How product engineering made Chad McElligott a better platform leader

As an engineer, you can’t afford to stop learning. From the moment you start to code it’s critical to stay up to date with technical communities, trends and developments.

Stepping into a leadership role only amplifies this need, according to our latest guest Chad McElligott Senior Staff Engineer at Smartrr. For success today, you have to be deeply in tune with modern tech, the newest strategies, and perhaps most importantly — your team. Balancing innovation with practicality can make the difference between successful implementation and functionality and a squandered organization left behind in a whirlwind of buzzwords and inefficiencies. Now more than ever, platform engineering plays a vital role in supporting developers and elevating an organization to the next level.

Join us as we discuss:

• Developing a customer first mentality
• The importance of over communication, being methodical and fostering an open environment
• A Platform Engineer’s role in ensuring development efficiency

A customer-first mindset

After graduating from college, Chad worked for a small, local medical software company as a product developer.

“Working there, I got a taste for not having boundaries around the work I was doing. Everything that had to do with making the customers' lives better was part of my job,” Chad says.

Chad highlights the importance of entering discussions with your customers with eyes wide open, always trying to find a pain point or discomfort that your platform team can solve or improve, even with the happiest, most satisfied engineers.

“Understand the impact your work will have on the systems you work on — and, in turn, your customers,” Chad says. 

Over communicating with customers and peers

As a platform leader (or anyone really), over communication is one of the most critical skills you can start to develop. By having an extremely transparent and open environment, it becomes easy to build a support network within your company. 

“When I am sharing something new with my team, I never expect to say it just once,” Chad says. “Reinforcing and repeating lead to understanding and support.” 

Over communication helps to prevent problems, misunderstandings and delays. At the same time, if something negative were to arise, over communication creates allies that will work with you to quickly solve the dilemma. 

The online water-cooler space

When over communicating becomes an organizational norm, people are quicker to speak their minds, and share their interests (and their problems). Even when the topics are not groundbreaking, next-level ideas, the spirit of open communication is what matters most. 

“With every business that I have been a part of, I have tried to find an online water-cooler space for people to share their thoughts,” Chad says. 

By having a comfortable, informal area built for discussion, the team feels more comfortable and connected. This culture of inclusivity ensures the entire team feels that their voices matter. With this important tool in hand, it becomes second nature to share thoughts, especially when a great idea, solution or even a potential problem arises. 

Even within the online water-cooler space, great ideas can develop through seemingly random conversations. 

“I tend to be quite introverted, so it takes a lot of work for me to be able to do this. But, it is so valuable, that I can’t not do it,” Chad says.

Continued and constant education

Working in a rapidly changing sector, staying in front of developments and advancements is crucial to remain relevant and continue providing high value to your customers. 

When entering a conference or course, Chad recommends doing your homework beforehand, walk into a new situation with some level of knowledge on the topic, no matter how small that may be. 

“Continued and constant learning is the only way to continue offering ideas and solutions that are the best of their breed,” Chad says. “You have to utilize tech solutions that work today, not something that was carried over from a decade ago.” 

Want to learn more about evolving your teams and becoming a stronger platform leader? Listen to the latest episode of Level Up on Spotify, Apple Music or wherever you find your podcasts.

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