Feeling stuck in your current tech role? For tech professionals at the mid and senior levels, it is not uncommon to find yourself facing a bit of stagnation. Whether you aren’t progressing to higher heights, or you find yourself less satisfied these days by your current tech role, a career plateau is something you will need to address proactively if you want to enjoy your work life and continue to experience career growth.

Here’s what you need to know to kick your career back into gear.

What Causes Career Plateaus in Tech

There are a number of reasons why you might reach a mid-level or senior tech position and find yourself with no forward momentum. It’s important to look at a variety of causes and determine how they affect you. Common issues for tech workers to become stuck include:

Failure to expand skill set

Since technical skills and new technology are always shifting, growth-minded tech professionals will look for ways to stay up-to-date. Those who get too comfortable in what they already know can find it hard to move forward.

Organizational constraints

If your company or organization doesn’t have a lot of open positions or has limited avenues for growth, opportunities for promotion may simply not open up often. And if the field or sector you’re in is making shifts such as increasing automation or outsourcing services, career growth there may be hindered.

Lack of motivation

Getting past the entry level in tech can be a driving force in someone’s career, but once you reach middle management or higher, you may find yourself stuck in your comfort zone—or even burned out. Before you realize it, you might fail to capitalize on growth opportunities.

Strategies to Help Move You Past a Tech Career Plateau

To climb up into a higher tech role, you will need to commit to a variety of steps that will take you out of the role where you’ve been languishing. This doesn’t happen by accident—but with intentional decisions and smart moves. Follow this map toward tech career success:

1. Assess Your Current Situation

Before you do anything else, conduct a self-audit to see where you’re at. Be honest and realistic about your current role, responsibilities, and job satisfaction. Think about where you’d like to be in three to five years, so you can set clear goals for where you would like to go.

Once you have clarity, it’ll be easier to see what qualifications you already have and what new skills you’ll need to acquire to reach your destination. Think about whether you want to step into leadership, or grow as a technical expert, or even move into entrepreneurship. Set goals that are specific and measurable—such as preferred salary, ideal industry, and other preferences so that it becomes more likely you can achieve those goals.

Action steps you can take:

• Evaluate what you like and dislike about your current role.
• Envision what an ideal new position would look like for you—get specific.
• Set clear goals for what you would like your new role to offer you—and ways to get there.

2. Ask for and Act on Feedback

Rising out of a tech career plateau often requires identifying the areas that have been holding you back. Yet it can be hard to assess ourselves honestly—we all have blinders in some ways.

To combat that, seek constructive feedback from colleagues, managers, and your network. Find out what they consider your strong points, and where they think you could grow. Ask about both your technical skills, as well as abilities such as communication and leadership.

Action steps you can take:

• Ask for a 360 review to spot your strengths and areas for improvement.
• Take a self-assessment test or two to learn more about yourself.
• Create an action plan to turn feedback into strategies for growing.

3. Upskill for the Role You Want

Because new technologies emerge so rapidly and continuously, if you are not continuing to learn new skills, you will quickly start to lessen your ability to remain relevant in the job market.

Kickstart your progress by assessing the most popular and upcoming technologies and technical skills that are making people marketable—and notice which ones you might need to study. Pursue advanced certifications, learn new programming languages, and take technical courses to ensure you can adapt to changing tech roles.

Action steps you can take:

• Attend boot camps and gain tech certifications to learn new skills.
• Pursue an advanced degree that applies to the next role you’d like to land.
• Identify lateral moves that can help you reskill to make yourself more marketable.

4. Keep up with industry trends

Pushing past career blocks in mid-to-senior-level technology roles means paying attention to new trends in your sector. Investigate emerging technologies specific to your area of the economy.

If you can predict where future needs for new tech will arise in your field, you can position yourself to be on the cutting edge of those changes. More broadly, you can also pursue tech knowledge that’s continuing to be relevant anywhere and everywhere—such as blockchain and cybersecurity.

Action steps you can take:

• Study emerging trends in new technologies through conferences, webinars, and online communities.
• Ask executives at your company what new tech trends they perceive as most important to master.
• Consider how gaining skills in emerging technologies might align with your future career goals.

5. Expand your soft skills

Often, people find themselves languishing in their tech role—not because they lack technical know-how, but because they aren’t well rounded in non-technical skills that are valued by their employers.

Make yourself more eligible for promotions to senior roles and C-suite positions by getting better at what those roles require for success. Build up skills in leadership, communication, project management, cross-functional collaboration, and negotiation.

Action steps you can take:

• Ask for challenging assignments that push you to grow all your skills.
• Volunteer for non-technical company roles, such as cross-functional projects that push you to develop your soft skills.
• Work with a career coach or a mentor to work on building soft skills.

6. Build Your Personal Brand

Set yourself up for new opportunities by proving you have what it takes to succeed if you are promoted. You can do this through finding ways to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

Speaking, taking leadership opportunities, and growing your online presence can all be ways to showcase what you’re capable of. Networking is also vital, as new positions can often come to light through word of mouth and personal referrals.

Actions steps you can take:

• Write thought leadership content or speak at conferences to build your credibility.
• Contribute to open-source projects, tech communities, professional tech organizations, and other tech-related activities.
• Regularly update your online presence and social profiles, including LinkedIn, GitHub, and other tech forums.

7. Explore New Initiatives and Push Yourself

Often, rising past a career block in technology requires looking for opportunities beyond the immediately obvious. Are there lateral moves that others in your position have used to reskill and then move up? What about moving into a smaller company that is rapidly growing, or a startup where your existing mid-level knowledge could move you into a high-level position due to your experience? Assess whether it’s better for you to stay in your field and aggressively pursue higher-level roles, or if it’s time to make a major career shift.

Action steps you can take:

• Find new tech fields with greater growth potential that you can switch into—such as moving from software development to product management or DevOps.
• Proactively propose a new project or even a new position that aligns with company goals.
• Explore what it would look like to move into an alternative or parallel tech-related career path such as consulting or tech entrepreneurship.

Summing It Up

However you look at it, staying in place in your career can be limiting—but there are many moves you can make to push past plateaus and grow in your tech career. It takes intentional choices, but it’s very doable to step up from mid-level to senior positions, and from senior positions to C-suite and beyond. Assess where you’d like to be, professionally and personally, and start taking steps that will actively lead you where you want to be.

When you’re ready to step up into a high-level, management, senior or C-suite tech position, we’re here to help. Join our Talent Network today to see our latest job listings and get personalized job alerts for tech roles in Tulsa, OK, and beyond.