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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How to design (and listen to) a developer survey
A well-designed developer survey is only the first step towards measuring team health, the important part is knowing how to listen to the results.
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LeadDev editor’s picks: October 2023
September had a back-to-school feel this month at LeadDev, with plenty of advice on how to tame the chaos of context switching, make your team’s work more visible, and contend with the major challenge of needing to “do more with less.”
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Tech is changing, engineering management is not
Engineering managers are being tasked with navigating a totally different industry landscape, but VP of engineering at the New York Times, David Yee, says “Your job actually does not change.”
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Why support and belonging are the final key to developer thriving
Beyond agency, motivation, and learning, a sense of support and belonging shouldn’t be overlooked as a key driver of developer thriving.
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A prioritization framework for uncertain times
Senior Software Engineer at Netflix, Laurie Barth, has some ways to successfully prioritize tasks, including her tried and true “three buckets” model.
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Setting goals and using metrics that motivate
Engineering leaders should use a combination of goals and metrics to motivate their teams to make the biggest possible impact.
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Putting your power into practice as a Staff+ engineer
Matthew Hawthorne discusses how his talk at LeadDev West Coast in October will help Staff+ engineers use their unique standing more effectively.
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The reality of being a VP of Engineering
What does being a VP of Engineering actually involve? Honeycomb’s Emily Nakashima breaks it down.
Top Career development videos
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Learning in the flow of work
Understand the difference between learning knowledge and developing skills and wisdom, and how each can be achieved in the flow of work.
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Leading by example: Staying technical as a CTO
How to identify the areas that you need to be up to date on.
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The places you’ll go: how to keep learning in leadership
Laura Thomson demonstrates how to keep up with technology trends as a leader.
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How do you keep growing when you are the leader of the organization?
Develop a framework for you to keep improving your skillset while in a senior leadership role
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CSS: Cascading Support Systems
Phil Bennett talks about how he has adapted basic principles like Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and applied them to be able to support my managers, and their reports dealing with empathy at scale.
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Building a better bridge
Bryan Liles shares how he came to find out that he was a bridge builder and how that carried through his journey as a senior engineer to where he is today as a VP-level engineer in a public company.
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Understanding the role of a Distinguished engineer
Breaking down the responsibilities and overlap involved in the most senior individual contributor roles.
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Elastic Leadership: Roy Osherove in conversation
Values and techniques to consider in leadership roles.