From my experience as a people manager (and an even longer stint as a developer), I’ve noticed that many engineers don’t see much value in goals.

If this is how you feel when your manager asks you to set yearly goals (or hands you new ones) you’re not alone.

In my perspective, they often feel like extra homework, tacked on after the “real work” of coding, only to resurface at the end of the year when someone asks about your progress. And from where I stand, you’re right: when treated this way, goals rarely deliver tangible benefits.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

You’re missing out (on what exactly?)

Periodic goals, when used correctly, are a powerful long-term focus tool. In fast-paced teams, swamped with Jira tickets, code reviews, and spikes, you can be constantly busy yet rarely challenge the true priority or value of your next task.

That’s what goals are for:

• Company goals make sure you’re working on what matters.
• Personal development goals help you learn intentionally from your day-to-day work.

If your goals aren’t doing that, it’s probably because they’re not being used as intended.

How goals started making sense (and bringing value) to me

Once again: you must pick something that you truly feel strongly about. Realising this simple truth was the change in my case. It is better to have one goal that truly meets this requirement than four you only slightly care about.

My turning point came from my personal, not professional, life. I realised that my life wasn’t heading where I wanted, and if I didn’t change course, I wouldn’t be happy with how I’d spent it. This insight helped me see the importance of long-term planning (and I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t read Stephen Covey’s classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).

From there, I began setting goals, actually tracking them, and finally seeing the value.

How to make goals work

For goals to work for you, you need three simple requirements:

1. Choose goals you genuinely believe are important and valuable.
2. Track progress regularly (if you’re not tracking, it’s usually a sign that requirement 1 isn’t really met).
3. Connect goals to your daily work, so progress happens as you ship, not as an afterthought.

Don’t isolate goals from your workflow

A common problem is that the goals are too detached from your daily work. You likely spend most of your time in the codebase, making changes based on your issue‑tracking system. Now consider a goal like:

By the end of the year, I will have finished a Kotlin fundamentals training.

That’s planning to fail. Will you truly make room for this while putting tickets on hold? If yes, great. But for most of us, day-to-day tasks feel more urgent. December arrives, and you realise you’ve made no progress. Cue the last-minute scramble.

Define a different goal instead: 

When I see a Kotlin feature in the codebase that I don’t understand, I’ll read the documentation and make a note of it (at least once a week).

Why this works: you don’t need much extra time, it won’t derail the task at hand, it’s easy to track, and it builds a habit of continuous learning rather than a one-off course completion.

Focus on the “how,” not just “what”

Another tip is defining goals that focus you on how you’d like to accomplish something. Probably the task from the issue tracking system already tells you what you need to do. A goal can help you define additional criteria or focus on the quality.

Let’s say you introduced a few bugs into the system recently and want to avoid this in the future. You could define a goal:

For every applicable pull request, I will leave a comment documenting measured test coverage before and after the change and ensure it increases.

This keeps the goal anchored in your daily work while adding a perspective often missing from the ticket.

Keep the goals visible

This relates to Requirement 2: if you do not see the goal often, you’re likely to forget to track it. Keep them in sight: as a sticky note on your monitor or pinned at the top of your to-do list.

Use OKRs (or something similarly effective)

There’s a reason OKRs have stuck around: they’re simple and effective. A practical check I like is to define the Objective and then ask:

Will it really happen once these KRs are met?

If the answer is “not quite,” adjust your Key Results until they make the objective inevitable.

Final thought

If you’ve made it this far, I hope it’s a bit clearer how goals can help. Pick goals that matter, track them regularly, and tie them to your daily work. You’ll feel the difference.

Happy goal‑setting!

The post Developer Goals Don’t Have to Be Corporate Theatre appeared first on ShiftMag.

I came to work today, opened my emails, and guess what? Our focus has shifted for the third time this month. We’ve just made good progress on a project, and now we must put it on hold. Why are they doing this to us?

This is a common stream of thought in the ever-evolving landscape of the IT industry. Large companies face the never-ending challenge of managing multiple projects with constant priorities switches.

For an engineer caught up in these changes, it can be equally perplexing and frustrating to witness a sudden change in direction. It’s only natural to question: Why do priorities in big tech companies shift so frequently? Does our management even know what they are doing?

Overall, the company management usually knows exactly what they want – and why that changes. Still, from my engineering perspective, this doesn’t always seem so. And this is fine – as engineers, we are supposed to have our own perspective on things.

