Want that Senior Dev Promotion? Start Taking Ownership Now!

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

Hey folks, I'm just headed to CrossFit. We're going to talk about ownership. And this is from a submitted question over at codekcom.com. And so this person wrote in to ask about some some challenges they're having trying to, you know, take on more responsibility, you know, working more towards having, I guess, like examples that can that can help showcase that they're, you know, working towards more of a senior position, which I think is great. I think this is the kind of uh thing generally that like over time needs to be showcased and I I think it's actually good that someone's proactively trying to do this right so just to to give you the inverse right if if someone was like frustrated like hey why why is it that I'm not making you know progress the way that I I think I might be it might be

because they're waiting to they're waiting to be given those opportunities versus someone like trying to proactively say like I'm going to take on a little bit more or you know attempt to I'm going to stretch myself uh to into things where I might not be you know the most comfortable the most amazing yet but I need to try taking these things on and so this person writing in like that's kind of the framing that I'm getting from them but one of the challenges that they're facing is that when it comes to taking ownership. It seems like there's a bit of sabotage and um I suspect not in not in a malicious way, but I think some of their reflection was good. So, they were saying that it seems like they're trying to, you know, step in to be proactive, take some ownership.

they are trying to work with some stakeholders to uh you know collect requirements like basically going through things and like I'm going to try um taking on more of this which I think is great. Um they're not maybe historically they'd kind of sit back and I think they were saying they get like almost like filtered down versions of the of the work. So, just to make up an example, say there is a uh a story or whatever work item that's on your your task board and there's a bunch of work involved and instead of you being able to do that end to end, uh your manager, maybe it's someone else in some cases, but let's say your manager comes in and they're like, "Cool, like let me go figure out all of the, you know, all of the precursor stuff for you and the work

that I'll give you in the end is just you know, diluted go diluted version of go like type this code up now that we figured out out what we want to build. Um, and to to be totally fair like in many cases for very junior people that is actually helpful so that someone doesn't get overwhelmed, they can make progress through things and then they build up some momentum with it. And it sounds like this person's trying to break out of that which is great. So, um, what's the deal here? Is it that their manager is micromanaging them? Is it that their manager doesn't trust them? What's up? Right? And I I think it's cool because in their in their message in they were saying like they had some of this reflection, right? They're they're observing it. They kind of see how it's making them feel and then they're going like, I I wonder what the cause is of this.

And uh spoiler alert, they they said something in their message which I don't know if they inferred from watching one of the previous videos, but I said maybe I need to have a conversation with my manager about this. And that's the spoiler. Like I think ultimately that's going to be like one of the best actions to take. But I I figured it would still be really good to kind of talk through some of what's uh potentially going on. Maybe that uh opens up some perspective before such a conversation. So in this case, uh I think it could be a combination, right? Um I I think when you have a situation like this, I wouldn't automatically uh personal like I I wouldn't say to go to taking it personally, which might seem kind of funny, but uh one of the things they said like my manager maybe they don't trust me.

And I think that's probably part of it, but I don't mean that in like a a malicious way or like a oh, it's because you're so bad kind of way. Uh like they they're personally distrusting you because you are bad or you have like some really good reason to make them not trust you. Uh, I think it's probably that there's a combination of things going on here and them not trusting you is not necessarily trying to find a good way to say, right? Not not a reflection of you being an untrustworthy person. Uh, but I think that statement's probably true. They don't trust you, right? Which is it sounds kind of weird, like why would my manager not trust me? And it's probably because depending on the manager, like I don't know this manager, of course, it might be because um they do have an issue with micromanaging.

It might be because they haven't seen enough evidence that they can trust you with this kind of a responsibility. Uh maybe to earn their trust, it only takes one time to do this successfully and they're like, "Hell yeah, great. This person can do it." Maybe that's something where it takes significantly more time demonstrated, right? Like they need a lot more of that pattern shown like I don't know the answer because I don't know this manager. It's one of the reasons why talking to them I think will be helpful to kind of show that. But I do think that it's a probably some level of distrust. So, I'm trying I want to I want to approach this from the perspective of like if I could think through people on my team doing something like a new employee, let's say. Um cuz in some cases uh what's a good way to say this?

