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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Ask Mathias: How do I define my role without any guidance?
Once you get to a certain level, it can be difficult to understand the parameters of your role.
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What developers need to know about generative AI in 2024
AI won’t replace you. But there are some things that need to be on your radar moving forward such as coding ability and data pipelines.
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How to lead senior engineers as a new manager
If you’ve just entered a management role, cultivating your relationship with the senior engineers on your team may be a daunting prospect. Here are a few ways to get that relationship off to a good start.
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How to be the best servant leader for your team
Servant leadership may be the missing piece for helping your team reach the next level of success.
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What DevOps teams need to know for 2024
We asked 10 tech leaders what DevOps teams need to know heading into the new year.
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Introducing a career framework as your organization scales
Career frameworks are always a valuable resource for engaging and developing engineers, but they become vital as your organization goes through rapid growth or operating changes.
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4 free engineering slides that win over boardrooms
A framework for how to present engineering results to the board.
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How engineering leaders can write better proposals
Upgrade your writing techniques to create the most user-friendly proposal documents you can.
Top Career development videos
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The 9.1 magnitude meltdown at Fukushima
Nick Means takes us to mid-afternoon on Friday, March 11, 2011 when the ground in Tōhoku began to shake. To the operators at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it seemed like the shaking would never stop. The way their team operated during that fateful week has a lot to teach us about helping our own teams be at their best, both in crisis and out.
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What to do after being laid off: Lessons on being my own CEO for a change
James Courtois shares his layoff experience. Recounting this, he shares some practical considerations and grounding thoughts that might be of use regardless of your employment situation.
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How to progress as an engineer while doing what you love
Blanca Rojo Martin shares how a large organisation like UBS has created a three-level strategy for Engineers technical career progression.
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Putting down line management; returning to an individual contributor role
Caroline Handley will help you crystallise what options there are. It will clarify what actions can be taken to find out more. Whether you decide to ‘put down line management’ or not, you can make that decision in a more informed way and be more confident in your choices.
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Working sideways
Aish Raj Dahal touches upon this slightly less talked about aspect of the job as a technical IC leader, which is creating peer relationships and working with other Staff engineers in shaping an organization’s technical roadmap.
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Exit plans and how to talk about them
David Kiger covers why the answer to that question is important, how to set up the culture to enable the conversation, how to actually have the conversations once the foundation is laid, and the benefits that both employees and the company get out of it.
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“I’m happy where I am” – Supporting team members that aren’t seeking progression
Ryan MacGillivray talks about how realistically not everyone can or wants to be a Lead Engineer/Engineering Manager/Staff Engineer and nor should we be pushing people into roles they either have no interest in or have done before and not enjoyed.
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Making the move to manager: Common pitfalls for new engineering leaders
Jacqueline Pan and Marlena Lui focus on challenges involved with people leadership: – How to rebrand yourself as a new engineering leader – How to build trust with a new team without prior experience or credibility – How to delegate effectively – How to balance proactive leadership without micromanaging.