"Redefining progress"
A principal engineer once told me they felt unproductive. They weren’t writing much code anymore, and that absence felt like a hole in their day. Coding had always been the proof of progress: commit history, tickets closed, something to point at. Now, their role was less about doing and more about influencing. And influence doesn’t come with a tidy pull request. It’s a common trap. When you move into higher-impact roles, the old signals of productivity disappear. Sitting with ambiguity, shaping direction, building alignment, none of these leave artefacts as obvious as code. It’s easy to feel like you’re doing nothing. But here’s the paradox: the less directly productive you look, the more impact you can actually have. The meeting where you help two teams agree on an approach. The question that surfaces a hidden risk. The nudge that shifts someone’s perspective. These don’t show up on a burndown chart, but they change the trajectory. For that principal engineer, the work wasn’t about being “busy” anymore. It was about making space for others to succeed. And that shift, from proving productivity to enabling impact, is what growth at senior levels really looks like. Until next time, ✉️ Enjoying The Messy Middle? If someone sent this email your way and you’d like to get it direct, you can sign up here. |