Career Development Plan

In our last post, we established the key skills that make up the value of an engineer working in an organization. However, knowing the generalities is not very actionable. 

In this post, we'll delve into the key sub-skills that make up the top level skills as well as accompanying specific actionable tasks that you can start implementing immediately increase your skillfulness in that area and thereby increase your overall value as an engineer. 

Technical Expertise (clean and efficient code, language mastery, editor mastery, etc)

• Core CS Fundamentals
• Algorithms and Data structures
• System Design
• Learn Programming Paradigms 
• Object Oriented 
• Functional 
• Programming Language
• Learn Ruby
• Text editor
• Learn Sublime Editor (for host machine development tasks)
• Learn Vi / Vim / Emacs (for general editing tasks)
• Shell
• Testing
• Debugging
• Source Control
• Learn GIT

Qualities (leadership ability, general problem solving ability, communication ability, maturity level, etc)

• Communication
• Writing and Speaking
• Analytical / Problem Solving Ability
• Maturity 
• Growth Mindset
• Honors commitments
• Seeks and Integrates Feedback
• Treats others with respect
• Actively Identifies problems
• Self awareness
• Proactive about future / career

Execution (planning ability, ability to get shit done, hitting goals)

• Estimation
• Project Planning / XP
• Time Management
• Getting Unblocked
• Simplest thing that could possibly work

Scope (area of impact, sub-component, component level, sub-system, system, business unit value)

As your skill sets grows (technical, quality, and execution), so will your scope. If it doesn't, then you need to seek out more responsibility yourself. 

Dedicate entire branches of improvement for each area and track your progress overtime. Identify sticking points (tasks that are on B) and master them (move them to C).