Becoming a go-to person gets you promoted. Here's how to do it as a software engineer.

The article argues that reaching senior level requires increasing scope, impact, and ownership. One of the main ways to do that is to become a go-to person in a technical area or product domain, so others seek out your advice and treat you as a leader there.

It says the best expertise area sits at the overlap of three things: what you are good at, what you are passionate about, and what creates team or company impact. If you have all three, you should invest more in that area. If one is missing, the article suggests either building that skill, finding a way to create impact, or choosing a different area. It also says visibility matters, and gives examples like leading projects, answering questions in Slack, writing documentation, solving unowned problems, creating tools, running presentations, leading recurring meetings, and starting guilds or working groups.

Reading notes

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• Senior level requires more scope, impact, and ownership.
• Becoming a go-to person is presented as one of the best ways to grow into that level.
• Expertise can be in a technical area or in a product domain.
• A go-to person is someone people ask for advice and see as a leader in that area.
• Promotion criteria from Google, Square, and Etsy are used to support the importance of deep expertise.
• The article recommends choosing an expertise area by balancing skill, passion, and team or company impact.
• If all three overlap, the advice is to double down and expand scope in that area.
• If one dimension is missing, the article suggests building skill, creating impact, or choosing a different area.
• Visibility is described as necessary, and the article says visibility is not the same as bragging.
• Ways to become visible include leading projects, following through on commitments, answering questions in Slack, documenting work, solving unowned problems, building tools, leading cross-team initiatives, creating a guild, and running recurring meetings.