A Shortcut To A Software Engineering Role?!

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all right I'm just leaving CrossFit here on Saturday we did uh one of these on the drivein we'll do one on the way back on Saturdays we go to a different gym it's the same uh I guess like franchise you'd call it but like just a different location but my wife's been sick all week so I went to this one alone um do got a topic today just got to pull out of the spot which is going to be a little dicey I'm going to put the windows down so I can see better you know what that's like right okay not so bad there's two huge trucks on either side of me so I just wanted to make sure I could hear and have all my senses going um but yeah the uh topic from this morning was submitted where is this person going figure

it out there we go um get me out of here topic this morning was sent in this one's also sent in um so if you didn't watch the previous video that one was about uh sort of like building projects to gain the experience because if you're being rejected for not having uh you know particular experience for a role like go make that experience I go build the projects you don't need to list that you have the experience with that technology on a team um those are just entirely separate things that uh especially for me as a hiring manager what I would be looking for um now with that said uh I don't think there's ever been a time in my career where I've been rejecting people because they didn't have a specific technology um now if they were good and someone else was good and

that someone else happened to have that technology experience and sure that's going to make fin only one position that other candidate is going to be a better fit potentially right um it's hard to tell everything in an interview but so that was a previous video um this one is going to be about doing um role changes when you're in an organization and what that looks like so we'll dive into that this intersection sucks and um a reminder if you want particular topics covered comment on the video let me know if you uh want to do it Anon anonymously just message me on social media pick a platform find me it'll be Dev leader that's my main uh Channel that I and Alias that I go by on all social media code commutes kind of just like this dedicated Vlog approach um but yeah just send

me a message the more detail that you're willing to provide um the more context I have to work with uh just let me know if you want to keep it Anonymous by default I will because I think that's only fair um so go ahead and do that my mouth is super dry I apologize I got to drink some water because I know if I start to talk it's going to be like fighting against myself okay so doing role changes within a company um this is something that like I don't personally have a lot of experience doing but I have experience actually coaching and managing people going through this so I feel like I can talk about this um now when this was asked I don't know if the intention of the person asking the question was to to ask like is this an easier path

forward than like just trying to land a software development role so I don't necessarily want to go into this saying like like debating what's easier or not um because there's other roles that you might find if you were applying for them like they're challenging too like for example maybe and I haven't done the research into this so that's why I'm saying maybe maybe going for tech support roles is actually very competitive right now maybe project manager roles are very competitive right now I just I don't know um but the idea would be if you had one of these roles so if you were working in tech support if you working as a project manager or some other role that's not a software developer is there this like what does the opportunity what does the scenario look like if you wanted to switch into a software

development role now my opinion on this is like I think there's a couple of really good things that can come out of this uh for like sort of all parties involved now again I'm not trying to go into this suggesting like hey here's like a a secret path into being a software developer nothing like that but genuinely if you were in one of these roles so say you were in tech support um the experience that I have in particular like coaching people through is testers so dedicated testing roles that do not uh develop the product uh and I've seen this with project managers as well so project managers that uh are not like Hands-On coding things um there's I think a lot of good that can happen from a business perspective if it's supported at a company now different companies and different organizations might take

different approaches for this they might say like no like we don't have a formal thing for supporting that um your manager might be like I don't want to you know put the effort into this like whatever uh but I think that there like I said I think there's goodness that can come out of this the reason I say that is because if you're an individual who is working in a role that's not a software developer if you were like hey I'm interested in doing this I want to get into this what's going to happen over time is that if that becomes your focus thing that you want to be doing you will start to resent things that prohibit you from doing that and ultimately if that's where you want to be going you're going to be looking for opportunities whatever that looks like for you

to put yourself in that position so what that means is that over time if you have someone who is sort of preventing that progress from happening um you will potentially start to resent them you will potentially start to lose engagement in the work you're doing and that's because you don't see it as something that contributes to your forward progress right now you might and you might for a long time but I would say over time if if you're you know set on doing this change and it's not being supported I would fully expect that someone loses engagement over time because it's just not aligned with where they want to be in their career growth so as a manager like I want to make sure I have engaged people on my team if someone is coming to me and telling me look like this is what

