3 Leadership Principles for Software Engineers

You have to look beyond programming

Photo by Jehyun Sung on Unsplash.

After spending years in the software development industry and gaining solid experience, engineers need to pass their knowledge on to the next generation. This is the best working approach because it contains both theoretical and practical expertise. With that combination, learning blossoms.

If you feel like you have something big to share but also want to take on the next big challenge, go through the following opportunities. They will bring you to a new level and can fulfill your aspirations.

But there is something important that you have to keep in mind: These opportunities do not relate to programming explicitly. This means you will do less actual coding. This is a trade-off you have to deal with. If you want to gain new experience, you have to sacrifice something.

Become a Mentor

In your team of developers, you probably have people with different levels of expertise. They can be interns, trainees, junior engineers, senior engineers, principals. All of them have something in common: They are passionate about technologies and programming.

But not all of them have enough experience.

This is an excellent place to step in. As a knowledgeable colleague, you can sometimes bring more value than simply coding. Think about it as if there is a task and only you can solve it. Company performance would be one task at a single moment.

When you share your skills with your colleagues, the company’s performance increases. You will not be a single person who is able to address specific issues. Some might think that this is a great way of having job security because nobody can fire an employee with unique expertise. However, this mindset is wrong and you never know which side you’ll end up on in the future.

Apart from the benefits the business gets, you will get gratitude from your colleagues. They will appreciate any valuable feedback from your side. For example, it can be reviewing pull requests and offering ideas to do things differently.

You could organize small workshops for your teammates only. It doesn’t have to be a high-level presentation but rather doing…