As a smart generalist in tech, there will be times when you feel you lack the technical skills you need to be successful. Maybe you’re working on a new product, project, or team, and are out of your depth. As someone who’s pushed relentlessly towards new challenges and transitioned into increasingly technical roles in my career, I’ve had many moments of confronting the question of if I was “technical enough” to have the positive impact I wanted.
In this post, I’ll share some of my learnings on how to navigate a career when you’re worried you don’t have the technical skills you need to thrive. To find out where to start, let’s go back a few years to my first full-time “tech” role in 2015:
I was a few months into my job as a business/marketing generalist at Kamcord, a startup that had raised $15 million in funding a year earlier. Kamcord’s founders had just pivoted the company to a new product direction: mobile live streaming. This was a bold, all-in bet for the startup. Despite having basically no technical expertise, I wanted to support the team at this critical moment.
Ahead of the launch, we partnered with a big gaming influencer to do his first live event on Kamcord. If this event succeeded, we would turbocharge new user growth; if it failed, so would our ability to get other content creators and their fans to try Kamcord. But we had no idea how many of the influencer’s fans would watch since it was his first-ever live stream—a big enough spike in traffic would cause our entire platform to go down.
To prepare, I did dozens of practice live streams to test and optimize the setup. I spent hours on the phone with the influencer, helping him prepare. I investigated adjacent spaces and studied the influencer’s YouTube viewership to anticipate how much traffic this event would drive. Finally, I recommended to Kamcord’s CEO that I and a senior engineer should be at the office and “on call” for the event, ready to handle any scaling issues. Our CEO trusted this recommendation—and wanted to join us to see this event through. No pressure!
Saturday night, the three of us were in the office monitoring the situation, fueled by adrenaline and pizza. When the influencer went live, to our surprise, the number of viewers skyrocketed past even our most optimistic estimates. Despite the crazy number of fans, the site stayed up, and the streamers and their fans were happy (and clueless to how much happened behind-the-scenes).
How did we get here? And how did I, a generalist with no notable prior technical experience, manage to work hand-in-hand with our CEO and engineers?
Leading up to this moment, I...
Started ‘Dogfooding” our products.
Built rapport with my coworkers.
Scaled my learnings.
Let’s dive into each of these takeaways for the generalist trying to contribute to the success of their company without heavy technical skills...
1. Dogfooding our products.
When I first joined Kamcord, my job was to get game developers to integrate Kamcord’s software so their players could create and share videos on our mobile app. I was not familiar with gaming, software, or how to work with developers. I didn’t have the coding chops to try to integrate Kamcord’s software, but I wanted to get familiar with the product.
I downloaded a bunch of mobile games and Kamcord’s app and examined how different developers integrated our software. I shared my laughably amateur gameplay videos and engaged with other Kamcord users. By using our products (also known as “dogfooding”) and being relentlessly curious and resourceful, I was able to learn about our users—both the game players and the developers. I scoured the App Store for new games as an “early adopter” and tested them all. I listened to our users’ feedback and deeply understood many of their pain points because I was immersed in our products. If the product or feature you want to dig into isn’t consumer-facing, you can still dive into documentation and learn about the data, architecture, design, and success/failure criteria.
Actually explore your team’s stack and systems. Get access to staging environments and Beta builds (e.g. TestFlight), where you can test features before they launch. Join your team’s GitHub, JIRA, or whatever tools your engineers use to collaborate and track issues. Even if you can’t code (I can’t!) and are scared of breaking things (I am!) you should be able to get view access. Don’t let yourself glaze over as you read—try to understand the code. Learn how the engineers get help when they don’t know something technical, then practice approaching questions yourself in this way.
2. Building rapport.
At Kamcord, I would make a big pot of morning coffee when I was the first one in the office and then catch up with coworkers over the fresh brew. I showed up to everyone’s bug bashes to help test new features, and went on lengthy lunch-and-chat walks with engineers.
Now that you are familiar with the tech stack, you have the context and language to ask good questions and earn the trust of more technical team members. So, get caffeinated, and get to know your team. If you’re working remotely, look for ways to recreate the casual coffee chat atmosphere—get together for “virtual” coffee time or a safe, socially distanced walk.
You’ll likely find that your more technical coworkers enjoy the opportunity to have an engaged discussion about something they built or are working on. Ask thoughtful questions, find out what your engineers need, listen and — when it makes sense — offer to help.
As you build trust and rapport with your technical teammates and manager, be open and ask for support when you need it, particularly if you’re feeling lost, confused, or overwhelmed. Give context for the problem and how you’ve tried to get unstuck, so that whomever you asked for help knows exactly where you’re at and how to support you. Communicate clearly, concisely, and proactively to help manage expectations with your team and manager.
3. Scaling my learnings.
When Kamcord first launched live streaming, we realized it was hard for a new user to properly set up a live stream. To help, I tapped into my work superpowers—I love digging into complex problems, clarifying the task at hand, figuring out a solution, and then scaling or automating it. I researched troubleshooting options and conducted iterative testing. I documented my learnings and worked closely with our founders and engineers to improve our technology and processes. Building on my efforts, we created a “live streaming operations” team and developed an onboarding program for new users. This helped our content creators and product succeed, and I built a lasting rapport with and practice of open communication across the engineering and business teams.
As you learn from your research and colleagues, take notes, synthesize, and share your key takeaways with the wider team. Whenever I start a new role, I also start a running notes document. These notes can become the connective glue between teams or part of onboarding materials for future hires. By taking notes as you ramp up, then sharing your learnings more broadly, you will contribute to building a culture of strong communication and begin to be seen as “technical” as others on the team can come to you for help.
Finally, fight through feelings of imposter syndrome.
Chances are when you start a new role as a generalist, you feel (and are!) not “technical enough”—and that’s okay. This was true for me when I first started at Kamcord. This motivated me to learn and grow, ultimately leading to where I am today: loving working as a part of a tech team building new products and delighting our riders as a Product Manager at Lyft. Although it will be hard, avoid letting imposter syndrome (which many of us feel!) overshadow your ability to learn and deliver impact; adopt a growth mindset and avoid taking failure personally. Confront the feeling of whether you’re “technical enough” as a smart generalist head on. And when you do, I hope that you succeed, thrive, and grow.
Special thanks to Jen Yip, David King, Jonathan Lai, Alizeh Iqbal, Matt Dunn, Andrew Woo, Angela Son, Kali Borkoski, Amit Sankaran, and the RenCo team for your ideas and feedback.