Mike Brevoort - Platform Architect at Slack

Junior to Senior with David Guttman

Talking Points:

• Management and Individual Contributor roles
• Career Awareness and Growth
• Technology Acceleration
• Transferability of skills between programming languages
• Negative aspects of a generalist career path
• Hirable aspects of an applicant

Quotable Quotes:

• “It’s hard to be really serious about being good at [ either management or individual contributor ] and do each well.” - MB
• “If you want to be a really great manager you really have to care about people. You have to invest your time with those people.” - MB
• “Projecting where you want to be in 5 years … is enough for a perspective shift.” - MB
• “If you are not deliberate [ about your career path ] it’s not going to happen.” - MB
• “The knowledge and the things that [ flash developers ] did and their capabilities really translated into other technologies.” - DG
• “We tend to overestimate these [ technological ] shifts; that we’ll be left behind.” - MB
• “Everyone’s path is different, but there is a lot of commonalities and there is a lot that you gain from your experience over time.” - MB
• “There are multiple skills or attributes of a person that are more important than the proficiency of the framework that you are using.” - MB
• “The thing that separates a lot of engineers from others is just your drive and ability to adapt and solve problems.” - MB
• “There’s no substitute for becoming deeply proficient in some technology.” - MB
• “When it comes down to it, this isn’t a single-player game. You have to work with teams of people.” - MB

Notes:
Mike Brevoort's
Twitter
twitter.com/mbrevoort
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/mikebrevoort
GitHub
github.com/mbrevoort
Junior to Senior Community
community.juniortosenior.io