I want to be doing and I'm going oh but no like you have a dedic tester role or Oh no you're just a like you're a dedicated project manager like there is no room for you to be a software developer here um like I should expect that they will lose engagement and that's going to mean that they're not doing their job effectively and ultimately I've said this many times whether it's been on this channel or just like on my primary Dev leader Channel like my goal as an engineering manager is to enable people to do their best work possible if someone is saying I don't want to be this role anymore I want to pursue something else you better expect that they will be putting their effort into doing that and if I am not helping enable that I should expect that they're looking for

that opportunity elsewhere whatever that happens to look like so I believe it's in my best interest to at least support that now that might mean that I have someone who's a very good tester very good project manager very good whatever role and I should expect that I will be losing them at least for that role but the reality is that's outside of my control like I think that's the first realization if someone says I want to be doing this other thing that's the direction I'm going in my career I can either try to not support that and then act surprised when they finally are so disengage that they leave or I can put in some amount of effort to make sure that I'm supporting them because they're going to leave they're going to leave if I don't have that role that doesn't mean that the

expectation is that I create that role for them that's a different story it doesn't mean that but I should at least find ways to support them so that's my philosophy on that kind of thing and in my career that's what I've been able to try and support um I have had people on different teams that needed coaching through that kind of stuff so I've talked with their man manager and kind of done this like a sort of like a mentoring system where it's like hey this person is going to start contributing some some of their time to uh try you know working on small features right so they're not a programmer by trade but um you know they've been putting in some extra effort we're going to give them some smaller features um there's a you know like a buddy on their team that's going

to help uh you know with the more day-to-day stuff that they've kind of volunteered for it and could we have you sort of as like a third party do some more coaching and mentoring as well and that way you can help gauge so me in this case I can help gauge how they're progressing so I've done that kind of thing it's been like you know uh months so like 6 months to a year kind of transition kind of thing um it's not a guaranteed thing but you know we've set things up like that where people try to make the progress we gauge how that's coming along uh and I found that it's been very successful because in the end someone is getting the support they want for the role they want to move into and I think a lot of good can come out of

that so another reason why it's in a company's interest in my opinion to do this is like say you want to hire for uh a more Junior role or something if you're hiring for any role you end up taking a bit of a gamble always doesn't matter how good your hiring system is obviously we want to reduce risk we want to be very sure when we're hiring but when you're bringing new people on there's always some amount of risk that that person is not what you expect when you're going through the hiring so there's always some risk now what can be really interesting is if you have a good employee right you have a good employee and they want to switch roles you're not guessing at whether or not they're a good person that understands the business understands how to work in a team all

these things you're not guessing at that because you have proof of whether or not that's the case so it's a much lower risk with respect to like fit in a company in terms of Behavioral types of things right like you already know and you can already get really good uh clear feedback on that kind of thing because they already work there it's really just a skill assessment thing and in my opinion if you're you know trying to take someone who's doing a rooll transition that person probably needs to expect that they're coming in at a junior level right and that's again Lower risk for a company to be able to say oh we know this person's coming in a junior so it's not like they're coming in at senior and you get totally surprised that they're like you know really not skilled or something like

that so um I think that that can be a really good fit for a company now something that I want to caution people about is that um when it comes to I use like engagement when I talk about this kind of thing like how motivated or engaged you are I got to pass this truck in front of me they're going 30 holy then going at a speed that's almostly dangerous because people have to maneuver around them um so when it comes to like engagement motivation and stuff if you're someone who's like man I really want to be software developer and you're starting to lose engagement in your role because you're so focused on this this type of transition like this can be kind of dangerous and it's because you're giving like it can look like mixed signals and what I mean by that is like

if someone is like say you want someone to support you in this transition to a different role if what they're observing is that it looks like you just don't care about anything you're procrastinating you don't care like your your quality of work is dropping all of a sudden like they like someone would want to expect that it's because you're you're so focused on doing something else right like it's you know you're losing interest and like that's because you want to do this other thing but the the challenge is that like where like how can they properly gauge that because if it looks like you're not even doing your your normal stuff with interest and skill and some level of expectations and now we want to give you something that's arguably going to be even more challenging and new to you it makes it a really

