Pt.2: How to get more done when things are crazy
As an early senior, life was a much simpler… Overtime as I’ve become the SME on many projects, more and more kept getting added to my plate. I felt like I was going crazy! What can I do?!
As an early senior, life was a bit simpler…
I had one core project I was leading. My main job was to plan the project, and deliver it successfully.
As I grew into a Senior+ engineer, and then Tech Lead, things became a bit more challenging. I had 3-4 projects I was giving technical guidance on. I couldn’t just go heads down on one priority.
I spent 6+ months of feeling like things were crazy…
If you are a senior engineer on multiple projects, tech lead, or staff engineer, this feeling is familiar.
Last week I shared 3 tips that can help you work through the craziness, if you haven’t read that article, or need a refresher you can find it here.
This week, we are diving into 3 final tips for how to still be successful and cut through some of the crazy. 👇
4. Say no more often
Sometimes you just need to say no.
No I can’t attend that meeting. No I can’t review your code this morning. No I can’t pair with you right now.
This will save you a lot of time, but may cause others to feel you aren’t approachable / helpful. Try this formula to lessen the blow: “No I can’t, but… <alternative>”
Here’s an example:
No I can’t pair right now. But I know so and so had a similar issue last week, can you check in with them? If you are still blocked, feel free to check back in tomorrow and I should have more time to help.
Saying “no, but” offers an alternative way to still fulfill their need / goal while allowing you to maintain focus on your top priorities.
5. Focus on learning and growth
As a senior+ engineer you end up wearing a lot of hats.
One reason things take longer is we just can’t be experts at everything. We’ve been thrown into the deep end, figured it out, but never invested the time to master it.
Personally, I’ve found myself often fighting jest when writing unit tests. I’d share that I’m almost done with a ticket, and then spend 2, 4, or even 6 hrs fighting tests.
Sure I can write them, but I’ve never set my tools down for a day to really dive in and learn the ins-and-outs of what’s going on with mocking dependencies.
Spinning my wheels on something is a great key I need to spend some focused time on learning it.
For me, investing time improving my test writing skills will pay off massively every time I take on a new coding task.
Take some time to identify tasks that you often struggle with. Make a list of them, and start working to improve in these areas – even if it’s something less concrete like preparing notes for a meeting, or making dashboards in datadog.
Make a list and starting tracking progress for these areas.
As you continue to prioritize learning and growth, you’ll save large amounts of time and improve the quality of your work!
Slow down today to go faster tomorrow 🚀
6. Document your knowledge
As a senior+, tech lead, or staff engineer you are the SME (subject matter expert) on a lot of systems and products. Your name often comes up when people have questions about them.
Pretty soon all your time is spent pairing, answering questions, getting called in on incidents, etc. This leaves us as the bottleneck for more and more things over time.
This was me last year as a tech lead.
I was forced to make a change as I made the switch to engineering management. It’s required me to slowly offload a lot of knowledge and systems I supported into capable hands on our team.
Every time I get into a 15+ message slack thread about a part of our system or codebase, I’ll either write a doc for that system, or ask that engineer to start a doc based on our conversation.
Over time we’ll document the most asked about portions of our codebase, products, and systems. Plus I’m becoming less and less of the bottleneck on knowledge.
Building out documentation is the slow game that helps you go faster tomorrow.
Well that’s it for this week!
What was your favorite tip from this list? 🙋♀️🙋♂️ Did I miss anything? I’d love to hear from you in the comments
Until next week 👇🏼
Catch me daily on LinkedIn where I talk about everything software engineering, startups, and growing in your engineering soft skills.
– Caleb
P.S. Don’t forget to like, comment, and share with others if you found this helpful!
Superb tips Caleb !!
My favourites -
Make a list of things you struggle to do and spend time on learning
This one I am never able to do, but I think will help a lot if we consistently plan some time 👍
Some great advice Caleb. Documentation really is key to a successful project. I always try to keep as much as possible on my projects.