- Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineers
- Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineer Job
- Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineer
- Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineer Resume
- Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineering
- What Are Your Career Aspirations Software Engineer
As a Software Engineering Manager, I constantly ask myself about the top priorities for my role and whether my actions are aligned with the priorities. This helps keep a check on myself on a regular basis and help correct the course if I’m deviating. Here, I'm listing the top 4 priorities which I believe are most important to be successful in my role. You might approach these things in a slightly different way but I think the core goals would be same irrespective of the path. Inspired by the book - ‘Multipliers’, that I recently read, I’d encourage you to discover your ‘native genius’ and figure out how to achieve these goals through your natural strengths.
A sample career aspiration would be to get promoted to a Senior Brand Manager. Imagine the satisfaction you could get from overseeing a portfolio of projects, or managing a set of key accounts! However, promotion to Senior Brand Manager role is the career aspiration. The long-term result. Career goals examples for Software Engineer: An example of a career goal, or a tip for software engineers, is to become a team leader of software developers. Becoming a software development team leader is a common step for software professionals. SUMMARY OF CAREER ASPIRATIONS/GOALS My career plan is to become an Information Technology (IT) Consultant operating across nations. I like to work in firms of management consultants, software and systems houses within large manufacturers of computing equipment, or occasionally internally in major industrial companies. Goals created for a member of a software engineering team should be focused on helping the engineer advance their career and improve either their technical (i.e., software engineering.
1. Successful Execution
'Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.' - Edward Berard
If you are working for a Software company, your are most likely there because you love building things and making lives of your customers better. Your primary goal is to build and deploy new features or products to your customers irrespective of whether you are an engineer, designer, product manager or an engineering manager. To achieve this goal, your top most priority should be to create a consistent loop of planning and executing within a particular time frame.
Executing it right means creating the perfect combination of people, technology and process. As a manager, your role is to ensure that your team has the right tools and resources (both people and technology) available and processes are set in place so that the team is able to make quick decisions and move forward with executing the plan like a well oiled machine.
Timely execution is also very important in order to build trust between the team and leadership. If a team is constantly delivering on what they’ve promised, the leadership will trust them to solve bigger problems next time. This will in turn provide the team with an opportunity to work on the best projects and get the best resources available.
Ensure that the team has the clear goals and priorities before they begin to execute. You should be the un-blocker and team productivity protector. A typical day for an engineer is not complete without facing an issue that they may not be directly responsible for. The build might be broken, the design might miss specifications, etc. You need to make sure that the team is not blocked for too long by these external factors. You need not be the one to fix every issue, but create a framework and provide tools through which they can figure things out themselves or help each other resolve issues.
There are many different ways to facilitate a predictable execution. One of the most common ways I’ve seen is the Agile methodology. I’m not going to go in detail about Agile here but it has worked well in my experience so far.
2. Building a Roadmap
As a manager, you are responsible for setting a vision for the team while striking a balance between long term and short term goals. Engineers are attracted to join or stay longer on teams that have an exciting roadmap of features/products.
BUT, you need not be the one directly building a roadmap. Then, how do you do it? You need to collaborate with the product manager/owner and help build the roadmap with technological considerations. Before that, you and your organization need to come up with a vision about the product and ensure that all the product and engineering teams are aligned on this vision. The vision could be as broad as ‘The app needs to have the best user experience in the industry’ or as specific as ‘The app needs to be able handle 1M Daily Active Users’. Once the vision is set, you should closely partner and facilitate discussions between designers, product managers/owners and engineers to come up with a roadmap on how to get there. A critical step here is to involve people from each of these disciplines in every stage of planning - this will align teams from the start and helps iterate faster.
The days of passing the requirements from Product -> Design -> Dev -> QE are gone. Everyone needs to work together from building the designs to implementation and collectively own the success (or failure)!
3. Coach and Hire
There are two equally important ways to grow a team. One is to hire smart engineers who fit well into the current team. The other is to coach and support the growth of your current employees in order to improve their skills and and in turn boost employee productivity.
Coach
You act as the employee’s coach. Your responsibility is to understand each individual’s career goals and passions, identify strengths and weakness areas of improvement and build a strategy for the person’s career growth. The strategy should be able to leverage their strengths and take them to the next level while also providing opportunities to work on their weaknesses . Create this constant loop of evaluate, feedback, improve, evaluate. The frequency of this loop can be as frequent as the employee wants but at least a couple times per year. In the feedback process, praising the strengths is as important as focussing on the areas to improve. There are many helpful tools out there but one I’ve found to be useful is the Situation-Behavior-Impact model.
Another key thing to remember here is that there is no one solution that fits all. You need to identify how each employee likes to receive feedback and act accordingly. Some people like to be praised in public and thrive in that kind of environment. Some individuals like to discuss in private.
Hire
This might be a cliche at this point, but it is in fact very crucial to hire the right people for your team. One question I always ask myself before hiring someone is how much impact will this person have in the long run.
