I delivered a keynote on this topic at Institute of Product Leadership's one-day conclave on Managing Careers in Data, Tech and Product

1. Growing Building Managing Owning
Nurturing your tech career
Tathagat Varma
Country Manager, Nerdwallet

2. My personal views!
http://www.grup-pumsa.cat/imglist/spectacles-wallpaper/Image:

3. We are living longer…and
tech is dying faster!
https://enrolo.com/2017/10/18/disruptive-change-and-the-growing-need-for-e-learning-innovation/

4. But, Tech still rules!
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/nearly-half-job-openings-tech-companies-non-tech-roles-study-finds/

5. However…Tech tenures are shorter
(and getting more shorter!)
https://insights.dice.com/2017/08/22/tech-jobs-last-2-years-study/

6. 35-40+ years of career
And the old school (literally)
is not enough…

7. Knowledge decays
over time!
https://transportfutures.institute/what-can-you-do-about-the-half-life-of-your-professional-knowledge/

8. So, how to grow
as a techie?

9. #1: Stop “managing”!
https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-artificial-intelligence-will-redefine-management

10. Free up your day…
https://luxafor.com/the-eisenhower-matrix/

11. #2: MS Office is for minnows.
Legends code!
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/engineering-managers-should-code-30-of-t/240165174

12. Coding doesn’t mean
programming only!
“Programming is 10%
keyboarding and 90%
design, communicating,
testing, reading and more.”
- https://medium.com/coursera-engineering/should-engineering-managers-write-
code-wrong-question-ec5fc54d3903

13. #3: Learn adjoining areas
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/who-are-professional-scrum-developers

14. Unicorn engineer…
why not?
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/who-are-professional-scrum-developers

15. “Stacked T”

16. #4: Do experiments and short-term
side-projects
https://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2014/07/17/science-of-side-projects/
https://daverupert.com/2010/12/40-things-i-learned-from-side-projects/
https://9to5google.com/2013/08/16/googles-20-percent-time-birthplace-of-gmail-google-maps-adsense-now-effectively-dead/

17. #5: Pursue long-term
creative interests!
“Creative activity was positively associated with recovery experiences
(i.e., mastery, control, and relaxation) and performance‐related outcomes
(i.e., job creativity and extra‐role behaviours). The mediating effects of
recovery experiences were examined to better understand the underlying
processes involved in the relationship between creative activity and
performance‐related outcomes. Creative activity was found to have
both indirect effects and direct effects on performance‐related
outcomes, but the effects varied by the type of performance‐related
outcome. The results indicate that organizations may benefit from
encouraging employees to consider creative activities in their
efforts to recover from work.”
Benefiting from creative activity: The positive relationships between
creative activity, recovery experiences, and performance‐related
outcomes
Kevin J. Eschleman Jamie Madsen Gene Alarcon Alex Barelka
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joop.12064

18. #6: From STEM to STEAM

19. #7: Help Inspire others!
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.

20. #8: Volunteer for community
work

21. #9: Heal the world!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/azrainman/1003163361/sizes/z/in/photostream/

22. How many real-world problems
worth solving do you see here?

23. #9: Who are you?

24. You: CEO of your Career
Hire your Advisory Board!

25. #10: Keep learning…

26. Learn, but how?
Daily Weekly Monthly Quarterly Annually Five-years Long-term
Consume
Blogs,
Articles,
Tweets,
Podcast
Meetups,
Book
Conferences MOOCs Certificate School PhD!
Create Code Tweet
Blog,
Podcast,
Vlog
Articles, Talk
at events or
school, etc.
Paper at a
Global
Conference
Publish a
Book!
What will be
your
legacy???
Collaborate Side project
Quora,
Stack
exchange
Mentor
online
Mentor
offline
Volunteer
(IEEE, ACM,
PMI, Agile,
WWW…)
What social
change you
want to see?
A global
cause so
big, it needs
all of us!!!

27. Case Study: Building Engineering
Careers at NerdWallet
• Considerations / Design Principles:
• A company’s needs, particularly startups, evolves as the company changes
• Not all skills can be evaluated in a discrete and measurable way
• All metrics are gameable
• We want engineers to adopt learning and growth mindset
• For these reasons we decided to move away from isolated enumerations of tasks and
towards more subjective statements of values and expectations for engineers with
examples provided at every level.
• We want engineers to approach software development as a craft to be mastered as
opposed to a certification or license to qualify for, and we need(ed) a job architecture as
a framework outlining a craft to master and not as a checklist or discrete set of steps to
accomplish!
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/engineering/building-engineering-career-nerdwallet/

28. Job Architecture
Leveling is a blunt instrument, but for any non-trivially sized
engineering organization, a necessary evil.
We created high-level distinctions to six levels of IC roles in
engineering:

29. Yes…we’re hiring!
https://www.nerdwallet.com/careers
https://www.keyvalues.com/nerdwallet

30. Recap

31. References
• https://hbr.org/2013/09/make-time-for-the-work-that-
matters
• http://www.eschleman.com/publications.html
• http://fortune.com/2014/11/05/career-advancement-advice/
• https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/engineering/building-
engineering-career-nerdwallet/
• https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/ten-steps-
to-a-tech-career
• https://books.producthunt.com/
• https://labs.spotify.com/2016/02/08/technical-career-path/