InfoQ Homepage Careers Content on InfoQ
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Growing Yourself as a Software Engineer, Using AI to Develop Software
Sharing your work as a software engineer inspires others, invites feedback, and fosters personal growth, Suhail Patel said at QCon London. Normalizing and owning incidents builds trust, and it supports understanding the complexities. AI enables automation but needs proper guidance, context, and security guardrails.
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Changing a Career from Developing Software to Test Automation
A developer who became a test automation engineer faced a challenging learning curve due to limited testing experience. He learned the importance of test levels, when not to automate, and how QA is vital to quality. Motivated by impact, growth, and teamwork, he values communication and continuous learning.
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How Software Engineers Can Grow into Staff Plus Roles
Software engineers can boost their impact by helping other teams, focusing on business-driven work, and building strong relationships, David Grizzanti mentioned at InfoQ Dev Summit Boston. Growth can come from mentoring, setting cultural norms, thinking strategically, and designing a career path based on what motivates you.
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Growing Your Career towards Senior Roles in Software Development
Flexible working is key to career development, enabling people to stay in tech while balancing personal needs, Sophie Weston said. Flexibility widens the pool of potential talent and enables keeping the best talent. She has championed internal promotions and "squiggly careers," allowing role shifts, including in and out of management, to support long-term growth.
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Lessons Learned from Growing from Junior to Staff and beyond
Bruno Rey suggested thinking about career growth in circles: self, team, company, and customers. Success comes from understanding broader impacts, embracing compromise, and acting fast, especially in startups. He advised seeking mentors for honest feedback, being open to unexpected or crisis-driven opportunities, and thriving in change with an anti-fragile mindset.
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Levelling Yourself up as a Software Engineer While Climbing through the Ranks
As software engineers grow into senior, Staff+, or principal roles, they take on greater responsibility, complex projects, and influence beyond code, Suhail Patel explained in his talk about growing oneself as a software engineer at QCon London. Growth isn’t linear; it requires mastering communication, strategy, and soft influence. Writing, speaking, and 1:1s can help to expand impact.
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How Software Engineers Can Grow Their Career
To grow their career, Bruno Rey suggests that software engineers should develop ambition, increase their capacity, and seek opportunities. He advises being proactive, broadening your influence by learning from peers, and stepping outside your comfort zone. Software engineers can keep a brag doc to ensure that their work is visible and plan their growth with realistic long-term goals.
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How to Develop Your Skills to Become a Principal Engineer
Becoming a principal engineer requires more than technical skill, it’s about influence, communication, and strategy. Success means enabling teams by shaping culture, Sophie Weston said. She suggested developing deep skills in multiple domains, with collaborative skills. Skills from life outside work, like sports, volunteering, or gaming, can add valuable perspective and build leadership potential.
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How Software Developers Can Build Their Personal Brand to Elevate Their Influence
A strong public brand helps software engineers in job transitions and creates opportunities, while an internal brand builds credibility within your company. Pablo Fredrikson shared a story about how he helped a team struggling with a service issue to improve relationships. To build your brand, define your goals, take on visible projects, and be helpful. It benefits both you and the company.
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Exploring Aging of Programmers: Fostering Inclusive and Age-Friendly Workplaces
Age-related discrimination assumes older programmers are less capable or unwilling to learn. Kate Gregory stresses that inclusive, age-friendly workplaces benefit all employees. She advises staying open to new experiences, learning, and building connections to maintain a fulfilling career and well-being as we age.
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Why Software Developers Need to Build Their Personal Brand
Growing your personal brand can improve your credibility, give you greater impact, and lead to better opportunities, Pablo Fredrikson said at QCon San Francisco. As a staff plus engineer, helping others solve problems creates value for the company. His advice is to find out what you are passionate about, learn more about it, get better at it, and share it, to build your personal brand over time.
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What Developers Can Do to Continue to Program as They Age
Trouble seeing, pain, and stiffness are some of the things that can make it harder to program as you age. But there are solutions like changing fonts, using glasses, and rearranging the office layout. Some older programmers' mental concerns included a lack of motivation and cynical feelings. According to Gregory, exercising and getting good sleep help to keep the abilities needed as a developer.
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Skills and Insights for First-Time Managers
The skills and capabilities required to be an effective first-time engineering manager are often orthogonal to those of an IC. These range from people management through to delivery of projects. We report on recent podcasts featuring Ben Greenberg, Matt Stratton and Shopify's James Stanier as they share practical management patterns for prospective, new and seasoned engineering managers.
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How Growing Tech Engineers Enables Growing Yourself as a Leader
It’s challenging to grow into a new role when you are still holding on to what you have been good at and really love, and what you’ve been doing in your previous role. By attaching to everything you used to do, you are also depriving the people around you of an opportunity to grow and learn to master those skills and take on those responsibilities too.
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How Big Tech Lost its Way - Accountability and Leadership
Accountability in big tech companies seems to be lacking; it’s rare for people in senior positions to be held accountable. Engineers should be conscious of the culture they want to work in and watch out for their well-being, whereas companies should invest in their leaders to support people’s best work. Andy Walker gave a talk about how big tech lost its way at QCon London 2023.