But suppose we try to take on a different perspective and understand the top priorities and reasons behind them from a business point of view – priority changes can then change from the cause of frustration to opportunities for professional growth and the company’s success.

So let me share what I’ve learned, as an engineer who has deep-dived into the business side of the pool, about why priorities change and how that actually benefits me.

Customers

One of the most important reasons for shifting priorities are the customers. They hold the key to success, and their expectations are ever-changing.

Companies have to ensure that customer needs remain at the forefront. In other words:

If we cannot deliver, someone else will.

Losing customers is obviously bad for business. On the other hand, delivering innovative solutions that match customer demands and foster stronger customer satisfaction and loyalty – is good for business. Happy and loyal customers are the best advertisement money could buy.

As we make our customers happy, they become more engaged with our products, asking for more features and creating the following reasons for shifting priorities.

Growth & Opportunities

A company needs to grow or seize new opportunities if it wants to stay competitive. Usually, companies continuously evaluate the market landscape and adjust priorities to stay ahead of the competition:

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

Ovid

Adjusting to this usually means thinking out of the box and delivering something new and innovative that could boost our growth and give us an advantage against the competition.

For me, an engineer, this has significant benefits – it could position me at the forefront of groundbreaking projects, exposing me to new technologies and expanding my skill set. It opens doors to exciting career opportunities and helps me grow both professionally and personally.

Having skilled engineers enables the company to focus even more on innovation and “complicates” our lives further. But in a good way!

Innovation

Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat.

Steve Jobs

Innovation thrives in an environment that embraces change. Companies cultivate a culture that encourages creativity, experimentation, and out-of-the-box thinking by reprioritizing projects.

Innovation could affect us as engineers positively and negatively, and people sometimes perceive it as a threat. Am I supposed to be pulling rabbits out of hats and achieving the impossible?

But the reality is that innovation comes in small steps. In fact, in most companies, the best innovations are meant to optimize and speed up the usual work. This, in turn, enables engineers to spend more time on unexpected challenges or to learn something new.

Efficiency & Impact

Prioritizing projects also allows companies to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that teams like mine can make some impact. We often find ourselves in a situation where we suddenly must switch priorities to assist another team on their project. This sometimes causes frustration – why can’t they do it on their own?

But large companies have hundreds of services and different teams handling and maintaining different systems parts.

For example, to set up a product on Data Centar, the developer usually depends on databases, which depend on Infrastructure, which depends on Networks.

It’s impossible for one engineer to cover all these areas, so allocating resources effectively and having the right people do their part will benefit the entire company as we can deliver products faster.

Embracing switching priorities to assist other teams allows us to become an integral part of strategic decision-making, where our expertise and input contribute to shaping the direction of a project, making a project more impactful, and driving the organization’s success as a whole.

Why embrace the changes?

Quite simply because, as engineers, our adaptability and willingness to embrace change are essential for success in the fast-paced IT industry.

Not so long ago, I was also frustrated with priority switching. The most important reason for that was my lack of understanding.

When I find myself frustrated by such a situation now, I ask myself: What would I do if I were in that client’s place? Could we do something better on this product? How could I assist my colleagues so we are more efficient?

Answers to these questions help me gain insight into the broader organizational context. And this empowers me to thrive in a dynamic environment, contribute effectively to projects, and seize opportunities for growth and advancement.

Each priority change presents a chance to embark on a new adventure, broaden my horizons, and make a lasting impact. By embracing change, I become an agent of innovation, propelling my career forward and helping my company stay ahead of the competition.

…and how?

The most important thing is staying informed. This helps me understand the reasons behind priority changes and provides me with enough information to start planning accordingly.

At first, this information usually comes abruptly or incomplete, so seeking clarity’s important. Seeking clarity allows me to understand how this change will affect my role. Asking specific questions to understand the rationale behind the changes and how they align with the company goal. Once I understand the new priorities, I can align my goals and plans accordingly.

Engage in open communication with team members and colleagues to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding the new priorities. Collaborating effectively will allow us to share knowledge, resources, and best practices to help achieve the revised goals.

This could help us stay positive if a project deadline is rough, as maintaining a positive attitude helps us navigate priority changes more effectively and output new ideas.

I could write about this whole day… But due to a change in priorities, we’ll have to stop here.

The post Do managers shift priorities to make engineers miserable? appeared first on ShiftMag.