Why your best Engineers get Bored?

Marco Alabruzzo

Engineering Manager

http://marcoala.com - marco.alabruzzo@gmail.com

LeadDev - London meetup

23 October 2025

Solving the Senior Engineer Plateau

Jaluca - Bolivia, 3600 m above see level

Why are some Seniors stuck?

A senior very likely progressed to their level mostly increasing technical skills.

 

If they are on a plateau, they have probably reached a technical ceiling.

Diversify the skillset

A Senior needs a broader set of skills:

soft skills, mentoring, product, project management, leadership etc.

The challenge is:

identify what skills are interesting for them, even when they don't know yet

Ask: Do you have any medium or long-term career goals?

Are sure that they don't know?

If they have the answer, allow them to lead their personal development. 

Congratulatins, you can skip the rest of the talk! 

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What if they really don't know?

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Values

Interests

Everyday decisions

Asking questions about their decisions, we can help them narrow down their Values and Interests.

Examples of open ended questions

An open-ended question allows the respondent to choose how they answer.

Don't take the answer at face value. Ask yourself, why this person answered in this way - what values and interests influenced it.

How did you end up here?

Past career choices give you information on what their values are.

  • I really wanted to work with React-Helicopter 5, in my old place we were using React-Overcraft 7.

  • Before becoming an engineer, I was a medical professional, and now that I can work on this product, I can pursue both my passions.

  • I wanted an early-stage company to go faster and have more impact.

  • This is closer to home.

  • I was looking for a promotion, and I was offered a higher role than the one I had before.

How did you end up here?

Follow ups

  • How does this compare to your previous job?

  • Did you had other options?

Your goal is to understand what drove this big decision, which will help support their future path.

What was the highlight of last week?

(or What was the biggest achievement? Proudest victory? Happier moment)

 

  • I solved this technical problem; I worked on it for days.

  • There was this really complex bug.

  • I delivered this ticket. I think it's a great feature.

  • I helped a junior engineer.

  • I finished the planning of this new feature.

What was the highlight of last week?

Follow ups

  • What did you like about this?

  • Why were you working on this

Look for patterns: you may have a product-focused engineer who has been asked to solve a major technical challenge.

What was the biggest challenge of last week?

(or What was the low light? Most difficult moment)

  • Often, this is the opposite of the highlight. Follows the same rules.

  • Allows you to gauge the size of the challenge. Do they need help?

  • "There was no big challenge last week"

What is the right level of challenge?

In the 70s, a Hungarian-American psychologist, Csikszentmihalyi,  started studying happiness.

 

He discovered a mental state where a person is fully absorbed, performing at their best, and experiencing a sense of timelessness, challenge, and control.

 

He called it Flow.

Flow

Are you working on what you do best?

This is an indirect way of asking:

  • Are you working on something that you enjoy?

  • What else could you be working on right now?

If they don't know how to answer, just move on, and let them sit with it.

Recap

Help them decide

Right challenge level

Infrequent questsions

Frequent questions

Do you have any medium or long-term career goals?

How did you end up here?

What was the highlight of last week?

What was the biggest challenge of last week?

Are you working on what you do best?

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Values

Interest

Decisions

Thanks!!!

https://slides.com/marcoala/senior-engineer-plateau 

 Carrots and sticks

"If you don't do this you will have a bad review."

"You need to be good at this."

"If you become good at this, you will get more money."

 Carrots and sticks

Don't work for creative tasks

A reward reduced resolution time for simple tasks.

Increases it for complex task.

Sam Glucksberg, “The Influence of Strength of Drive on Functional Fixedness and Perceptual Recognition,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 63 (1962)

A reward reduced distraction time slightly, but when it was removed, the distraction time increased.

Edward L. Deci, "Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation" . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1971)

 

 Carrots and sticks

Don't work for creative tasks

A fine was introduced in childcare facilities to reduce lateness.

 

Lateness increased until it stabilised to almost twice the original value.

Uri Gneezy, Aldo Rustichini. "A Fine is a Price" . The Journal of Legal Studies (2000)