At AMC Bridge, employees can choose the direction of their career growth. Someone prefers the technical vector and develops horizontally: improves expertise, studies new technologies, and shares knowledge with teammates during meetups. Employees who have chosen such a direction go from the position of a trainee or junior developer to a senior level or become technical experts at the company.
Others see themselves on a managerial position. At AMC Bridge, the PM and operations director roles require deep technical domain knowledge, too; however, good communication skills are required as well. After all, it is not only about organizing the teamwork but also about interaction with clients at different stages of project implementation. By the way, all our colleagues who currently hold such positions have grown up at AMC Bridge, some of them joined the team as trainees.
Also, sooner or later, all employees go through the team leader position. And it does not depend on the chosen direction. Team leader at AMC Bridge is not a permanent role, but it is an integral part of professional development. After all, employees gain experience in organizing teamwork and communicating with clients due to this role.
We asked AMC Bridge employees about the opportunities for career and professional growth they had chosen for themselves, the difficulties they had encountered on the way, what one should learn to become a good project manager, and whether technical roles require soft skills. You are welcome to read about it on our blog.
To gain good expertise, one needs time
Maksym Danyliuk, Software Development Engineer, AMC Bridge
I am a junior developer. Although I carry out no managerial responsibilities, I enjoy communicating and giving a helping hand to my teammates when it’s necessary. Having started my career at AMC Bridge as a trainee on a research project Editor’s Note: AMC Bridge educational projects on which trainees work before switching to client projects, I’ve learned that communication itself and cooperation with a team leader or mentor are bare essentials for a newbie.
Apart from hard skills, I’ve decided to develop my soft and mentoring skills. I think a good start is to become a team leader on a research project. It will help expand my technical expertise, take on more responsibility, and ensure the development of my teamwork and managerial skills.
To my mind, it’s vital to go deep into the things you do, know the primary challenges you may face, and have a good grasp of industry specifics. Along with the technology that is currently used on the project, you need to acquire more knowledge about other related technologies. Don’t be afraid of more responsibility. Frankly speaking, I can’t boast about learning much apart from work. Mostly, I read more about technologies I work with to get a better understanding of the project functionality. Since I write code in C++, I monitor new language standards and try to implement the latest constructions and features.
Expertise is your key advantage as you can’t develop it within a short period of time. And when you learn something new—and you do it daily—you strengthen your arsenal of professional skills. As a result, you can see things differently. You dive into the context easier and faster, navigate through tasks successfully, estimate and prioritize them efficiently, and manage your time better. In addition to effective problem-solving, you also learn to consider a problem from a global perspective, paying attention to various factors. Put together, all these skills help find common and effective ways of solving a problem. What’s more, communication with the team becomes more native, productive, and clearer.
I doubt the obtained experience can be measured quantitatively. However, when you are experienced enough and have the vision you want to share, you definitely should take part in discussions at meetings or during code reviews.
Do not advise when you are not asked for it
Anastasiia Fedina, Software Development Engineer, AMC Bridge
I’ve chosen to develop as a technical specialist. That’s why I focused on upgrading the skills that a good developer requires.
When speaking about programming, it’s crucial to learn new things and sharpen your skills continuously. One more highly demanded ability is to practice accepting a failure as an experience and not stop searching for new approaches. Just look at the issue from different perspectives instead of claiming it as the one that can’t be resolved.
Over some time, I came to the conclusion that it’s better to work out and implement the early conceptual framework and only then improve it, adding new details. The practical experience shows that it’s quite difficult and time-consuming to think it out at the very beginning. I also realized that even if tasks seem to be easy, they should be carefully analyzed to avoid bugs in the future. That’s why I spend a little bit more time on easy tasks but resolve complicated issues much faster.
If you are experienced in solving a particular kind of issue, it’s always an interesting challenge to find a new, improved solution. Of course, one can interpret it as taking a lot of initiative; however, in my opinion, it’s about effective management of your responsibilities.
