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Engineering Leadership

Software Development Superstream: Becoming a Senior Software Engineer

Published by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Beginner content levelBeginner

Contribute at a high level, drive big projects, and determine tech strategy

As software development grows more complicated and becomes increasingly central to a business’s identity, the demand is high for developers who operate at a senior level. Join us to level up your skills and accelerate your journey to senior software engineer. These in-depth sessions cover some of the biggest challenges facing software developers today, teaching you practical methods and best practices to improve coding and software design, better manage data, mentor new engineers, and collaborate with your team.

About the Software Development Superstream Series: This two-part event series will help you elevate your technical skills, become a better project manager, and build the other professional skills that will allow you to move into senior engineering roles.

What you’ll learn and how you can apply it

  • Learn how to contribute at a high level, drive big projects, and determine tech strategy
  • Understand what's really important for career development
  • Determine what you should be working on, set your goals, and define your backlog of work

This live event is for you because...

  • You’re a developer who wants to find your skills gaps and upskill accordingly to move to the senior or staff level.
  • You want to better understand what work matters the most at every stage of your career and learn how to build the skills you need to support your journey.

Prerequisites

  • Come with your questions
  • Have a pen and paper handy to capture notes, insights, and inspiration

Recommended follow-up:

Schedule

The time frames are only estimates and may vary according to how the class is progressing.

Sam Newman: Introduction (5 minutes) - 8:00am PT | 11:00am ET | 4:00pm UTC/GMT

  • Sam Newman welcomes you to the Software Development Superstream.

Trisha Gee: Career Advice for Programmers (50 minutes) - 8:05am PT | 11:05am ET | 4:05pm UTC/GMT

  • Do you know how to avoid being “promoted” to a position that doesn’t involve technology and code? Did your university program teach you the social skills you need to be a good developer? Or the other “nontechnical” skills that are required? Did you know that all development roles are not created equal? Is it true that moving jobs a lot is a bad thing? Join Trisha Gee to hear some lessons she learned the hard way over 20+ years as a Java developer. You’ll discover what's really important when planning your career as a developer and get tools for working out your next steps. If nothing else, you’ll get to laugh at the (many) mistakes Trisha’s made in her search for the “Perfect Job.”
  • Trisha Gee is a Java Champion and author. Trisha has developed Java applications for a range of industries of all sizes, including finance, manufacturing, and nonprofit, and she led the Java advocacy team at JetBrains. She has expertise in Java high-performance systems and dabbles with open source development. Trisha’s exceptionally passionate about sharing things that help real developers. That might be getting them up to speed on the latest version of Java, teaching them tips and tricks to save time with IntelliJ IDEA, or promoting healthy technical communities across the globe. And she values helping all developers level up their careers and skills at every step of their journey. Learn more in her books Getting to Know IntelliJ IDEA, Head First Java, 97 Things Every Java Developer Should Know, and What to Look for in a Code Review.
  • Break (5 minutes)

Sabrina Leandro: Setting Goals as a Senior Individual Contributor (50 minutes) - 9:00am PT | 12:00pm ET | 5:00pm UTC/GMT

  • Sabrina Leandro shares how to define your development journey as a senior individual contributor. You’ll learn how to figure out what you should be working on, set your goals, and define your backlog of work. You’ll also discover how to track your progress so you can keep growing as an engineering leader in the individual contributor track.
  • Sabrina Leandro is a principal product engineer at Intercom. She enjoys working in cross-functional teams developing useful and delightful products while maintaining long-lived and healthy code bases. Sabrina has helped shape the product development process at a number of companies and is always looking for new and better ways for people to work together.
  • Break (5 minutes)

’Wolé Solana: You Know Nothing, Tech Lead (50 minutes) - 9:55am PT | 12:55pm ET | 5:55pm UTC/GMT

  • As a technical leader on a project, are you supposed to know everything about everything? Does it matter if you don't? ’Wolé Solana explores how to develop a mindset that’s comfortable with not knowing and how it’s still possible to create and maintain healthy, strong, and performant technical teams.
  • ’Wolé Solana is a lead consultant at Thoughtworks, with over nine years of experience consulting, coaching, and delivering software for clients in the airline, retail, finance, oil and gas, social media, pharmaceutical, and government sectors. Previously, he worked in engineering and financial consulting and conducted research in the physics of photovoltaic devices and mathematical biology. ’Wolé’s main areas of software development focus include full stack development of iOS and web applications using technologies such as Swift, Python, React, Angular, Node.js, Java, Ruby on Rails, Kotlin, and Ansible.
  • Break (5 minutes)

Heidi Helfand: Being a Senior Engineering Leader (50 minutes) - 10:50am PT | 1:50pm ET | 6:50pm UTC/GMT

  • Looking to get into a senior leadership role? Want to build in some skills now that you can put into play later? Heidi Helfand shares insights on and practical tips for senior engineering leaders based on her experience as a director and engineering VP. You’ll learn how to balance your time and focus with your peers and with your reports, when to delegate (and when not to), how to bring clarity with decision making frameworks, and crucially, how to maintain a focus on software delivery while also navigating inevitable organizational change.
  • Heidi Helfand is author of the book Dynamic Reteaming. She coaches software development teams using practical people-focused techniques, with the goal of building resilient organizations and keeping them that way as they double and triple in size. Over her 20+-year career in tech, she helped launch Procore Technologies and take AppFolio to IPO and Expertcity to acquisition by Citrix. She was on the original development team that built GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar.

Sam Newman: Closing Remarks (5 minutes) - 11:40am PT | 2:40pm ET | 7:40pm UTC/GMT

  • Sam Newman closes out today’s event.

Upcoming Software Development Superstream events:

  • Building Better Software - September 20, 2023

Your Host

  • Sam Newman

    Sam Newman is a technologist focusing on the areas of cloud, microservices, and continuous delivery—three topics which seem to overlap frequently. He provides consulting, training, and advisory services to startups and large multinational enterprises alike, drawing on his more than 20 years in IT as a developer, sysadmin, and architect. Sam is the author of the best-selling Building Microservices and Monolith To Microservices, both from O’Reilly, and is also an experienced conference speaker.

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