I am working on a project with sister team under my skip level manager. My manager does not manage that project. How do I approach him to ask that I want to work on a task with end-to-end ownership?

How to approach skip manager with specific task requirement?

I moved to the Bay Area to be within a denser network. However, everyone is working within their own silos, and it's hard to break them out so you can develop a deeper relationship with them.

Can you recommend some good platforms to network with other engineers in the Bay Area? I would like to meet other engineers at a similar level and working within a similar space.

I've already tried some basic things which I didn’t find much value from:
- Went to some public meetups from online sites like Meetup.com which claimed that there will be a lot of great engineers there. Once I went to these, the level of engineers didn’t match my expectations. The conversations were more generic and centered around TC.
- Get in touch with as many alumni from my college as possible.

How can I better network with other software engineers in the Bay Area?

I'm deciding between staying as an IC and becoming an EM, and I'm completely neutral right now.

When looking at the managerial role, it seems like you get more exposure around the product overall and you’re more involved within the product lifecycle end-to-end. When I look at Staff+ engineers on my team, they are more sound technically but don’t have as much impact on the product direction. As a senior engineer, I don’t understand the product much end-to-end, I'm mainly just working on features - It seems like becoming an EM is a way for me to get more of this scope.

When it comes to mentorship, I'm just mentoring some interns and no other full-time engineers. The mentoring is also more ad-hoc and unofficial - I help them out here and there, especially with onboarding.

How do I figure out whether I should stay as an IC engineer or explore management as an EM?

Does specialization matter? I have a bunch of friends working in Big Tech, and some of them at my level started growing in 1 specific area. For example, one of them started going deep into machine learning. Do you need to make that decision when you’re a mid-level/senior engineer and what’s the criteria?

Adding on to this, I see a lot of noise in the market about various degrees and certifications to help you with specializations. Things like web3, ML, or other hot topics. This, combined with what I see my peers doing, makes me feel like this is a worthwhile or even the optimal thing to do.

As a counter-example, I have a friend who chose to specialize in ML and they’re job hopping a lot as they haven't been able to find good ML work at any of their recent companies.

Does it make sense for me to choose a specialization like ML? If so, what's the impact?

VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture.

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Senior Software Engineer

This isn’t completely clear. You said you’re working on a project with a sister team already. Aren’t you already working across teams?

Why not start with your manager, even if they don’t run the project itself? They may not be able to allocate the specific work, but could determine if this is how they want to allocate your time and communicate with the right people.

Staff Eng @ Google, Ex-Meta SWE, Ex-Amazon SDM/SDE

Lee McKeeman

Similar to Lee, I'm also a bit confused by the question - Can you add more context on what "end to end ownership" looks like to you?

> How do I approach him to ask that I want to work on a task with end-to-end ownership?

Is the idea that you don't own this current project, because it's owned by the sister team? I have seen this sort of "loaning" situation happen a lot before, especially in bigger companies like VMWare. It can often feel less rewarding to engineers as they want to work on their own thing.

If this is the case for you, I recommend talking to your manager about how much credit you're getting for your efforts. Generally engineers, especially senior engineers, are rewarded for working across teams, but this will obviously vary based on the ownership structure and your contribution.

Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero, PayPal

Alex Chiou

By end to end ownership I meant I want to take end-end ownership of a feature on this project, basically drive a task from requirements to completion

Senior Software Engineer [P4]

> By end to end ownership I meant I want to take end-end ownership of a feature on this project, basically drive a task from requirements to completion

Ah okay, got it. I think you can more or less take this and ask them. Something like, *"I really like this project and want to take on more responsibility. Do you think I can own X part of it and own it from requirements to completion?"* I don't think this is a strange ask, especially since you're a senior engineer.

On top of this, I have 2 more trains of thoughts:

1. **You should do this naturally** - Something that got hammered into me as I was growing into a tech lead at Meta was *"Fill in the gaps."* If you want to own more scope end-to-end, you should start identifying problems in projects on your own and proactively solving them. Once you build a reputation as someone who's always willing to do whatever it takes to move the project forward, you'll naturally find large end-to-end ownership naturally falling on your plate. For a very good in-depth example of this, check out [my case study where I talk about becoming a tech lead again in just 1 month after onboarding at Robinhood](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/X8vpfJooDpsX915ouC00/session-3-becoming-a-tech-lead-again-in-just-1-month-after-joining-robinhood-from-meta/).
2. **Be transparent about your aspirations in general** - Promotion and growth in general should be an ongoing, transparent dialog with your manager, primarily done through your 1 on 1 meetings. If you haven't already, try [working with your manager to create a growth expectations plan](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/snuWpv8cv7Vab6Hpg4Er/understanding-how-to-empower-your-manager-to-get-the-rating-you-want/). Doing this will make asks like the one in the question less awkward and surprising when you bring it up with your manager.

At the end of the day, working in tech, or anywhere really, is all about working with other human beings. Communication is the core skill necessary to make this collaboration effective.

Senior engineers have proven themselves to be extremely capable at shipping high-quality, complex software efficiently. This collection breaks down how they operate and how you can get to this level too.

Doing this properly is a hard requirement for professional success. As a software engineer in particular, this relationship needs to be carefully navigated to achieve maximum impact.

How to approach skip manager with specific task requirement?

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