How Community Engagement Can Boost Your Staff-Plus Career

How does someone become a successful Staff-Plus Engineer? It is probably a mix of technical skills and having the right opportunities. But what if you don't have access to the best opportunities or the right contacts? What if you didn't study in an Ivy League university or live in a city that does not have a relevant tech scene? How can you learn from the best engineers and access the latest technologies if your current job doesn't give you this kind of opportunity?

In this talk, I'll share the secret that changed my life and paved my path to becoming a successful Staff-Plus engineer against all odds: community engagement.

#Main Takeaways

  • Developer communities encourage sharing of what you know with others, being a safe space to you grow as a reference in your field;

  • Organizing communities teach you how to curate technical content, enabling you to make informed decisions on your company's architecture;

  • Community engagement provides motivation and encouragement on the long path towards a Staff-Plus career;

  • Communities are an opportunity multiplier and can help you build a network of peers and open up chances to find mentors and role models in your field;


Speaker

Eder Ignatowicz

Principal Software Engineer and Architect @RedHat

Eder is a Principal Software Engineer and Tech Lead for Red Hat Business Automation, leading several tooling efforts, including the Kogito initiative. Java Champion since 2017 and a recognized community contributor and speaker in large conferences across the globe, including Red Hat Summit and Forum, Oracle Code One, QCons, The Developers Conference, and multiple community events. Eder has also been part of the QCon Sao Paulo program committee since 2014 and became QCon SP conference chair in 2018.

Read more

Date

Wednesday Nov 30 / 11:40AM PST ( 50 minutes )

Topics

Staff Plus Engineering Community Engagement Developer Communities People and Culture People Skills

Share

From the same track

Session Staff Plus Engineering

The Engineer/Manager Pendulum

Wednesday Nov 30 / 12:50PM PST

Should you be a manager? Or should you be an engineer? The old wisdom used to say that you should pick a lane and stick to it, but this is bad advice.

Speaker image - Charity Majors
Charity Majors

CTO @Honeycombio

Session Staff Plus Engineering

Unraveling Techno-Solutionism: How I fell out of love with “Ethical” Machine Learning

Wednesday Nov 30 / 09:20AM PST

As a Staff-Plus Engineer, I’ve had plenty of learning moments in my career where I realized my view of a problem was hindered by my own desire to solve it with technology.

Speaker image - Katharine Jarmul
Katharine Jarmul

Principal Data Scientist @Thoughtworks

Session Staff Plus Engineering

The Secret to Finding Impactful Projects to Land a Staff-Plus Engineer Role

Wednesday Nov 30 / 10:30AM PST

So, you want to be a Staff-Plus Engineer at your organization. Are you one of a hundred engineers vying for that big new shiny project to get you there?

Speaker image - Akhilesh Gupta
Akhilesh Gupta

Principal Software Engineer @LinkedIn