Probably, the best way to share your expertise is to become a team leader for the recently onboarded AMC Bridge employee. The main thing to keep in mind: give advice only when they are required. No matter how much you want to train someone to do the job properly, the knowledge acquired by yourself is the most solid.
Learn planning and develop soft skills
Vladyslav Taran, Project Manager, AMC Bridge
11 years ago, I got my feet wet in the profession. Since then, I have been working at AMC Bridge. At the company, a PM influences not only effective communication and process management but the overall project architecture. Thus, almost all PMs are also technical experts in the area of software development and testing. It allows taking an active part in product development and, in my opinion, makes the role of PM more interesting. Given that specifics, I simultaneously developed my hard and soft skills while working as a team leader.
To my mind, soft skills are an equally important part of every or almost every job. Furthermore, they should be improved regardless of the employee’s position as effective communication is highly critical for a productive team. At the same time, I don’t think that soft skills can be acquired immediately or after completing some specialized courses. I truly believe that the most crucial aspect here is communication with different people and coherent analysis of that communication.
I think that an employee who shares ideas only on request has a limited perception of the role. If you work in a healthy work environment, everyone is welcome to suggest solutions and improvements. That’s where opportunity generates responsibility. If you can’t freely share new ideas or your opinion is ignored, the best turnaround is to improve your work environment and make it comfortable.
At AMC Bridge, this process is absolutely transparent, and you can offer improvements at any level. We still maintain the spirit of a startup, which ensures excellent opportunities to perform at our best.
For now, I learn to be a good project manager. My responsibilities are changed. I had no practical experience in conducting some procedures. Thus, I dove into a large volume of information available on our corporate resources.
It’s an interesting new experience. One of the challenges so far is to upgrade the obtained skills and improve the ability to delegate. There is no much sense in trying to handle everything yourself. But it’s a good chance for your direct rapports to not miss out on valuable learning opportunities.
The one more observable change in my daily routine is an increased number of meetings, which caused the necessity to effectively manage my schedule, taking into account the interests of many other participants.
I am always ready to share acquired knowledge, either by taking part in a meetup or a conference. However, I don’t really like when speakers use much common knowledge or talk about well-known facts. To my mind, a trigger of a good presentation is sharing a personal experience or results of investigations. Currently, the focus of my attention is shifted to effective process establishment. It’s quite challenging for me to combine PM’s and developer’s responsibilities as it’s necessary to switch between various activities many times a day.
In the nearest future, I want to continue improving my managerial skills and focus more on app architecture.
Delegate responsibilities and trust your teammates
Mykola Ziubrii, Project Manager, AMC Bridge
I entered IT almost 9 years ago, 5 of which I have been working at AMC Bridge. What I know for sure is that a developer who makes no effort will make no progress. It goes without saying that you have to be a professional at what you do. But the ambitions by which you are driven and the focus of the activity, which always switches, identify the route to self-improvement, and, of course, salary increment.
When I was promoted to project manager, my scope of responsibilities enlarged immensely. I was stuck in tons of details. My schedule was filled out with a great number of meetings. And the cherry on top was that I had to take on more responsibility. Am I missing anything? To be honest, I suffered at first. In a month, I realized that I couldn’t deal with all of it. Thus, in emergency mode, I learned to delegate tasks and develop trustful relations with many people. When you work as a developer in a small team or a team leader on short-term projects, you are not concentrated on these things.
I made a significant effort to improve my self-management. Instead of a couple of tasks, I kept 10 in mind and 20 more in my notepad. And this was accompanied by numerous emails in Outlook, endless messages in MS Teams, and regular meetings. But at least I am sure Alzheimer’s disease won’t affect me due to such a diverse activity of the brain.
Frankly speaking, I still work at improving the processes on the entrusted projects. It takes a lot of time, and not just the working one. Therefore, I am pressed for time to learn new things, but I regularly fill in the gaps that appear during particular task execution.
Later I plan to focus on reading philosophical texts about project management, and probably I’ll reach Zen. But let’s leave it for the future; meanwhile, I have to get a handle on how everything works.
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