W08 - Front-end Infrastructure Evolution and Personal Development Planning for Tech Colleagues

I’ve recently discussed two topics with many people.

1. How to continuously advance the infrastructure engineering level of a front-end business team?

As team size grows and engineering foundations solidify, this year’s focus should shift from short-term campaigns to long-term approaches. Ensure established technical consensus isn’t diluted and accumulated infrastructure achievements don’t regress. Enable collective decision-making among those who determine the team’s engineering level, and allow contributors who want to drive engineering progress to participate freely. Establish a sustainable engineering evolution mechanism that escapes individual dependencies and supports a self-organizing, self-evolving group. I’m proposing a working group; feedback so far has been broadly positive and it will be reflected in the team plan.

2. How to iterate on personal development plans for technical colleagues?

Try to improve the binary mindset of either technical expert or manager. Although both are valid, clear paths, they are vague in practice and can cause cognitive bias or unclear execution routes during implementation. Our understanding of technical experts is too narrow, and our view of the manager’s path is too abstract.

Most people hold a stereotypical image of a technical expert as an “alpha geek.” In reality, technical experts take many forms. What we commonly recognize is not the full definition of a technical expert. A technical expert can be a domain specialist who deeply understands business logic and applies domain knowledge to solve problems; an architectural expert who oversees the team’s technical progress and aligns it with business foresight; or a focused specialist with unique experience in a particular technical area, such as performance or data. As the business deepens and the organization grows, requirements for technical experts diversify, and that diversification itself offers rich development opportunities.

For the management career track, provide clear, reachable paths for those inclined toward it. A technical manager should be a well-rounded professional with broad technical perspective and solid technical achievements, able to earn business trust and mitigate risks under pressure. There are several key growth milestones: be a good mentor, cultivate new graduates, coach colleagues through promotions, manage projects of 4–5 people effectively, lead large-scale technical initiatives when required, and leave lasting value for the team.