My website/newsletter exists to solve this problem - providing project ideas: <https://codingchallenges.fyi/challenges/intro>

Coding Challenge Writer @ CodingChallenges.fyi

John Crickett

How long it takes will depend on the level of support you get and the complexity of the project. I'd take the feedback at face value and take the time to evidence that you've done some work independently before asking for help.

When it comes to sharing your ideas it might help to phrase them as questions. "Could we approach it this way .... I think it could offer these benefits .... or address these challenges .... What do you think?"

Get professional advice.

Here in the UK they're taxed when they vest and you can usually elect to have enough sold to cover the tax bill, and either sell or hold the rest. 

Alternately you might elect to hold all of them and cover the tax out of pocket.

It's absolutely worth building a personal brand around both open source contributions and LinkedIn. It will take time to develop though, so I'd combine that with David's suggestion.

Getting started in simple though, just start writing and sharing what you are learning or contributing to.

They're human just like you. They have hobbies, hopes, fears and dreams too.

Talk to them just like you would any other person you meet. Get to know them as a person.

Start simple and respond to the :Hi, how are you doing" with something like: "I'm great thanks had a great weekend hiking, what about you?".

s/hiking/your hobby/

Ask questions to find out what you need.

Then be sure to document what you learn - ideally create an onboarding guide for whoever joins after you.

Every time you find a bit of friction, like the dev environment, make a small change to improve it. Over time those small changes add up and will help you and the team ship faster.

Some great responses here, one more option is to share useful things you've learned or found with the team via those group chats.

If the service hasn't been restarted in 2+ years it is clearly not a problem.

I'd agree with your TL, ideally you write reliable code that does not leak memory.

Why do you think you can't control memory leaks?

I think the other answers may have glossed over this part: "a Staff Engineer who would like to be a Fellow one day"

My approach would be to look at the existing fellows and see what they are doing. I expect that they're not just talking to the domain experts, but are positioned as one.

If that is so, then I would work to position yourself as one too. To do so, start demonstrating thought leadership by writing about the domain and ideally presenting at conferences. 

When people disagree with me, I learn from it.

I learn that I wasn't clear - and hopefully how to be clearer in future.

I learn how to better convince others when I am right.

And most of all I learn something useful when I'm wrong.

If you want to build it - just do it!

Personally I tend to do just enough reading of a book/documentation/tutorial to get started then jump into a project - I may have a slight bias here :)

Then when stuck, or just not making enough progress read a bit more to get unblocked.

If you’re not sure how, try this: ask a question or share what you are currently building/learning. If you have very few followers add the most relevant hashtag or two.

If it's anything that relates to software development or what I write about feel free to dm me the post and I'll add a like and comment if I have anything constructive to add.