Future Proof Your Career with T-Shaped Growth

Your Growth Strategy Matters

The tech industry is evolving faster than ever. Technologies are becoming obsolete all the time. In relatively recent years, jQuery has been replaced by modern frontend frameworks like ReactJS. Docker Swarm has been swarmed by Kubernetes. The list goes on.

Companies need engineers who can both master their craft and adapt across domains. The secret is to grow sustainably to ensure you remain relevant. If done strategically, you can future-proof your career, avoid stagnation, and prepare for leadership roles.

There’s a universal law called the Right Rule- doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right order.

It’s easy to fall into one of the two pitfalls of Depth First Growth (mastering a craft) vs Depth First Growth (learning across domains), which ultimately cap your career because both without balance lead to learning in the wrong order.

The solution is to grow in a T Shaped manner by selectively taking the best of both worlds and blending DFS and BFS. I’ll show some examples at the end along with some frameworks and tools you can use.

What does a T Shaped engineer look like?

T-shaped engineers balance depth and breadth, making them resilient, versatile, and indispensable. Here’s what sets them apart:

• They easily lead and communicate effectively across teams.

• They understand technical details (depth) and the bigger picture (breadth).

• They drive innovation by connecting ideas across domains.

• They step into adjacent roles when needed.

• They “speak the language” across disciplines, breaking silos.

Reflection: What are your current impediments to growth? Are you focused too narrowly or spreading yourself too thin anywhere?

PS. there’s a T-Map and Growth Ladder Guide at the end to build your personalized T-shaped career plan.

T-Shaped Growth Gets Results

Professional Stakes:

• Resilience: Depth without breadth is a recipe to become obsolete, while breadth without depth leads to shallow knowledge limiting your authority. Either extremes will cap your growth and limit you to operations and gatekeeping from the world of systems.

• Leadership: Growth to L6+ demands cross-functional collaboration and systems thinking.

• Relevance: T-shaped engineers bridge gaps between domains, making them indispensable to businesses.

Becoming T Shaped

Before we artfully combine the two approaches in a complimentary manner, let’s dissect their strengths and weaknesses and find the right implementation of a hybrid that works for you:

• Depth First Growth

• Breadth First Growth

Depth First Growth

def depth_first_growth(career):
    if level is None:
        return  # Base case: no more levels to explore

    # Recursive call to the next level
    depth_first_growth(career.next_level)

It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it’s recursive. Until mastery, keep specializing.

The drawback reveals itself when a specialty becomes outdated or obsolete. It’s worse when upward mobility requires you to adapt, be cross functional, and speak in many domains.

Their greatest strength is their greatest weakness: A subtraction mindset.

In short, this mindset allows you to easily see what’s different and in a detail oriented manner refine, hone, and master skills to the highest degree:

Failure Mode: What happens when that expert kicker finds themselves in a boxing match? Their greatest asset, kicking, immediately loses all value. And despite years of training, they’re no better than a beginner.

Breadth First Growth

# Initialize a queue for breadth-first exploration

def breadth_first_growth(career)
    queue = deque([start_node])
    visited = set()

    while queue:
        current = queue.popleft()

        # Skip if already visited
        if current.role in visited:
            continue
        visited.add(current.role)

        # Explore roles breadth-first
        for role in current.adjacent_roles:
            queue.append(role)

        # If no adjacent roles, go deep into the next level
        if not current.adjacent_roles and hasattr(current, 'next_level'):
            queue.append(current.next_level)

This approach often seen as quick and dirty, but has it’s own dazzling charm.

On-the-job-learning is expected of software engineers. Startups often have many needs and limited resources. This requires one to get good at a lot of things fast. But the definition of ‘get good at’ usually means get good enough to operate, at best, as an L3 or L4 in an area. And if diving into multiple areas at once, the foundation is bound to be full of gaps.

Breadth First Growers’ greatest strength is also their greatest weakness: A addition mindset.

They’re able to rapidly grow by asking themselves ‘how is this like something I’ve seen before?’. And the more they pick up, more they can pick up! Their breadth of comprehension snowballs across domains and allows them to show up in many arenas.

Failure mode: This archetype has a pitfall of becoming an Expert Beginner. They remain a newbie forever and lack the complete end-to-end experience that depth first growth learners are exposed to.

The Hidden Connection between Breadth and Depth

Ironically, depth-first and breadth-first growth each hold the key to what the other needs.

Depth’s Power:
Depth-first learners master a single domain, building deep vertical points of reference. This expertise enables them to simplify and refine ideas through subtraction thinking—removing noise to uncover core principles.

However, their focus on specialization can limit their ability to work across domains or align with broader business goals. Depth-first learners often reach L5, excelling in end-to-end ownership within their domain but struggling to lead in cross-functional contexts required for L6 leadership.

Breadth’s Strength:
Breadth-first learners explore multiple fields, giving them a wealth of horizontal points of reference. They excel at addition thinking—connecting dots and synthesizing ideas across domains.

