Latest
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How do I progress without a clear career ladder?
Help! As a new Director, it’s unclear what’s expected of me.
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Making executive onboarding a smooth journey
Some tips on how to onboard senior leaders and executives with relative ease, based on recent experience.
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Unconventional paths in tech: Leveraging your strengths to find your place
n this talk, Mitra Raman will take a look at the many paths that engineers can take on their leadership journey.
Editor’s picks
How to find and become a great engineering mentor
Mentoring is a great way to boost your career. Here’s everything you need to know about getting a mentor, and becoming one yourself.
November 4 & 5, 2025
The leadership conference for tech leads and engineering leaders.
Essential reading
Learning to enjoy the career progression journey
Reaching a management position in the tech industry is hard work. It’s important to remember to enjoy the journey and celebrate victories big and small along the way.
On our Career development playlist
Career vectors for technical leaders
Mix and match skills to become the best technical leader that you can be.
Their career: sponsored by you!
Strategies to move from an advisor to an investor in your reports’ careers
How to become a staff+ engineer
What do you need to be able to demonstrate to get promoted to a staff engineer?
The path from Director to CTO: How to follow it, or how to mentor it
This talk is aimed at both aspiring Chief Technology Officers and those who are in a position to mentor future CTOs. Explore the journey from a Director of Engineering role to a CTO, focusing on the skills and experiences needed for this transition and how experienced leaders can guide others on this path.
Essential soft skills you need to succeed as an engineer
There is a big focus on technical expertise in software engineering – but soft skills are equally as important. Which ones are crucial to master and how can you do this?
November 4 & 5, 2025
The leadership conference for tech leads and engineering leaders.
More about Career development
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Building a learning culture to unlock developer thriving
Allowing developers to learn on the job can be difficult when the pressure is on, but research proves that a strong learning culture can help developers thrive.
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9 ways to build technical depth, fast
Understanding a new technical stack isn’t easy, but these nine activities can help you get there faster.
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Setting boundaries when you’re overworked
It can be difficult to set boundaries at work. Here are a few scenarios to show you how to do so, even if you’re worried about an unstable job market.
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Improve your learning culture with retrospectives
Nurturing healthy team learning cultures has never been more important for engineering leaders.
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LeadDev editor’s picks: May 2023
With so much talk about doing more with less during the month of April, we want to help engineers and managers make better use of their time. In no particular order, here are the five articles you need to read on LeadDev.
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How to return to work after parental leave
What to expect when returning from parental leave: Senior Staff Engineer at Slack, Maude Lemaire, talks through how she navigated her return to work after a six-month parental leave.
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LeadDev editor’s picks: April 2023
From convincing your team to come back to the office, to optimizing your daily habits, March was all about making difficult decisions. In no particular order, here are the five articles you need to read on LeadDev.
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Just 16% of training budgets have been cut in 2023
Despite rounds of layoffs and growing economic concerns, learning and development budgets aren’t being slashed, according to LeadDev research.
Top Career development videos
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Don’t try this at home. How to practice self-improvement as a senior leader
Phil Calçado looks at how to continuously improve your skills and expertise when you don’t have the ability to always experiment.
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Healthy and effective leadership teams
The foundations of a high performing leadership team are built on strong relationships that are rooted in mutual trust and common goals.
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Being a principal engineer. The world is your oyster.
Silvia Botros talks about how to navigate the many facets of the role of a principal engineer.
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Understanding the role as a Staff engineer
How to define, develop and deliver in your role on the technical track.
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Designing an engineering career framework
Anirudh Todi introduces the approach taken when designing and iterating on our engineering career framework at Dropbox.
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So you’re Staff+ … now what?
This talk will cover how to define your development journey as a Senior IC, figuring out what you should be working on, how to set your goals, and keep track of your progress.
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Added to the List: How to build technical domain expertise
In this talk, we go over tips on how to land an opportunity that allows for technical domain exploration, how to efficiently learn from the experience, and how to utilize your new domain expertise for career growth.