I think I think if someone was uh more junior and new to a team, there's a lot of reason to like uh to not not trust them, right? I realize this sounds terrible. Like I say not trust them as in like it's actually supposed to be helpful for them. I don't want to like put high expectations on them to go do a bunch of things that they they may not have demonstrated or may not understand how to do effectively. So when I say not trust them, again, I don't mean because they're untrustworthy. I mean because it would be unfair to to give like to put that accountability on them and so there's this uh combination of like how junior one is just you know lack of experience again that's not a you know a shot at anyone so lack of experience and uh like overall and then being new to a team or new to a domain which I think is another huge factor.

Oh my god, these people. I guess tailgating my wife. You don't do that. Very bad drivers. Um, and then yeah, so you could have people that are that are more senior as engineers, but because they're newer to a domain or new to a team, like you kind of still have to give them a little a little bit uh a little bit of extra help in terms of like not putting all of these expectations on them again. So it makes it seem like thus not trusted. Not because they're untrustworthy, but you can't put too much accountability and responsibility on them until they've kind of learned the ropes, so to speak. So, in a situation like what this person's experiencing, it might be a combination of of these two things, right? Maybe their manager is uh you know used to giving that kind of responsibility to people who are more senior overall maybe more time on the team overall combination of the two.

But for me if I even like I have um some team members that joined a few months back now. So at the beginning of this year and from their from their work experience like I've known them for for years right so like I don't have when it comes to like trusting them right giving them responsibilities uh expectations around accountability I don't just passing my wife um I don't have sort of trust issues in the sense that like they're not capable as engineers which is great right like in terms of being able to trust them that's a huge boost because I have worked with them before um I know that at least in the broader domain that we're in they know a whole bunch so like in terms of being able to trust them with things that that kind of goes up and up and up

and then there's going to be parts where like um where I don't trust them and that's going to that takes a little bit of time for both of us back and forth to build that trust. And again, hopefully this framing is like helping because I keep saying like we're not trusting each other, but it's not like I don't trust them as people. I don't it's more of an accountability thing when I'm saying trust. So, what happens is that at least in uh the case of these employees that I'm thinking about, I'm able to to trust them quicker. right? There takes fewer iterations of the thing to to earn my trust on it. And that's again largely because I've worked with them before. I I know there's some background, there's some history. Uh and we're not talking about like for a month like this is multiple years.

So, a lot of that stuff has kind of been built up already for me. Now if someone even at their experience level was coming in from you know outside the company completely new I had no work experience with them maybe they had a bunch of uh you know software engineering experience just not sort of in our area or our domain I might trust that person less right and maybe maybe it's still a quicker path But um given like their this seniority or their experience overall as an engineer, but it might take me a little bit longer to trust them because I I will want to make sure that uh they're demonstrating to me like they understand things at a level that I need more senior engineers to uh to understand them at. So to kind of reiterate some of that, the trust part is not so much a person is untrustworthy.

It's more like I want to make sure that someone has I don't know like a level of understanding and I feel like there's they've demonstrated that they can be accountable and take ownership of something. So I need some of that. Now there is a bit of a difference between demonstrating that they can take ownership and demonstrating their understanding of something. If someone has not demonstrated that they understand the domain or the thing that we're talking about like I sort of need that as a baseline to even care about the like if I haven't seen the accountability part even I need to get the understanding part um or the inverse can happen too if someone has proven for a bunch of other things that they're very accountable and dependable and this is a new space then I can trust them a lot. And I say that because they have proven repeatedly that they are accountable.

So just because something's new, I'm in my head I'm like, they might not know it in depth right now, but because they've proven their dependability, their ownership, their accountability, I have no concern with them taking on something that's less familiar because I have a lot of trust that they will learn the thing. They will ask the questions as needed. um because they've kind of demonstrated that way of operation before. This person might be in a position where to their manager uh neither of these things are demonstrated very clearly. And I don't mean at all and I don't mean that they don't understand things or they're not accountable. Not what I'm saying. But their manager may not have seen enough of this because every person in terms of building up that level of trust is going to look probably different. So you can do that in many ways, right?

