An invitation to work with me 1:1
Methodically strengthen your core set of software engineering skills and achieve a promotion
Methodically strengthen your core set of software engineering skills and achieve a promotion
This invitation is for software engineers with over 3 years of professional development experience seeking to pinpoint their weakest engineering skills and strengthen the specific ones necessary to secure a significant promotion.
Refactor SE (software engineer) is my new program that builds on top of my first generation coaching programs. It unifies them into a single coaching and mentorship program focused on software engineer career development and progression.
After coaching and mentoring engineers for more than 2 years, I've discovered that I provide better service to my clients by concentrating on a single program rather than juggling multiple ones simultaneously (I’m applying what I help my clients understand - for greater effectiveness and a stronger impact, delve deeper into 1-2 major areas of focus at a time).
Through these previous programs, I’ve helped multiple engineers achieve promotions and raises that range between $10k - 75k.
Refactor SE empowers you to concentrate on strengthening the essential engineering skills needed to advance towards your desired promotion, embrace new challenges, and find greater personal fulfillment in software development.
We achieve this through a 3-part coaching and mentorship program that includes the following:
P1) Identify your engineering strengths, weaknesses and set your 12-month career objective(s)
This is a foundational part of developing yourself to become a next-level engineer. Determining the most impactful skills to strengthen seems deceptively straightforward to do, but let me tell you something important - it’s not.
I’ve found that most engineers struggle to articulate what they want to achieve in their career. Stuck in a cycle of never-ending user story backlogs and bug-firefighting drills, they feel unable to create time to identify what they want from their software career.
This is precisely what you’ll be able to better articulate after completing Part 1.
I use a thorough self-assessment (covers technical and soft skills) and 2 coaching sessions so that you come away with knowing the skills you need to strengthen to achieve your 12-month career objective(s).
P2) Create a foundation for growing into being promoted
When given responsibility to complete an engineering task, how effective are you at organizing yourself to deeply understand the objective and see it through to completion?
Initially, we enhance your fundamental soft skills, focusing on your capacity to articulate objectives clearly, prioritize the crucial initial steps, organize your time effectively into focused blocks, and grasp the importance of maintaining singular focus to boost productivity and reduce distractions in the workplace.
Secondly, we’ll coach you through co-creating a clear plan with your manager that lays out the steps to achieve your promotion.
Our goal is to have a clear promotion plan in place that you and your manager agree on. Your plan will be very clear on what engineering skills to strengthen, by how much, and over what time period (typically between 6 - 12 months).
P3) Achieve growth and your promotion with intensive hands-on practice
We use the foundational skills you learned from the previous two parts of the program and go hands-on with intensive software engineering skill enhancement.
Similar to athletic training, we'll recommend and work through specific software engineering practices to strengthen a single skill area at a time. Our focus is on the skills that were identified in your self-assessment and further refined in the promotion plan you co-created with your manager.
Possible practice areas might include: understanding software requirements better, writing better pseudo code, practicing advanced programming language concepts, writing effective software design documents, improving your ability to explain software architectures in plain English, using AI tools to make you more effective, writing smaller and more testable units of code, learning how to give impactful code reviews, and many others.
If I don’t yet have a practice guide for a specific skill you want to strengthen, we’ll create a new one tailored for your particular development goals.
Who is this program for?
Engineers who earn $75k or more per year and have regular experience with at least one tech stack. This includes a programming language, common libraries, and preferred frameworks.
These individuals have a strong desire and are open to identifying and strengthening their weakest engineering skills and commit to working through their practice plan to achieve their promotion.
Engineers who are a great fit for this program:
Juniors with 3 years of experience looking to be promoted to “software engineer,” dropping the “junior” part of your title/role
Mid-levels looking to finally be promoted to senior
Seniors looking to understand what comes next for them (team lead, staff or beyond? management?) and achieve this promotion
A common belief among engineers is we feel that we should be able to grow ourselves by ourselves without partnering with other experienced engineers. This program is for engineers who realize that partnering with a coach gives them a competitive advantage in becoming a more experienced engineer and achieving their promotion.
Financially investing in yourself pays you large dividends
For over 2 years, we have coached and mentored a diverse group of software engineers. We've found that our coaching programs often pay for themselves, if not more. Jim has already helped several clients achieve raises that ranged between $10k - $75k.
I encourage you to discuss with your manager or HR professional getting reimbursement for your investments to improve your engineering skills. Many companies have a Development & Learning budget specifically set aside to support engineers in investing in their career development. Don’t let this company benefit go unused for your own benefit.
*These figures are for US software engineers. The specific size of raises for engineers who work in other countries will vary.
Logistical details
Each of the 3 parts of this program is designed to build on the previous one. However, each one is also designed to achieve a specific outcome. Feel free to enroll in each part when you are ready to work on each one’s specific outcome.
Live coaching sessions
Each session is a live, virtual one-on-one meeting that lasts for 55 minutes with a highly experienced software engineering coach (you read that right - I’m beginning to partner with and build a team of experienced coaches). You’re encouraged to schedule individual sessions at the pace that works best for you (i.e., you will self-schedule each session).
In between live sessions
You have access to your coach outside of your live 1:1 sessions over private Slack messaging and email which enables you to receive support and keep moving forward in between sessions.
Next steps
If you’ve decided that you’re ready to begin working on strengthening your skills and achieve your promotion, your next step is to sign up for Part 1. I’ll ask you for some background information about yourself and your software career which will give me helpful context about you.
If you have any questions that aren’t addressed here, please be sure to check out the FAQ.
For any unanswered questions, feel free to book a free intro session. I’m here to help answer your questions. And something new I’m testing out - you can private message me right here on Substack with your questions.
For testimonials from past clients of mine, please visit here.
I look forward to meeting you and partnering with you to help you grow and advance in your software engineering career! 👋 🤝
And a final thought…my coaching isn’t right for every software engineer, but if you feel energized after learning how Refactor SE can help you, know that it’s an empowering gift to give yourself to forever change the trajectory of your software career. 🚀
Jim
