The Engineering Leader

Chapter 2. Setting and Executing on Career Goals

When we talk about career goals, it’s rare that we talk about things that are actually…goals. Often what we call “career goals” would be better termed “external validation” or “career dreams.”

External validation is often out of our control. “Getting promoted” is not a goal. It is a desire to be recognized as being at the next level. “Be a VPE” is not a goal for someone who is currently three-plus levels below; it is a dream.

Dreams are often most useful directionally, as some kind of guiding principle. If an early-career engineer dreams of being a Staff+ engineer, that is a guiding principle that can be very useful in early career decisions. In a choice between leading a small team working on a simple application and working as part of a bigger team with more experienced engineers to learn from, the value of technical complexity versus the leadership opportunity will depend on what the person wants long term; it’s important not to underestimate the value of access to people to learn from and time to build depth.

To achieve our dreams, we need a strategy. That strategy will probably contain many goals within it, which show incremental progress and milestones to where we ultimately want to go.

Developing a Strategy

For a long time, I dreamed about writing a book. People often asked me if I was going to write a book because I wrote a lot. I wrote things internally at my job and externally on my blog, and I had regular articles in ...