Intro

Being proactive is a truly timeless skill and will always be highly worth. It’s part of problem-solving abilities and engineers who are great at solving problems → will always thrive.

No matter how much AI progresses, such engineers will always leverage the tools to solve business/product problems and ensure they are building the RIGHT things upon their initiative.

In today’s article, I am sharing actionable tips that you can use immediately in order to be a proactive engineer, which will provide you with countless opportunities.

This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:

- What does it mean to be proactive in the engineering industry?
- Proactive engineers are the best kind of engineers
- Such engineers are getting promoted first
🔒 This is what you need to do to be a proactive engineer
🔒 Understand the bigger picture
🔒 Get better at anticipating problems
🔒 Take Initiative on improvements
🔒 Be curious and always learn new things
🔒 Communicate well
🔒 Help and support others
🔒 🎁 Notion Template: Be a proactive engineer
🔒 Last words

Resources mentioned in the article:

• Great engineering leaders create leaders (paid article)

• A good engineer thinks like a product manager (paid article)

• How to propose an impactful improvement to the codebase and own the implementation (paid article)

• 100+ resources to become a great engineering leader (paid article)

• How to be a reliable engineer (paid article)

• Best engineers are focusing on helping others (paid article)

Let’s go straight into it.

What does it mean to be proactive in the engineering industry?

There are many ways we could define proactivity, here is the definition that resonates the most with me:

Being proactive means taking initiative, anticipating challenges, and driving solutions without waiting for instructions or problems to arise.

It’s a forward-thinking mindset where you are not just reacting to tasks or issues as they come up, but actively seeking ways to improve processes, the team, and overall outcomes.

Now that we know what proactivity exactly is, let’s find out why it’s so important!

Proactive engineers are the best kind of engineers

For me, as a manager, these kind of engineers are the best kind. And the reason is that such engineers don’t need excessive instructions and they don’t need every piece of the outcome defined completely.

I can rely on them to find out exactly what needs to be done and that they will do it in the right way + timely as well.

The business and also the whole engineering organization have many challenges and a lot of such challenges are very ambiguous → you need to find out exactly what is needed and what is the reason for that specific problem to exist.

Proactive engineers thrive in ambiguous tasks and they ensure to ask all the questions to the right people so that they completely understand the problem. And after they do, they are able to provide the simplest solution to solve it.

Such a mindset is very valuable for any organization.

Such engineers are getting promoted first

And the reason is that the more you grow in any of the career paths, the more ambiguous the problems become.

People who have demonstrated good proactive abilities → will be able to thrive in such challenges, while on the contrary, people who are used to working out of well-defined tasks, will have a harder time.

As a manager, I am looking to promote people that make my role easier and that I can rely on them to get things done whenever I need them.

I am looking to promote people who are going to be an asset to me, people who can solve problems well and are able to inspire others to do the same. And people with the right attitude and mindset are exactly going to do that.

My goal as a manager is to create leaders. You can read more about my path from creating followers to leaders here: Great engineering leaders create leaders (paid article)

This is what you need to do to be a proactive engineer...