Hacking and Tracking your Career

Employees, especially those earlier in their career, often expect managers to provide a plan for career growth. Experienced managers know this effort needs to be collaborative or it will likely fall flat. Employees that take an active role in this process will have more agency in shaping their career. This talk is geared towards individual contributors (ICs), but still applicable to people managers. We’ll demonstrate how to translate your company’s ladder into the skeleton of a Career Development Plan (CDP). A custom CDP is a powerful tool that can help you during promotions and makes filling out self-reviews a breeze. It’s also a durable document that will help protect you from career setbacks when you switch teams, your manager leaves, or when you change companies. Another aspect of shaping your career is being comfortable talking about your accomplishments. We’ll briefly cover how to make your work visible to others. This combined with a CDP helps you achieve whatever’s next. This could be Senior to Staff AppSecEng, IC to manager, or changing disciplines from CloudSec to CorpSec. The most consistent person in your career is you, make sure you are recognized for your work.

Transcript

1. Hacking and Tracking Your Career Leif Dreizler Misha Yalavarthy 😢
2. About Me Present • Security Engineering Manager @ Semgrep • Advisor at Panther • Active member of various groups (Women in Trust, WiCys, D&R) • Budding startup investor with Venture in Security Past • Detection & Response Manager @ Sentry • Senior Security Engineer @ Cloudflare • Security Engineer @ ServiceNow Misha Yalavarthy
3. About Me 🍃 Leif Dreizler @leifdreizler @404pod Present • Senior Engineering Manager @ Semgrep • Co-host of “404: Security not found” • Start-up investor & advisor Past • Senior EM, Security Features @ Twilio Segment • Conference organizer & OWASP chapter leader
4. What’s Semgrep? Semgrep Code Scan code you write Semgrep Supply Chain Scan dependencies Semgrep Secrets Scan for exposed credentials 4
5. Agenda • How do performance reviews work? • How to you prepare throughout the year • Getting recognized for your work • Ladder-based career conversations • Preparing for promotions The slides are on <>!
7. Who is this talk for? Individual contributors (IC) • Insight into how a layer above you operates Managers • Areas you can coach your team Both managers and ICs • Things you can apply to your own career
8. Our philosophy • You are responsible for much of your own career development! • Your manager should play an active role Nobody else will be with you your whole career!
9. What to Prepare For
11. Year Round Events • Performance review season ◦ Self reviews ◦ Peer reviews 3-5 outbound requests ◦ Manager reviews
12. Year Round Events • Promotions only reviews
13. Promotion Prep • Promo Packets ◦ List of accomplishments ◦ Reviews ◦ Projects ◦ Any other supporting documents
14. Calibration
15. Manager changes as an IC • Use your notes to onboard your manager • Assume your old manager isn’t going to document anything
16. Changes as a Manager • Your reports may change teams • You may leave the company • You also have a manager, and this person can change!
17. Unpredictable Changes • Reorgs ◦ They happen, sometimes they are painful, sometimes they are welcomed ◦ How do you best prepare yourself so you keep your progress on track? • Role or Team Changes
18. Year-round artifacts
19. Engineering design docs • Write down a plan for your work • Socialize your plan and get buy in • Document milestones and estimate the required work • Be explicit about things you aren’t doing • Testing/supportability/metrics https:/ /segment.com/blog/track-meaningful-security-product-metrics
20. Project Retrospectives (retros) • Intro • Links to docs • Timeline • What went well? • What went wrong? • What did you learn?
21. Quarterly Team Retros
22. Weekly notes • Myself • My manager • People on my team • People I work with closely
23. Year-round artifacts • Engineering design documents • Project retros • Team retros • Weekly notes
25. Why should I do this? • Time commitment is low • At some point you will need this information ◦ Updating your LinkedIn ◦ Your résumé ◦ Writing your self-review • Great for onboarding a new manager • Reminds your current manager what you’ve accomplished
26. How do I make one? • Month • What • Impact ◦ Metrics! “Built feature x, used by 10% of our customers” > “Built feature x” • Notes
27. Getting recognized for your work
28. Why is this important? • Helps your peers stay informed about what people are working on • Technical communication skills are invaluable throughout your career • It’s important that people understand your areas of expertise ◦ Interesting project opportunities ◦ Chances to mentor others • Helps support you during calibrations
29. Ways to share your work • Sign up for demos • Post in Slack • Recognize teammates for their contributions to projects • Contribute to docs/give internal trainings • Write blogs/speak at events
30. Blogging/speaking tips • Everything starts with an outline! • Content helps your team with recruiting • Many podcasts and local meetup groups need speakers • Make your title and talk abstract attention grabbing, yet informative • Everyone gets rejected, this talk got rejected from another conference Don’t forget to add these activities to your hype list!
31. Resources for blogging/speaking • https:/ /leif.substack.com/p/the-infosec-community-needs-you-yes • https:/ /leif.substack.com/p/share-the-spotlight-creating-a-culture • https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHDUVzrpZEk&t=13250s Reminder! Our slides are linked on <> 🙂
33. Ladder Based Self Reviews and Career Convos
35. Understanding Ladders • Understand or Implement Career Ladders • Helps to push for a more fair process and standard across teams • There are publicly published ladders, like progression.fyi • If your company doesn’t have ladders, can you bring them in?
36. Career Conversations • Have regular career convos • Coordinate the convos with perf reviews • Assess promotion-readiness together • More frequent convos for early career engineers can be helpful
37. Forming your Deconstructed Career Ladder
38. Filling out the Details • Granular assessment of each point in each section • Can take a long time the first time around • Add in delta from last round • First time will take longer • Do it separately from your manager to reduce bias
39. Review Ratings • Ideally you and your manager agree about your rating • Collaborate to identify opportunities to show mastery • A difference in rating can be challenge Meets Meets Some Close Off Track No Opportunity Yet Exceeds Mixed
40. Tip for Improving Ladders • When reviewing the ratings, think about improvements you can make • Give feedback on ladders • A lot of organizations have separate ladders for Security Engineers
41. Promotion Thesis
42. Promotion thesis template • Why now? • What’s the case for promotion? • What’s the case against promotion?
44. Preparing for promotion • Try to work on a promotion packet collaboratively • Complete the deconstructed ladder for current and next level • Not all promotions get approved ◦ Are there things you can address before next promo cycle? ◦ Helps seed the idea that you might be ready next time!
45. Tip for Calibration Prep • Cheat sheets with pre-written answers ◦ Set yourself up to answer questions confidently and quickly • Get support from managers beforehand
46. Closing thoughts • Take steps to own your career development • Ask your manager how important processes work • Have ladder-based career conversations • Document progress and setbacks throughout the year • Celebrate wins! 🎉
47. Questions? @leifdreizler @mishayalavarthy <> https://leif.substack.com https://mishayalavarthy.com