But how do you define ‘right’ person? There are several things that you need to consider while hiring someone for your team. Are you looking to hire someone who is able to coach other members in the team? Do you already have a team of leaders who are excited by the opportunity to mentor new engineers and scale the team? Do you have a huge backlog and you are looking to hire someone to help deliver specific features in the near future? Are you looking for specialized skill that your current team does not have? These are just some scenarios I’ve been in. There is no one type of hiring advice that works for everyone. You as a manager need to understand your team dynamics, short and long term goals and define the ideal candidate accordingly.
While it is important to look out in your network to find the right person, be sure to look for candidates within your organization. This of course depends on your company’s policy around changing teams internally, but if allowed, it can be a great form of hiring. This works great because they understand the product, tools and processes used within the organization and will have almost zero ramp-up time.
Hiring best talent need not always be a one way approach. The other way is to build a brand for your team so that the candidates come to you. Do your best work and make sure that it gets the right visibility, put your team in the spotlight by showcasing your work and vision at local conferences, organization wide presentations etc. As a manager, you need to help create this brand for your team and attract the best engineers.
4. Culture Cultivator
Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineers
Another reason people stay in teams is the culture and dynamics they share with their co-workers. But what is culture? It could be as simple as the team going for a happy hour every Wednesday evening,an informal technical talk every week, lunch and learn sessions or a nerf war! These are things that will not just make work fun and provide learning opportunities but also create a sense of camaraderie and empathy among the team.
As a manager, you should strive to be a culture cultivator. A team culture is not something that can just be built by one person. Typically there will be a few individuals in each team who will be responsible in creating a team culture either voluntarily or involuntarily. You should pay close attention and should foster an environment where these individuals can strive and keep the culture going. You might be one of those individuals, but if you are not, you should facilitate these people.
In case you join a new team/company as a manager, it is very critical to get a pulse of a team, quickly become part of that culture and help take it forward instead of changing things or expecting them to do things just like your previous team. Sure, you can suggest new ideas based on your prior experiences but it is really up to the team to follow them or not.
I’d like to conclude this by asking what am I missing here? How do these align with your priorities? Please share your thoughts. I will continue to share what I learn going forward as well. I hope this will be useful for other managers or even individual contributors who would like to challenge their managers if they are not focussing on the right things.
« Previous: 2 Societal, Global, and Professional Contexts of EngineeringThroughout the ages humankind has sought to divine the future, in the past by consulting the Delphic oracle, today by creating massive computer models. However, life has a habit of reminding us that our predictions are rarely accurate. Despite the fickle nature of events over time, two constants persist. One is that we continue to prepare ourselves for an uncertain future as we always have, and the second is a steady growth of the influence of technology in our lives.
Engineering, through its role in the creation and implementation of technology, has been a key force in the improvement of our economic well-being, health, and quality of life. Three hundred years ago the average life span was 37 years, the primary effort of the majority of humans was focused on provisioning their tables, and the threat of sudden demise due to disease was a lurking reality (Kagan et al., 2001). Today, human life expectancy is approaching 80 years in many parts of the world as fundamental advances in medicine and technology have greatly suppressed the occurrence of and mortality rates for previously fatal diseases and the efforts of humankind are focused largely on enhanced quality of life (Central Intelligence Agency, 2001). Only 150 years ago travel from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast entailed a hazardous journey that took months to accomplish. Weeks were needed to transmit a letter from one coast to the other. Today, in the developed world, we take it for granted that transportation is affordable and reliable, good health care is accessible, information
and entertainment are provided on call, and safe water and healthy food are readily available.
To be sure, there have also been negative results of technology. Pollution, global warming, depletion of scarce resources, and catastrophic failures of poorly designed engineering systems are examples. Overall, however, engineers and their inventions and innovations have helped shape the changes that have made our lives more productive and fruitful.
With the prospect of the exciting new developments expected to come from such fields as biotechnology, nanotechnology, and high-performance computing, the year 2020 can be a time of new choices and opportunities. The years between the present and 2020 offer engineering the opportunity to strengthen its leadership role in society and to define an engineering career as one of the most influential and valuable in society and one that is attractive for the best and the brightest. If we are to take full advantage of this opportunity, it is important to engage all segments of the population in a vigorous discussion of the roles of engineers and engineering and to establish high aspirations for engineers that reflect a shared vision of the future.
Our Image and the Profession
Without engineers working both in technical endeavors and as leaders who serve in industry, government, education, and nonprofit organizations, progress would stagnate. Engineering offers men and women an unparalleled opportunity to experience the joy of improving the quality of life for humankind through development of engineering solutions to societal problems. Many engineers pursue career paths in fields that are traditionally defined as engineering. However, a significant number use their engineering backgrounds as points of departure into other fields such as law, medicine, and business. The opportunities offered by an engineering education are multifold, and this is not fully realized by young people, their parents, counselors, mentors, and the public at large.
By 2020, we aspire to a public that will understand and appreciate the profound impact of the engineering profession on sociocultural systems, the full spectrum of career opportunities accessible through
an engineering education, and the value of an engineering education to engineers working successfully in nonengineering jobs.
