A strong public brand helps software engineers in job transitions and creates opportunities, while an internal brand builds credibility within your company. In his talk about building your personal brand as a software engineer at QCon San Francisco, Pablo Fredrikson shared a story about how he helped a team struggling with a service issue, ultimately helping to improve relationships. To build your brand, define your goals, take on visible projects, and be helpful. It benefits both you and the company.
Growing your personal brand can improve your credibility, give you greater impact, and lead to better opportunities, as Fredrikson explained in the InfoQ article Why Software Developers Need to Build Their Personal Brand. As a staff plus engineer, helping others solve problems creates value for the company. His advice is to find out what you are passionate about, learn more about it, get better at it, and share it, to build your personal brand over time.
The public brand is whatever people outside of your job know about you, Fredrikson said. This is really helpful if you are looking to switch jobs, or even careers. Having a good public personal brand can lead you to better connections which you can turn into opportunities, he mentioned.
The internal brand is similar, but it’s aimed at your company. Improving your internal brand can lead you to better connections with your peers, which will improve your credibility, Fredrikson mentioned.
Fredrikson gave an example of a situation where an application was constantly failing and running out of memory. As an SRE, he noticed frequent alerts about the service going down, so he contacted the responsible team, informed them about the issue, and asked them to fix it. They acknowledged his request, but after a few days, the service was still crashing. He kept reminding them to address the issue, but the problem persisted.
Frustrated, he spoke to his manager and explained the situation:
I told them that this team had a service that kept crashing, and they weren’t fixing it. My manager asked if I had offered to help. I replied, “Why would I do that? It’s their service; it’s their responsibility.” My manager suggested that I should offer my help anyway.
He reached out to the team and offered his assistance over a video call. During the call, he realized they didn’t have the knowledge or access to the necessary tools to debug the issue. He guided them on how to access dashboards, and they conducted a debugging session together. Within 15 minutes, they had identified some potential causes. A few hours after the call, they pinpointed the exact problem and fixed it:
The team thanked me for helping them, and our relationship changed instantly. They became much more communicative and cordial. It was a great experience that taught me the value of collaboration and offering support, even when something isn’t directly my responsibility.
By joining leadership or planning discussions, you can find out what the company needs, Fredrikson said. He mentioned that you need to know your goal when you want to build your brand and think about what you want to do:
It could be building credibility, or positioning yourself as a go-to expert. Or career progression. Maybe getting noticed within your company or industry. Or transitioning roles.
Once you have your goal defined, it is time to work on building your brand that matches with that idea. “Fake it till you make it!” is a good way to start; start working as you are already in the position you want to be, make sure you get visible projects, Fredrikson said. That way your superiors will notice and you might get that promotion you are looking for.
Just be a good person, Fredrikson advised. You help others and the company. Everyone will benefit, he concluded.
