Slide contents

1. 1. Hard Skills Maxed Out — What's Next?

   Five skills that widen an engineer's influence

2. 2. 01. Complexity became a team job

   One engineer can no longer hold the whole SDLC

3. 3. One pipeline connects every role

4. 4. Problem type determines practice

5. 5. 02. After Senior, influence grows

   The next level is defined by responsibility, not a technology count

6. 6. IC and manager split late

7. 7. Growth starts with a gap

8. 8. 03. Five skills widen influence

   Planning, ownership, communication, motivation and curiosity

9. 9. Three foundations, two accelerators

   Foundations

   Plan the work

   Own the outcome

   Explain the decision

   Accelerators

   Sustain motivation

   Keep digging deeper

10. 10. Important work loses to urgency

    Urgent

    Important → do

    Not important → delegate

    Not urgent

    Important → schedule

    Not important → delete

11. 11. Plan backwards from the outcome

12. 12. Ownership is visible in outcomes

    Acknowledge your role

    Agree success criteria

    Propose the next step

    Learn without blame

13. 13. Clarity scales an engineering decision

    Listen before answering

    Fit language to the audience

    Speak briefly and structurally

    Notice emotion and non-verbal cues

14. 14. A big goal lives through small steps

    One goal — Connects several areas of life

    Rhythm — A plan and intermediate checkpoints

    Focus — Forget the goal; see the next step

15. 15. Theory and practice converge

16. 16. Strong engineers build and operate

17. 17. Growth means influencing wider

    Plan from the outcome

    Own a measurable result

    Make the decision legible

    Move through small steps

    Join theory with practice

    Hard skills remain the foundation

18. 18. The models are verifiable

    Cynefin · The Cynefin Co

    Staff Engineer · Will Larson

    Working Backwards

    SRE Book + Workbook

19. 19. Thank you!

    tellmeabout.tech

    Slides, notes and links are on the site

    Alexander Polomodov, Technical Director & Fellow, T-Technologies

    @book_cube