels like we’re on top of the world, and at times everything is hard. Forming your intuition on what works best takes time and some hustling, so don’t skip any steps. Don’t fall into the trap of overconfidence; keep pushing and looking for feedback. #3 Stagnation phase How do we know we’re past the overconfidence phase and are actual experts? This usually happens when things aren’t as difficult anymore. They can be challenging because of the of work, but the work itself becomes relatively straightforward. We’ve now seen things enough times that nothing can really surprise us, and we can rely on our intuition. We’ve reached our peak! amount At this point, a hard decision is In front of every engineer — do we stay in this position, where things aren’t as challenging, bringing the benefit of reduced mental load and lower stress while providing a high-quality output — or do we take a fresh challenge by taking on new responsibilities, inside the current company or somewhere else, being bad at something once again? One of the bigger questions for me as a senior engineer was: do I go into the engineering management career track or into the individual contributor track? They are fundamentally different, and it’s a really difficult choice to make. I was a solid senior engineer, and I loved it. But by looking at what I truly want for myself and with the support of my team, I went down the engineering management route. Ideally, we can align our career progression with our professional goals, and learning about all the possibilities helps us make more informed decisions. Talk with your mentors and peers about possible next steps, and stay true to what’s important to you. Good news: learning has a compound effect Throughout our careers, we learn and grow — it is an emotional journey that brings both joy and pain. By understanding what challenges lie ahead and that it’s all a natural part of the process, we can learn to appreciate them. And the awesome thing is — as we continue growing, new challenges become easier to tackle, like the snowball effect of layering skills. Learning how to communicate with engineers will make learning how to communicate with business people somewhat easier to do, which will make learning presentation skills easier. And the chain goes on. This blog is part of my challenge — to share my thoughts and ideas, connect with the engineering community, learn from them, and find new opportunities. And while at times it feels hard as hell, exposing my thoughts and giving a chance to the world to prove me wrong, I learned to appreciate how it makes me grow. So, next time you take on a new responsibility, keep the big picture in mind and try to enjoy the challenges ahead: as you start out, followed by occasional lapses into , and just as you reach the peak, They are helping us grow! the impostor syndrome overconfidence as you learn and experiment stagnation and thinking about next steps. By the way… Call to action Hi, Juraj here — I’m building a newsletter that covers deep topics in the space of engineering. If that sounds interesting, and don’t miss anything. If you have some thoughts you’d like to share or a topic suggestion, reach out to me via or . subscribe LinkedIn X References And if you’re interested in diving deeper into these concepts, here are some great starting points: - or how we make decisions when learning new skills Dreyfus model - or how our confidence changes with expertise Dunning-Kruger effect - or how learning stacks Compound learning - or how to establish an empowering outlook on life Growth mindset - or why you feel bad about yourself when you shouldn’t Impostor syndrome Also published . here

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Making a Good Engineer a Great One: Training Your Skills and Training Your Mindset

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Juraj Malenica

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Making a Good Engineer a Great One: Training Your Skills and Training Your Mindset

Too Long; Didn't Read

Juraj Malenica

About Author

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