🐣 How to gain influence as a junior engineer

It's not the common internet advice

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.

That’s 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, it’s 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?

I’m onboarding in a new team and I’m mentoring an engineer who joined out of university a couple of months ago.

What am I doing and recommending to this engineer? Use “glue work” in your favor.

In her famous talk about glue work, Tanya Reilly talks about glue work hurting junior engineers.

Yet, I’m recommending it and doing it myself.

I’m talking about glue work as a proxy for influence.

And influence as the keystone to get opportunities.

In this post, you’ll learn

• How I stole an opportunity from my Senior engineer’s h…