Like if we're talking about accountability, like you can be demonstrating this sort of on a a regular basis with different projects, work commitments, things like that. It doesn't have to just be like the one big project to demonstrate that you could take ownership on it. But I think getting to that point is really just demonstrating that you you do what you say you're going to do repeatedly, right? So you can be chipping away at that. I think that's a quality that everyone should try to to work on. And that does mean that if you are saying that you're going to do something, if you're if things change and you're unable to do it or it's going to be late or the circumstances change, communicating that right, it's like it's understood that in software engineering and life like things change. That's not the problem. The problem is when people don't communicate that and then you end up like completely missing expectations on something, right?

That's the bigger problem. So, you can be chipping away at this kind of thing. I want to talk about the other angle here though, and that's micromanagement. And uh this is you have some some managers that will that will do this out of nature. like that's just who they are as people. Um I don't know in this person's case the history with their manager, but a common thing that I've seen with um software engineering managers that micromanage is it comes from a place and I'm not saying this is a rule but just what I've seen. Um when you have managers that used to be software engineers on a given team or a given space um depending on the circumstances of how they became a manager from a software engineer it might be such that they were doing a whole lot. Um they were they had to be responsible and accountable for a lot of different things.

Um and then sort of the side effect of that was maybe they got like sort of promoted into this manager position over the team. Um and maybe in some cases that's like you know manager left and you know their their skip was like well who's a good maybe we have a good candidate internally to do this. Um again I want to remind people software engineering manager is not a like might seem like a promotion uh like a linear promotion from an engineer to engineering manager but they are different roles. Often they are tied with a promotion because you'd be getting sort of like a level increase and then a role change but it's a different role. So just keep that in mind. Um, in some cases though, I think that there are managers that they might have had a lot of responsibility on the team and they had to do a lot.

And the side effect is that it's really hard for them to let go. And that's like a that's a them problem, not a not a you problem. Like you are the untrustworthy person, right? I just I wanted to to kind of share this because it's like that is a that is a them problem. This person stopping. Excellent. So that's some framing that when you're going to have this conversation, right? It's like um it's not about defending yourself and being like see like I told you I'm trustworthy kind of thing like because it's a you problem. A lot of the time this is a them problem in that they they may not realize how um how controlling they're being uh how how much they are micromanaging and it's sort of this side effect of like um of just being like they might have had this expectation

on them before where they were accountable for all of these things and uh it's hard to let Oh, so I think when you go to have a conversation about this, I I think that there are ways to to talk about this and bring it up where uh you don't need to be feeling like you're um you know, 100% in defense mode and it's not about attacking them and calling them terrible for being a micromanager. But there's ways to to bridge this where if you're considering like hey look this person if they are micromanaging that's probably coming from a place of like you know their their inability to to trust people effectively. Not not because you suck or you're untrustworthy but they have trust issues or they had expectations put on them before that they've not necessarily adapted to.

I've seen this with um I know like where I used to work at a startup the the founder and the CTO not that he micromanaged not at all but the way like he there were some things that he would do where I know that it was hard for him to to kind of let go and trust others um because it was it was his company right like he was he cared so much about all of us and being able to ensure that this company was going and and all of these things where it's like there was so much pressure and responsibility on him. So stepping back seems very scary. It's very scary to let other people take, you know, take on responsibility and accountability like that's that's for me to do, right? Um and it might be similar with this with this manager.

So I would say when you go into that conversation, my my suggestion would be trying to to talk about how you are genuinely looking for some more ownership, how um in some of these cases it makes you feel that uh you are um you're unable to demonstrate that. So trying to come up with the balance, right? saying things like, "Hey, I I know I realize that you're probably looking for uh more clarity on these things or uh maybe there's aspects of this that that you feel that you do have, you know, better understanding of and uh they are critical. So, you want to make sure you're involved, but um you know, I'm trying to make sure that I can demonstrate some ownership and accountability. So, could we talk about parts of this that I can that can be carved out for me that I can try demonstrating to you?

Um, and then we can build on this over time, right? Because I feel like if it's not addressed, it doesn't just get better automatically easily, right? Because they will keep jumping in to do this and it might take significantly longer to demonstrate, but when you bring it to the forefront for them and say like, hey, this is something I'm actively trying to do, then they can pay more attention to it, they can proactively try to remove themselves as needed. But I think the conversation will help. So, hope that's helpful framing. See you in the next one.