From Geek to Star #20 - Are you ready to SHINE?

If you missed the previous episodes, you can access them online here.

🗓️ This Week – Episode 20: The SHINE Reveal

First, a personal note. This weekend I've just turned 51 years old 🙂. Thank you for reading and replying in the past weeks, this little group has grown to ~95 subscribers with a ~60% constant open rate! You really encourage me to take time to think and write this newsletter every week!

If you appreciate this newsletter, please forward today’s issue to some friends or teammates - slowly but surely, my birthday wish 🧞is to nurture a worldwide fellowship gathered by engineers / leaders brilliantly succeeding in their career and promoting “Tech for Good” values. 

Over the last weeks, we explored one by one the traits I believe define successful tech engineers and leaders in this AI-age through dedicated newsletters. You’ve seen each piece in practice:

S (Soft Skills) → NL#7 & NL#12,

H (Hard Skills, AI-augmented) → NL#8 & NL#13,

I (Industry Knowledge) → NL#9 & NL#14,

N (Nurturing your Network & your Curiosity) → NL#10 & NL#15,

E (Experience) → NL#11 & NL#16. 

To be fully transparent, this framework was inspired by a framework called SHIME, a Fintech Skills Framework. Thinking over it, I made a an open-source style "fork” to shape something directly useful for us engineers.

✨SHINE is easy to remember - the name of this framework speaks for itself: helping you to level up across different dimensions to be fully recognized. Whether you want to stay in an expert / individual contributor role or to climb up the management ladder, you aspire to be recognized and compensated well: this is what the SHINE framework is all about.

S: Soft skills are not the area where most engineers feel at ease. Communication, Presentation, Empathy, Social and Emotional intelligence, Storytelling, Negotiation, Teamwork skills: these skills are essential to grow if you want to go to the next level.

H: Hard skills (problem solving, critical thinking, architecture design, specifying, coding, data analysis, AI augmentation… skills) will continue to be your core strength but you will also keep refreshing and improving them, adapting to the new realities - for example structuring more documentation and specs tomorrow maybe than writing code.  

I: Industry Knowledge. To increase your perceived and real value in the eyes of management, business colleagues or even on the job market, “shifting left” as we say in tech is also something essential. Not just having knowledge in the technical field but also having business knowledge like your business colleagues will multiply your impact as you will be the one able to connect the dots across organisational silos - and use your soft skills to communicate and show your insights. 

N: Nurturing your network and your curiosity. Agree, it's kind of two in one but it makes it easier to remember as an acronym. Nurturing your network is essential for you to grow as it is going to become more and more difficult to ride solo in this complex world. Solidarity between people of similar values will help a lot. And nurturing your curiosity will help to foster your creativity to address complex issues in a holistic way.

E: Real experience from the trenches is most valuable - this is a unique feature only you have. Not another one, not AI. This multiplies your relevance, so developing experience as much as possible and knowing how to leverage on it is key. Even if you are a student or a young graduate, you can create experience before landing a first job. 

🙏 I’d Love to Hear From You

Any thoughts about this SHINE framework? Where do you think you want to progress most?

Reply to this email, I read every note.

And don’t forget: follow me on LinkedIn for more reflections and “behind-the-scenes” thinking between newsletters. Don't hesitate to engage discussions there in the comments to also start showing and sharing your thoughts publicly. 

A birthday gift for me? 🎁

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to few friends or colleagues. Let’s nudge this fellowship together!

✨ May you SHINE more each day than the day before!

From Geek to Star by Khang | The Way Forward