Caleb Mellas on LinkedIn: 7 tips for rapidly learning new skills 💪 | 42 comments (2024)

How to influence your team towards a technical decision, without being a brilliant jerk.At my current company, I’m one of the most tenured engineers.I know most of our systems inside and out, which helps me provide really through code reviews and design spec reviews.However, because of my tenure and title, people tend to take my word very seriously.My manager helped me see that often times when I thought I was offering a suggestion, others took as something they had to do – even if they didn’t agree with it.Now when I have an idea or suggestion, I’ll first ask questions to hear out the other engineer’s ideas. I’ll then share my suggestion in the form of a question.eg. in a code review I might say: “What would you think about refactoring this function to only update the guest profile, and move x/y/z into another function?”Or: “I’d love to hear more of your thought process on using redis here, can you help me understand more of the background and context?”I’m still working on this… but so far:I’ve found it comes across way better, and gives the team the freedom to feel free to push back and keep their voice and ideas. 🙌🏼Senior+ engineers, how do you make room for welcoming ideas and opinions other than your own?I’d love to hear ideas and tips in the comments. 🙋♀️🙋♂️- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -P.S. If you liked this post, you’ll probably love my weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e8d5ymr3

58

23 Comments

As engineers we are really good at being technical... 👇🏼Dependency injection, TDD, Clean Code, Reverse Proxies… we are all in.But there’s something simpler but harder we struggle with...And it’s makes you standout when interviewing, and looking to grow as an engineering leader (senior and beyond roles).Taking on challenging, high-impact projects.AND. Quantifying those project wins to business outcomes and wins. 🧠We are technical superstars, so what often happens internally in conversations, or when interviewing is we go deeeep into the technicalities.“I rebuilt our build system from webpack 1.x to webpack 4.0 and removed the x/y/z security vulnerability, and speed up load times significantly.”Sounds impressive… But for product, business, and hiring leaders, it’s hard to really understand how valuable and impactful that was.What if instead for the same project, you were able to say: “I identified that our build system had several security vulnerabilities. I also discovered it cost our engineers 125 hrs / month waiting for builds to complete. I spearheaded an effort to upgrade this system, and led the team to fix our security issues, and decrease build times by 78%. Combined these measures saved our business approx $150,000 / yr.”Ok now you have their interest… they can’t wait to dive in more and ask follow up questions and learn more about the project. 🔥But how can you get stories like that?Brag docs.– Keep a daily log of project updates + learnings.– Summarize these into meaningful impact every 2 weeks.– Summarize those wins again every 2-3 months into top wins/learnings.– Quantify them. Talk with engineering, business and product leaders to get the bigger picture and some impact numbers.– Use these wins/learnings in resumes, performance reviews, interviews, etc.Taking on challenging projects is key to your success.Don’t stop there. Quantify and document those wins. ✔️- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -If you liked this post, you’ll probably love my weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e95JH9qH

204

38 Comments

As an early senior, life was a bit simpler… 👇🏼I had one core project I was the project lead on, and my goal was to move that forward, build it well, and deliver for our customers.As I grew into a Senior+ engineer, and then Tech Lead – things because a bit more challenging.Now I had 3-4 projects I was giving technical guidance on.I couldn’t just go heads down on one priority.I had to learn how to keep multiple balls in the air at once, and do that well.Whew – that was a challenge. 😅It took me around 6-7 months of feeling like I was running around a bit crazy to really get the hang of that.For me as a newer team lead, that juggling challenge has only 2x’d or even 3x’d. It’s similar for staff engineers.I’m now working cross-team both with other engineering teams, product teams, support teams, business teams, sales teams, etc.I knew things were really heating up when I had 4 overlapping calendar invitations at once. 🧐 (happened yesterday)Here’s what I’m learning… I still can’t clone myself.But there is a path forward through some of the craziness.My friend, Irina Stanescu shared a simple comment with me, that clarified things:The important thing is to figure out what are those glass juggling balls that I can’t drop, and what those rubber balls are that I can pick up at any time.Pro-tip: One great way to do this is write a daily + weekly summary of all the competing priorities you are working on, and then manage up in your communication and share them with your manager. Talk through the priorities, and align on those “must keep afloat things”, and the ones you can pick up later or in a spare moment.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Do you struggling with competing priorities, and the constant juggling act?Any tips or ideas you’ve learned that might help others?I’d love to hear from you! 🙋♀️🙋♂️- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -If you liked this post, you’ll probably love my weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e8d5ymr3 👉 Follow along as I share everything I’ve learned about becoming a#fullstackengineerand leveling up into a#senior+ engineer and#techleadat a hyper-growth#startup.

