What does it take to be a 100X Engineer?

How to read this document

• Being a 100X Engineer is not for everyone . . . and this is ok!
• Slower Team Members aspire to be 100X Engineer(s).
• This document explains the meaning of a 100X Engineer, what is termed to be a 100X Engineer and the education to become a 100X Engineer.
• This document explains what a 100X Engineer is or what they can be.
• The following are patterns of behavior that we have collected from our customers over the last decade.
• This is an abridged version of a much longer document.
• This document only reflects the soft skills portions of a 100X Engineer.

A Culture of Customer Obsession

• Great Engineers are driven by the customer's needs and wants as the top priority in decision-making and what engineers deliver.
• Great Engineers expect to lead and be led. In the absence of orders engineers will take charge, lead your teammates and accomplish the mission. Great Engineers lead by example in all situations.
• Exceptional candidates strive to build long-term relationships with customers based on trust, and deliver each and every day, they go above and beyond to deliver what is expected.
• Deep understanding of the customer and their journey, including pain points and opportunities for improvement are critical to being a great engineer at Slower.
• The ideal candidate actively listens and exudes empathy toward customer issues and discusses these issues with team members and leadership in a timely manner.
• Seeking answers/solutions to opportunities or problems beyond what client is asking.
• You actively gather customer feedback and incorporate it into development or service improvements to help our clients deliver above and beyond.
• The 100X Engineer will pay close attention to detail on their active projects and will not be afraid to ask for additional help from team leaders and/or team members.
• The 100X Engineer asks questions, writes down responses and actions the next steps until deliverables are successful.

Missionaries

• Great Engineers take ownership of situations involving their own projects, the customers needs, their teammates and act to complete and resolve the situation.
• 100X Engineers are Finishers, Be a Finisher not a Starter!
• The Ideal Candidate will showcase a willingness to learn and even more of a willingness to demonstrate it.
• Having the capability to assess a situation, bring forward a solution and welcome it to be challenged to gain a well rounded objective perspective is critical to success. Following through on ensuring the solution is delivered successfully is just as important–Finishers!
• A massive opportunity to contribute to the overall execution around service operations and reliability here at Slower (incident response, post-mortems, trend analysis, availability standards).
• The Ideal Candidate can provide changes to the product architecture from reliability, performance, availability perspectives with a data driven approach.
• The 100X Engineer can scope, design, and plan. All of these are great opportunities for writing each and every step down and assessing the impact of the path.
• A key skill is to be able to process feedback with professionalism, assess the situation, and not be threatened, while being able to self-assess your own opportunities to improve in every situation.
• Actively drive meetings to the core purpose and focus on coming to a resolution.
• Great Engineers “Fail forward” - they take risks openly, they ask for feedback, they self assess, learn, improve and apply.

Can you listen as Dolphins do?

• The Ideal Candidate will document word-for-word as they listen in meetings. At Slower, we call this “Dolphin”–code for Extraordinary Listening. Listening to understand first, thinking critically to assess all the options and then replying with exceptional solutions for clients that are extremely customer obsessed, i.e empathetic.. Are you up for the challenge?
• Critical to success is the ability to listen to expectations from project stakeholders and negotiate with them when you know the customer is going to unintentionally harm themselves.
• The Ideal Candidate will communicate in writing and in speech form that requires no interpretation and/or conversation required for clarification.
• Great Engineers have the capability to recall, document and voice valuable information that gives substance to an active topic being discussed in technical / non technical environments.
• High performing communicators are prepared to use their remote tools: Google Meet, Zoom, WebEx, etc. Exceptional standards and clarity in their verbal and written communications.

Empathy for the Win

• Cognitive, emotional, empathic concern are key drivers of success at Slower.
• Great Engineers express empathy while interacting with other people.
• The Ideal Candidate is excited, curious & focused, delivering, above and beyond them.
• The 100X Engineer is willing to speak clearly and is not afraid to “push-back” if they have any questions, concerns, or misunderstandings.
• Demonstrating confidence, self-awareness and empathy when dealing with partner issues are key drivers of the success of a 100X Engineer.

Building a Team Together

• Great Engineers look to help and grow others (give a person a fish vs teach a person to fish).
• The Ideal Candidate possesses the ability to acknowledge publicly when they need help.
• Vocalizing, communicating in writing and following through to fill in the gap of their knowledge is standard practice. This 100X Engineer approach strengthens the effectiveness of the team collectively.
• The Ideal Candidate thrives when working independently or collectively as a team when required.
• Act as a champion for reliability. For stable counterpart assignments, maintain awareness and actively influence stage group plans and priorities through participation in stage group meetings and asynchronous discussions.