Yet, without depth, they rarely develop the mastery needed for L5-level ownership. Breadth-first learners often stay at L3 or L4, viewing tasks as isolated pieces rather than parts of a greater system.

The paradox is that neither depth nor breadth alone is sufficient to reach L6. Depth-first learners need breadth to work cross-functionally and align with business goals. Breadth-first learners need depth to understand how smaller tasks fit into larger systems.

True mastery lies in blending the two: applying subtraction thinking to refine breadth and addition thinking to deepen expertise.

Recommended T Shaped Implementation

In short, I recommend getting to L5 as fast as possible.

Objective: Get your mind’s eye used to seeing systems as components interfacing each other

• L3: Become an expert debugger

• L4: Push out features in as many areas as possible

• L5: Put all the knowledge together and push out projects end-to-end

Once you can see end-to-end projects as building blocks, you should have enough points of reference to have the mental agility to dabble into other areas which will be your platform to stand on to pursue leadership.

from collections import deque

def career_growth(career, queue=None, step="depth", depth_target=5, breadth_target=3):
    if step == "depth":
        # Step 1: Depth-first growth to L5
        if career.level < depth_target:
            print(f"Focusing on depth: {career.role} at L{career.level}")
            career.level += 1
            return career_growth(career, step="depth", depth_target=depth_target)
        else:
            print(f"Reached L{depth_target} in {career.role}. Start exploring breadth.")
            queue = deque(career.adjacent_roles[:breadth_target])  # Initialize breadth queue
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="breadth", breadth_target=breadth_target)

    elif step == "breadth":
        # Step 2: Breadth-first growth in adjacent areas to L3
        if queue and queue[0].level < breadth_target:
            current = queue.popleft()
            print(f"Exploring breadth: {current.role} at L{current.level}")
            current.level += 1
            queue.append(current)  # Re-add to queue until target level is reached
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="breadth", breadth_target=breadth_target)
        elif queue:
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="breadth", breadth_target=breadth_target)
        else:
            print("Breadth achieved in 3 areas. Ready to advance to L6.")
            return career_growth(career, step="advance")

    

This next part is up to you on what advancing makes sense with your personality. This is where customizing your life around what works for you really shines. With a solid foundation you choose your own path and author your future.

elif step == "advance":
        # Step 3: Advance core area to L6
        if career.level < 6:
            print(f"Focusing on depth to L6: {career.role} at L{career.level}")
            career.level += 1
            return career_growth(career, step="advance")
        else:
            print(f"Reached L6 in {career.role}. Deepen breadth areas to L5 and add 3 new L3 areas.")
            queue = deque(career.adjacent_roles)  # Reinitialize queue for L5 depth and new L3 areas
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="deepen")

    elif step == "deepen":
        # Step 4: Deepen breadth areas to L5 and add new L3 areas
        if queue and queue[0].level < 5:
            current = queue.popleft()
            print(f"Deepening breadth: {current.role} at L{current.level}")
            current.level += 1
            queue.append(current)  # Re-add to queue until target level is reached
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="deepen")
        elif queue and len(queue) > 3 and queue[3].level < 3:  # Add new areas to L3
            current = queue.popleft()
            print(f"Adding new breadth area: {current.role} at L{current.level}")
            current.level += 1
            queue.append(current)
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="deepen")
        elif queue:
            return career_growth(career, queue=queue, step="deepen")
        else:
            print("Growth path complete.")
            return

If you follow the Right Rule and do the Right Things at the Right Time in the Right Order, you’ll beat specialists every time and become the generalist businesses are thirsty for in today’s era.

The code snippets should be a powerful guide already, but if you want more tools and tips, check out the next section.

Tools and Frameworks

What is your Core Competency?

In order to grow in the right direction, it’s best to identify your core compentency, and the adjacent skills you wish to pick up. Be sure to zoom out and make sure they holistically complement one another and synergize into something greater than the sum of the parts.

Growth Ladder Guide

Build Your Own T Map

Use the image of this post as inspiration

• Vertically: Write down your core area of expertise and list:

  • Current level (e.g., L3, L4, or L5).

  • Key skills you’ve mastered.

  • Recent projects you’ve led or contributed to.

• Horizontally: List adjacent areas you’ve explored or plan to explore. For each:

  • Current familiarity (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced).

  • Skills or tools to focus on (e.g., Docker for DevOps, React for Fronten

Conclusion: Your T-Shaped Growth Journey

T-shaped growth isn’t just a career strategy—it’s your edge in a rapidly changing industry. To start your journey:

1. Assess Your Skillset: Use the T-Map to identify your depth and breadth.

2. Prioritize Depth: Advance to L5 in your core domain.

3. Add Strategic Breadth: Explore adjacent fields that enhance your core expertise.

4. Build Towards L6: Take on cross-functional roles, develop systems thinking, and align technical work with business goals.