https://theburningmonk.com/2019/11/how-to-break-the-senior-engineer-career-ceiling/

remember, your job is to help others become better versions of themselves, not to make them become you!

why you wouldn’t want to become a principal engineer

you are not responsible for setting the team’s priorities and have no line management authority.

your only weapon is your power of inspiration, to inspire others to want to do better and to follow your lead

it can be very frustrating at times

you also need to be empathic to different people’s needs and constraints. the “right way” may be too far a stretch for some. It’s not your job to judge others for not reaching your lofty standars. But it is your job to help others improve, even if it means baby steps

and the funny thing about pushing people our of their comfort zone is that you can only push it so far in one step.

try to force someone too far out of their comfort zone is one go and they’ll likely reject and resent you

wrap up

if all you want is to write code and be a subject matter expert (SME) on your system then you might not enjoy the role of a tech lead or principal

moving into these roles require you to change from a do-er to an enabler.

and your success is no longer judged on what you produce yourself, but how much more you enable others to achieve

https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes/

Managing difficult software engineers

https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/managing-bad-engineers/

The Procrastinator

The Lone Wolf

The Negative Nancy

The Over-Promiser

The Know-It-All

The Silent Type

The Perfectionist The Unreliable One

The Conflict Instigator

The Burned-Out Employee