difficult cell to be like oh yeah like that's just going to change their attitude around they're going to stop procrastinating they're going to be like everything's going to be better like it's not a it's not a good set of indicators so I would encourage you if you're going through this type of thing where you're feeling demotivated because you want to be getting this other type of role you're really interested in switching try to keep doing a good job in your current role try to keep demonstrating that you are a hard worker right that you get things done that you're meeting expectations uh you're doing all of these things and that way it makes it seem like there's a lot more trust that you will be able to do something else that's going to be more challenging right we people want to they want to support

you and they want to believe that you're going to do good work so prove to them that you're already doing good work because if you were dropping the ball on everything and then trying to say oh and and it's because I want to go do this other thing that I'm not experienced at that's going to be harder for me it's not like a good set of indicators so it's going to be a lot harder to get support doing that kind of thing okay a couple more angles to take at this maybe and I got to turn at this intersection cuz I'm almost home um let's see so if you're not able to get these opportunities directly at work um depends on the size of your organization and stuff like your company um I know for example if someone came to me on my team and

they said like Nick I want to be a manager or Nick I want to be a project manager like I don't have roles like that open on my team so again I want to support them but I need to be transparent with them like I can't just like create that role I don't have one I can't just create it um in some organizations and companies they might be able to say like especially like startups they might say you know what like we see that you're demonstrating these things and we we know that's valuable like maybe we can make that happen um but like where I am at Microsoft I I am not in a position where I can make that happen out of out of nothing so uh I would need to be transparent with people and say you know if if this is something

that you want me to support you in like let's get you focused on projects and things that would enable you to like be leading them or for like a for management style things um if we have interns like you should be their buddy you should be focused more on uh mentoring the more Junior people on the team that kind of stuff like I can create those opportunities um informally and try to do everything I can but I'm basically explaining to this person like look it's not going to happen here so let me support you but like let's also be transparent it's not happening here uh and ideally when that person grows and becomes ready I would want to make sure that I could try to keep them at Microsoft right if I know a team that is looking for that kind of position would try

to make sure that I can support them with a uh you know recommendation for that but otherwise like I again I shouldn't be surprised that they're going to leave to be able to do that um I also do recommend that like you don't just look for the opportunities to practice these things like at work because if you're truly trying to transition to a different role and um the amount of practice and stuff that you get amount of focus time that you get to do at work in like this this new type of role just to like build the skill is minimal you're probably going to find it really difficult to make the necessary progress um again I know some people don't like hearing this where they're like I'm busy though like I have uh I have you know wife kids pets we got extracurricular things

like we have all these um I don't know like commitments outside of work I don't have time to go work on this stuff the it's kind of like a hard thing to hear but it's like okay but someone who can make the time for it is going to make the progress so it it feels unfair but all I'm saying is like if you're finding that you're not getting the opportunity at work to be able to do a transition like this like to build the skills I mean you need to find the time somewhere so I recommend doing a bit of time budgeting looking where you can drop some things out rep prioritize this over other stuff if it's really that important to you I think that's a key thing I think like I said some people don't like to hear it because it feels unfair

it feels like they shouldn't have to and it's like I don't know what to tell you like a lot of things feel unfair and you you got to do it um if you get enough time at work and there's a path for it like uh if your especially if your company has program to do this kind of thing um that's awesome right like there may be resources at work that truly enable you to do this effectively but um all in all just to kind of summarize this I do think that moves like this within a company can be a really awesome opportunity um I think that there's a lot of benefit in terms of understanding the domain like the product or the service domain um that's a lot of learning on its own at any company so being able to have that as a foundation

uh knowing what the organization's already like and then being like okay now I got to work on these skills cool like again if there's Junior opportunities I think this kind of stuff can work really well so uh I would encourage anyone if you're listening to this or you know someone that is interested in doing this then uh encourage them to do this kind of thing um if that's if that's where your passion and interest lay so anyway I'm home my wife is just pulling in in this uh funky X1 rental look at this thing it's coming this thing's it's awful anyway that's it for today take care