32

16 Comments

Trust is currency. If people trust you, you’ll be given better opportunities and be seen as a leader no matter what your title is.👇10 ways you can build trust with your team, and your leadership. 1/ Provide creative solutions with blockers.2/ Ask for specific feedback, then work on it.3/ Be a team player. Not a solo hero-dev island.4/ Give accurate estimates, with updates as needed.5/ Don’t hide it when something is off. Speak up about it.6/ Prioritize consistency. Leaders are looking for reliability.7/ Take meeting notes, and follow through on action items.8/ Finish things. Be known as someone who “gets things done.”9/ Manage up in your communication with regular project updates.10/ Say what you are going to do, do it, and then share what you did.What would you add?Think about the people you really trust… why do you?Any tips of stories you can share with others? 🙋♀️🙋♂️Pro-tip: If you want others to trust you, don’t focus on trying to earn their trust –that’s a blockable goal. Focus on being and becoming a trustworthy person. P.S. If you want to learn more on this, Irina Stanescu is the person to follow. I’ve learned so much from her, and recently took her cohort class that dove into trust-building and so much more.Highly recommend. Checkout her profile for more info.

68

42 Comments

Ever wish you had a clear roadmap for learning frontend development?I often get asked questions like: 👇🏼– What should I learn next to level up in my career?– What skills am I missing that I need to be a senior engineer?– How do I break into my first tech role?I’ve totally been there…There were so many times in my career where I spun my wheels wondering what else I needed to work on to get to the next level in my engineering skills.Unfortunately... many of us don’t know where to start, or we get overwhelmed/confused taking courses and watching endless youtube videos.I want to save you from the pain of spinning your wheels wondering what to learn, or focusing on things that don’t really matter in the big picture.That’s why I’m working on a complete roadmap to frontend engineering. 🚀Whether you are just breaking into tech, growing into mid-level, or looking to grow into a senior engineer, there will be something here for you!This is shaping up to be a 5000+ word guide.It’s not quite ready yet, and I want to make sure it’s super high quality.Here’s the table of contents so far...1/Basics of the Internet2/Learn HTML3/Learn the basics of CSS4/Javascript is your friend5/Advanced es6 Javascript6/Everything version control7/Package Managers8/Pick a framework, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte9/Advanced state management10/ CSS Helpers and Libraries11/ CSS Preprocessors and Sass12/ CSS Responsive / Mobile-first design13/ Build Tools, Bundlers, Tasks Runners, Linters and Formatting14/ All things Testing15/ Authentication Strategies16/ Web Security Basics17/ Web Components18/ Typescript… everyone is using it19/ Server Side Rendering (SSR)20/ APIs and HTTP Requests21/ Static Site Generators22/ Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)23/ Performance Best Practices24/ Accessibility – Equality for all25/ Caching26/ CDNsIf this sounds interesting, make sure you are subscribed to my newsletter.https://lnkd.in/e95JH9qHI plan to send it out in the next week or two. So keep your eyes out. 👀Also, if there’s anything I can include that would be helpful –let me know in the comments. I want to make this as helpful and useful as possible.

120

33 Comments

Underrated ways to level up as a software engineer 👇🏼Do:Right answers only.I’ll go first...▶ Join the oncall rotation 😅Yep, I know – oncall can be stressful or overwhelming –especially if you are newer to a company, or working in a newer product area. But hear me out...Joining oncall has many benefits including:– Shadowing other knowledgeable engineers– Learning how all the systems work together– Hearing about issues affecting real customers– Seeing system wide issues that need addressing– Leveling up in systems design knowledge and experienceWhen I first joined the oncall rotation at a hyper growth startup I was worried what would happen if something came up I didn’t know. News flash: it did.However, what I quickly learned is that I’m not expected to be able to solve every issue that pops up without help. My job is to triage the issue, do basic troubleshooting and then call in a subject matter expert who can help further.Over the next 6 months as I became more familiar with our systems and products and troubleshooting common issues, I took a leap of faith and joined our L2 rotation – which is who they call when things are really broken.It was hard, but it again helped me level up massively. 🚀A lot of scaling, troubleshooting, debugging, monitoring, alerting, systems design concept became reality rather than theory. 🧠And I started to become one of those “go to engineers” that everyone came to with those hairy issues that are difficult to track down. 💪It was a win for me, and our team. 🌟It’s your turn... 👇🏼How about you? What is an underrated way to level up as an engineer that not many people talk about?Let’s all share and help each other learn and grow 🙋♀️🙋♂️- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -P.S. If you liked this post, you’ll probably love my weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/e8d5ymr3

54

40 Comments