6 Ways for Software Engineers to Show Impact Outside of Their Teams

Noran Azmy
3 min readFeb 28, 2022
Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Tech companies typically expect senior engineers to show initiative and impact beyond their smaller teams, and in areas outside of coding. Here are some of the ways you can demonstrate leadership and good citizenship at work on your path to a more senior role.

1. Give a tech talk

One of the easiest ways to show impact outside of your team is by communicating with other teams. If you happen to be familiar with a particular tool, technology, or API that another team is interested in using, try offering to give a short tech talk or writing a how-to guide on the subject.

2. Maintain documentation

Another great way to share information is to maintain part of the documentation on your team’s APIs that other teams are likely to use. If your documentation tool doesn’t automatically support freshness checks, it’s a good idea to set calendar reminders every six months or so to take a look at the documentation you own and update it as necessary.

3. Interview candidates for hiring

Many companies see interviewing new candidates as extra-curricular work that shows good citizenship and cross-team impact.

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Noran Azmy

A software engineer who enjoys writing on a variety of topics, including personal development, productivity, learning, books, politics, and social issues.