High Performer v.s. Smart Performer: Tips for Career Advancement
I started my software engineering career about two decades ago as a co-op student in college and slowly progressed through the ranks to manager.
Since then, I’ve been running teams of three to fifteen people, mentoring and coaching them along in their own careers. In doing so, I’ve found it very interesting that organizations have different criteria for career progression and title responsibilities and different definitions of what it takes to be considered a high performer or a smart performer. But the end results for promotion considerations seem to always align.
What’s the difference?
When you graduate from post-secondary education and find your first job, you do the work you are given to do. And that’s good enough. But as you become more and more comfortable with your daily tasks, you become faster at them. Then you get new tasks to learn and do. This cycle repeats itself until, one day, your speed doesn’t impress anyone anymore. Speed at task has become a given — It is expected now that you’re approaching more senior levels. This is an example of high performance reaching its peak.
This is where smart performance begins.
Smart performance is not about writing smart algorithms. Again, this knowledge is expected from a senior engineer. I’m talking about writing code that makes a difference or advocating for projects or approaches that benefit the business. Smart performance means having the courage to tell another senior level person you disagree with them. It’s providing good arguments that change minds.
Smart performance comes with practice, time, and experience. It’s very different from the technical know-how required to optimize an algorithm to run 10% faster.
Understanding the difference has helped me recognize when I’m ready to progress, and it has helped me recognize when my team members are ready too. If I’m looking to fill a senior engineer role or higher, here are five things I look for:
Number 1: Consistency
Don’t get me wrong, I want my high performers to advance, but having one good project or one good sprint doesn’t make you a high performer. I look for evidence that you are consistently a high performer. I look for high performance during easy projects and hard projects. If your performance drops during a high stress situation such as a hard deadline, or when navigating complex dependencies from internal or external factors, I’m watching. Anyone on my team will tell you that this aspect will be evaluated with the most scrutiny during performance reviews.
Number 2: Seeing the full picture
Engineers love to solve problems. We get our dopamine fix from achieving solutions. But we often get stuck in the weeds. It’s not uncommon for engineers to focus on the smallest, most immediate issue without bothering to notice it’s a symptom of a much larger problem. For example: Working with a 3rd party API produces some issues and bugs. The engineer creates a great way to monitor and report on errors from that API. This is a great solution for missing observability, but what we failed to fix is the overarching problem of standardizing the process of working with 3rd party APIs throughout the project as well as developing a consistent way to approach this in the future. Today’s solution works as a temporary fix for today’s problem only. Looking at today’s problem through the lens of how it can benefit future business decisions is the key for success in this area.
I’m looking for the engineer that says, “We have a problem that’s going to have an impact throughout this project, and here’s a solution that will work across the board.”
Number 3: Don’t give me problems, give me solutions!
Sometimes we don’t have all the answers, and that’s ok. But running to your team lead for every little thing doesn’t build confidence in your ability to put out fires on your own. When there is a problem, consider some possible solutions and then bring them to the table if you still need to meet with your lead. They will appreciate that you put in the effort without leaving it all to them. Plus, keeping a calm, cool head when handling fires also shows maturity. A wrong approach here would be to always say how hard or impossible something is. Always talk about what can be done rather than what cannot.
Number 4: Fighting for the right end goal
Way too often we protect our ideas — not because they are good — but because they are ours. It takes real maturity to accept that your approach is not as good as the alternatives and to not get defensive. It’s also very hard to stand your ground when someone else is being defensive about their work.
I watch for people who can find middle ground and use it to persuade others (without pulling rank). Compromise is a hard skill to master. Bringing people together to achieve a common goal is not easy, but it’s a valuable, crucial skill for any team-based workplace.
Number 5: Charisma
It doesn’t matter if you are the best programmer in the world: If you can’t get people to follow you, you won’t get far. As soon as you reach senior developer level, you will be responsible for more work than you can complete on your own. You will need to delegate some of this work to others, and you want those people to rally behind you and not work against you.
Sometimes you’ll be unloading boring or unpopular tasks because they can be delegated, and you need time to solve complex issues, or interact with the client or the project owner — things only you can do. Your team will understand, kind of, but here’s where a little honey goes a long way! Practice building your charisma and flex that social influence muscle as you progress through the hierarchy — don’t wait until you need it. Here are a few things to try:
- Do something fun at work. For example, help organize a hackathon. Engineers love hackathons, and management typically signs off as they usually generate interesting ideas. Being an organizer aligns you with positive experiences. People will remember this! Bonus tip: Make sure to set target outcomes and record the process throughout to demonstrate success and learnings.
- Rally people to join you for a local meetup group related to your job. Social is good, but making it job-related keeps it from being weird. Bonus tip: Talking to people outside your sphere who face similar problems can help you discover potential solutions that you can bring back to adopt in your workplace.
Good communication is your ticket to ride
In conclusion, it’s critical to mention that most, if not all measures of performance are dependent upon good communication skills. This is so foundationally important, and so interwoven with everything else, that it needed a separate call-out.
Unless you are working in a vacuum researching something highly secretive or totally anonymous, knowing how and when to communicate is the key to your future success.
There is no way to lead without also being able to listen, give feedback, and provide direction in a timely and easily absorbable way. And being able to take feedback and act on it is critical. Make improving your communication skills an intentional part of your daily habit. Learn to ask questions, pause before speaking, write beyond Slack (blog post anyone?), improve your spelling, grammar or reading skills with online sources. Talk on the phone, facilitate a meeting or a lunch and learn. Whatever you do, just keep working on it. This will improve everything else you do at work and in life. That’s just smart.
As someone who has coached and mentored many teams, these are things I look out for. Their existence tells me when my high performers are ready for their next adventure.
If you’re looking for your next adventure, explore our open positions and learn more about Q4 by checking out our careers page.