While engineering is a rapidly evolving field that adapts to new knowledge, new technology, and the needs of society, it also draws on distinct roots that go back to the origins of civilization. Maintaining a linkage of the past with the future is fundamental to the rational and fact-based approaches that engineers use in identifying and confronting the most difficult issues.
We aspire to a public that will recognize the union of professionalism, technical knowledge, social and historical awareness, and traditions that serve to make engineers competent to address the world’s complex and changing challenges.
Engineering must be grounded in the fundamental principles of science and mathematics. This foundation supports the development of new knowledge and the creation of safe, reliable, and innovative technologies that advance society and the human condition. Solutions of societal problems require that these technologies be applied in innovative ways with consideration of cultural differences, historical perspectives, and legal and economic constraints, among other issues.
We aspire to engineers in 2020 who will remain well grounded in the basics of mathematics and science, and who will expand their vision of design through a solid grounding in the humanities, social sciences, and economics. Emphasis on the creative process will allow more effective leadership in the development and application of next-generation technologies to problems of the future.
Engineering has shown itself to be responsive to technological breakthroughs from within engineering and from other fields, although not always in the most timely fashion. From its first two subbranches, military and civil, it expanded early on in recognition of developments that led to mining, mechanical, chemical, electrical, and industrial engineering. This process has continued and is evidenced recently by the introduction of biomedical and computer engineering.
We aspire to an engineering profession that will rapidly embrace the potentialities offered by creativity, invention, and cross-disciplinary fertilization to create and accommodate new fields of endeavor, including those that require openness to interdisciplinary efforts with nonengineering disciplines such as science, social science, and business.
With technology becoming ever more pervasive in society, it is incumbent on the engineering profession to lead in shaping the ultimate use of technology and the government processes that control, regulate, or encourage its use.
By 2020 we aspire to engineers who will assume leadership positions from which they can serve as positive influences in the making of public policy and in the administration of government and industry.
The success of engineering is based on a deep reservoir of talented people. In the United States this wellspring has been nourished principally by drawing from a white male population.
We aspire to an engineering profession that will effectively recruit, nurture, and welcome underrepresented groups to its ranks.
The world faces significant environmental challenges in the future. At the same time there is great opportunity for engineering to serve as a force to help society solve the problems associated with these challenges. This requires a holistic understanding of economic growth and development in terms of the principles of sustainability. The present generation has the obligation to leave a legacy to those who follow so they can have the opportunity to appreciate the unrestrained beauty of nature, the full diversity of the world’s flora and fauna, and ancient and modern cultures and their artifacts.
It is our aspiration that engineers will continue to be leaders in the movement toward use of wise, informed, and economical sustainable
Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineer Job
development. This should begin in our educational institutions and be founded in the basic tenets of the engineering profession and its actions.
Advances in communications, travel, and economics have created a world where no country is untouched by any other. In the United States the oceans that bound our coasts no longer insulate us from other nations. In this dynamic global economy and political environment, engineering must adjust to a new world view.
We aspire to a future where engineers are prepared to adapt to changes in global forces and trends and to ethically assist the world in creating a balance in the standard of living for developing and developed countries alike.
Engineering education and its nature have been debated for many years. Change typically comes in waves, often following from forces outside the education establishment. Fallout from the surprising success of the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik led to reinforcement of the “engineering science” paradigm. The impacts of the recession of the early 1980s and subsequent reconstitution of the competitiveness of American industry and the dramatic failure of the space shuttle Challenger in the mid-1980s aided the movement toward more attention to quality principles and communication and teamwork skills. Presently, it is important that engineering education be reconsidered in a futures-based approach driven from within engineering.
It is our aspiration that engineering educators and practicing engineers together undertake a proactive effort to prepare engineering education to address the technology and societal challenges and opportunities of the future. With appropriate thought and consideration, and using new strategic planning tools, we should reconstitute engineering curricula and related educational programs to prepare today’s engineers for the careers of the future, with due recognition of the rapid pace of change in the world and its intrinsic lack of predictability.
It is appropriate that engineers are educated to understand and appreciate history, philosophy, culture, and the arts, along with the creative elements of all of these disciplines. The balanced inclusion of these important aspects in an engineering education leads to men and women who can bridge the “two cultures” cited by the author C.P. Snow (1998). In our increasingly technological society, this is more important now than in the 1950s when Snow identified the issue. The case can be made that an appropriately designed engineering curriculum today offers an education that is more well rounded than that obtained by students majoring in classical liberal arts, where technology is conspicuously absent from the field of study.
Our aspiration is to shape the engineering curriculum for 2020 so as to be responsive to the disparate learning styles of different student populations and attractive for all those seeking a full and well-rounded education that prepares a person for a creative and productive life and positions of leadership.
Central Intelligence Agency. 2001. Long-Term Global Demographic Trends: Reshaping the Geopolitical Landscape. Available online at: http://www.odci.gov/cia/reports/Demo_Trends_For_Web.pdf.
Career Aspirations Examples For Senior Software Engineer
Kagan, D., S. Ozment, and F.M. Turner. 2001. The Western Heritage, 7th Edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Snow, C.P. 1998. The Two Cultures. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.