You get better by revisiting the decisions you made, think about how you could do better next time, and move on to the next challenge. When you develop learned helplessness, you stop getting better and can actually become worse.
You get better by revisiting the decisions you made, think about how you could do better next time, and move on to the next challenge. When you develop learned helplessness, you stop getting better and can actually become worse.
I'm considering the last few situations I was in, professionally, and how they match these descriptions...
How do you translate IC work wins into company wins (akin to turning a lane win into a game win)?
Is... step one of that, gaining the organizational power to expand beyond your lane?
PS - This concept is hazy and I'm finding it hard to grasp to put it into words ATM, so if this isn't clear enough for responses, ask some questions and I'll try again.
Then reconjugate to be a thing you can do -
"If the game's being lost, and you're winning in lane, ask to be given leadership. It's when /that/ comes back 'no' that it's time for you to find a new game."
(I'm noticing this is begin to look like "Winners want the ball.")
I think ICs who focus solely on keeping their head down and writing good code are limiting themselves, and it's a similar mentality I see at lower ranks in games.
In any case, asking to be given the lead only works if you have sufficient levels above you that leadership can be taken away from the people currently in charge. If those are (for example) the founders of the company, good luck.
- To keep using the MOBA analogy (for me that'd be LoL), when you're winning in your lane enough to roam, you don't take over someone else's lane, you go assist them in it.
If eng is killing it and sales are lagging, I guess you'd send some folks from one to assist and empower the other. Maybe sales doesn't understand the tech well enough to sell it, maybe what sells isn't what's been built, maybe it's a question of moral and bodies, maybe it's a question of tooling.
I am intrigued by the possible interplays with sales though. So far I have not been in a position to really help them out, but maybe I'm just lacking in imagination?
Re: Sales - I'm actually a "Solutions Engineer", which is one of the many versions of sales-supporting-engineer roles, others being "solutions architect", "customer engineer", "sales engineer", "field engineer", etc etc. Depends on what kind of thing the company makes (AWS is def SAs, for ex, while stuff that gets physical installs is FEs (AFIAK)), the balance between pre-sales and post-sales in the role, etc. I love it, and if you like face-time with people while still doing tech, you might as well. I kinda view the whole category as under the motto: "My job is to deploy our technology"
I think... First thing that came up when I searched.