So you made it as a technical leader, you are now a high-level contributor. You might even have a formal staff-level title – finally! You are working on big picture projects and programs that change the way the organisation works. But!
As work continues to happen I have experienced that I need to rely even more on guiding myself than being guided. “You’re on Your Own Kid” as Taylor Swift sings. Besides target setting I need my formal manager less for the domain specific decision-making and specific strategies. As a high-level individual contributor I have learned that this is no longer a given. She has a different domain background from me, so I need to work more on my own – both towards understanding the organisation and towards my own continued development.
Jitesh Gosai, Principal Tester, became a principal tester in 2019 and shares how the work has developed over the last five years:
- From being guided to guiding yourself
- From having a team to building a network
- From fixing problems to playing to your strengths
- From clear definitions to complex realities
The first point is important. It does take a bit of a mindset change – especially for us experienced folks.
We need ways to read the organisation and understand our own position to continue to make the impact we want to give. You will sometimes be missing the formal frameworks of management or the formal training that managers might get in One-on-One’s, coaching and budgeting. If you want it, you have to work for it. Or swap between management roles and individual contributor roles. [Charity Majors,Questionable Advice: “My boss says we don’t need any engineering managers. Is he right?” 2024, https://charity.wtf/2024/01/05/questionable-advice-my-boss-says-we-dont-need-any-engineering-managers-is-he-right/]
There are ways to address this feeling. You can sharpen your Staff+ axe in many places: book clubs, testing communities, conferences, and even play strategy games. Tanya Reilly says it’s even job level research to play Civilization! [See page 65 Tanya Reilly, 2022, The Staff Engineer’s Path, https://www.noidea.dog/staff ]
I’m sure many staff-level testers often have an identity crisis. Maaike Brinkhof, experienced test consultant, shares her journey out and into testing again:
Most importantly, I now have a ton of experience under my belt. I know what doesn’t work for me, and I have learned how to speak about testing with people who don’t understand the profession. I have more vocabulary at my disposal, and examples that illustrate that testing isn’t only a process of test cases and automation.
Maaike Brinkhof, Why do so many testers have an identity crisis? 2025, https://www.maaikebrinkhof.nl/why-do-so-many-testers-have-an-identity-crisis/
[ Most of this post is original content from my recent book, grab it below ]