Staff-Plus Engineer Training Series
This is an expansive training specifically designed for engineers aspiring to excel in their careers and make a significant impact without transitioning into people management roles. It equips engineers with the skills and knowledge needed to become influential leaders, earn promotions to the staff-plus level, and navigate the complexities of today's engineering landscape. The training series focuses on nurturing a growth mindset, fostering resilience, and honing leadership presence, enabling engineers to confidently take on challenging projects, oversee technical initiatives, and guide and mentor junior engineers.
Audience
Engineers interested in obtaining a Staff-plus role
Tools Used
Microsoft Powerpoint, Canva, Miro, One Note
Time Spent
4 months from assignment to training completion
This training is designed for engineers aspiring to excel in their careers and make a significant impact without transitioning into people management roles. The CTO and the Director of Engineering reached out to me in May of 2022. There was a gap in career opportunities for engineers who wanted career growth but did not desire to become people managers. After brainstorming, the end result landed on a book called 'Staff Engineers: Leadership Beyond the Management Track' by Will Larson. This book was favored by the Engineering Leadership team, and they requested that I turn it into a training.
Project Overview
I began this project by reading the main chapters in the book, taking notes on the sections I deemed most relevant to the project's goal, and further breaking those down into specific topics. Since I had the freedom to design this training however I thought would be most beneficial, I decided to focus heavily on the 'Operating at Staff' chapter. Although there was relevant information in other chapters, I saw that it mostly repeated the topics covered in 'Operating at Staff.'
Process
Once I had decided on what topics the training would cover, I started storyboarding how to take these concepts and turn them into a workshop. I decided to create a separate workshop for each section in the chapter: 'Operating at Staff,' 'Work on What Matters,' 'Writing Engineering Strategy,' 'Managing Technical Quality,' 'Stay Aligned With Authority,' 'To Lead, You Have to Follow,' 'Learn to Never Be Wrong,' 'Create Space for Others,' 'Build a Network of Peers,' and 'Present to Executives,' for a total of ten workshops.
I started with 'Work on What Matters' and presented it to the CTO and Director of Engineering before moving on to the next workshop. After obtaining their approval, I continued to develop the rest of the workshops. To create these trainings, I wrote all the content for each session and then brainstormed how to transform each concept from plain text into some form of visual aid. I utilized various colors, animations, and designs to create visual scenarios, enabling learners to see the concepts rather than just hearing or reading about them.
Result
The result of this project was overwhelmingly positive. The Engineering Leads were impressed that I could break down complex engineering topics in a way that was easily understood and visually appealing. It was rolled out along with a redesigned engineering career ladder inspired by the content in the training. The success of this project led to the initiation of a future L&D project, where I extracted lessons from the workshops that I believed were applicable to employees outside of engineering and turned them into short 15-minute trainings for a lunch and learn series.