The advice on the internet is to focus on your technical skills as a junior engineer.
Leave the meetings to the senior dudes. The only promotable work is the hard skills.
Thatās true.
But how do you find the opportunities to make an impact? Do you just wait?
You need both technical skills and influence
For technical skills, itās clear: Do more code and designs. Read the technical books.
But what if the only work given to you is moving configs around?
And what about gaining influence?
Iām onboarding in a new team and Iām mentoring an engineer who joined out of university a couple of months ago.
What am I doing and recommending to this engineer?Ā Use āglue workā in your favor.
In her famous talk about glue work, Tanya Reilly talks about glue work hurting junior engineers.
Yet, Iām recommending it and doing it myself.
Iām talking aboutĀ glue work as a proxy for influence.
AndĀ influence as the keystone to get opportunities.
In this post, youāll learn
How I stole an opportunity from my Senior engineerās hā¦
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