In March I went to two different DevOpsDays events in LA and Chicago and gave a talk called "Friendships and Firewalls: Building a Balanced Professional Network". I wanted to impress upon my DevOps friends that technical skills are oftentimes not the limiting factor to career growth–relationship skills are. When AI can write your IaC, what makes you invaluable is your ability to influence, collaborate, and navigate complex human systems.
The good news is that we can apply systems networking concepts to our professional networks! And the feedback I received was that it hit a nerve.
When Technical Excellence Isn't Enough
You've probably experienced at least one of these scenarios in your career.
The Builder who creates an amazing internal tool with perfect documentation, only to see minimal adoption six months later.
The Fixer who swoops in to solve the nastiest bugs for major customers but gets passed over for promotion.
The Anchor whose technical expertise actually traps them in their current role when exciting new projects emerge.
The Island who realizes during restructuring that their connections have narrowed to just their immediate team.
The Advocate, a fantastic manager who champions their team but gets overlooked for a director role because they aren't seen as leadership material.
In each of these situations, technical skills weren't the limiting factor—relationship skills were. We're conditioned to believe that if we just get better at our technical craft, success will follow. But the reality is far more nuanced. Career growth often hinges on our ability to build and maintain effective professional connections.
A Systems Approach to Relationships
But my DevOpsDays audience understands infrastructure. We segment networks, create firewall rules, and monitor system health. What if we applied this same intentional approach to our professional relationships? What would change for you?
Let's walk through a framework that does exactly that.
Define & Segment Your Network
As technical professionals, we're trained to be intentional about systems architecture but haphazard about professional connections. We often invest in relationships that happen organically, people that we see daily. The challenge is that sometimes the relationships that could truly advance our goals remain undeveloped simply because they're not in our daily path.
This isn't a personal failing—it's a system design problem.
Start by defining your career objectives—not your official development plan, but what you truly want. Do you want to be a team lead? Build your own company? Have the flexibility to enjoy personal pursuits? With clear goals established, you can identify which relationships will help you achieve them.
Next, segment your professional connections much like you'd segment a network. I've found it helpful to organize mine into four categories. These are not HR terms, per se, just loose categories which I define as:
Stakeholders are those with a vested interest in your outcomes—mentors, leadership, project stakeholders. Your goal is to support what's important to them so they'll vouch for you when you're not in the room.
First Team members are your close peers—people at your level you work with regularly. Supporting these relationships helps you become more collaborative and better aligned with broader objectives.
Direct Reports include those whose work you have a vested interest in and who look to you for leadership. By giving them the support they need, they become allies in supporting your mission.
Base connections are less frequent but still meaningful professional relationships. These are the people who help you maintain cultural awareness and broader influence beyond your immediate sphere.
In this image you can see the folks from our scenarios. Had they spent more time nurturing relationships in these groups, they may have had different outcomes.
The Builder created an amazing tool but couldn't drive adoption because he hadn't cultivated those Base connections across teams.
The Fixer swooped in to save the day technically but would have benefited from being more intentional about leading the rest of the team with vision. He forgot that Staff Engineer is actually a leadership position.
The Anchor found himself stuck despite his expertise because he didn’t show alignment with his team’s strategic priorities. He wasn’t considered for the new team because he was a lone wolf, and they needed a team player.
The Advocate excelled at supporting her Direct Reports but didn’t nurture Stakeholder relationships with other leaders, so no one vouched for her for the director role.
The Island's social and professional network outside of her company diminished as she concentrated on excelling in her role. This lack of external connections left her vulnerable and limited her options when her company underwent restructuring.
Firewall & Automate Your Connections
The Boundary Deficit
Without proper boundaries and automation, we face two common relationship pitfalls. First, the boundary deficit—where we struggle with saying "no" and become overextended. The manager with endless 15-minute meetings working nights to catch up. The engineer who becomes everyone's unofficial help desk. The SRE monitoring dozens of channels "just in case."
The Just-In-Time Networking Trap
Second, the just-in-time networking trap—activating relationships only when we need something. Approaching leaders only during promotion cycles. Engaging stakeholders only when seeking project approval. Rebuilding external connections only when layoffs loom. (People know you’re doing this, so don’t do it.)
Just as you create firewall rules to protect your systems, set boundaries to protect your time and energy. Establish interaction patterns based on relationship type—my approach to an intern differs from a VP, though I aim for mutual success with both.
Be intentional about communication fidelity. When we spread ourselves thin across low-fidelity communications, monitoring threads and reacting to everything, we feel engaged but miss deeper connections. With key relationships, prioritize high-fidelity interactions. A Slack huddle beats a message. A lunch meeting beats a huddle. An off-site beats everything.
Most importantly, create systematic check-ins with your key contacts. Organize your professional connections by category with clear intentions for frequency, medium, and purpose. This could be a simple spreadsheet or calendar system or our app when we get to beta! What matters is having a proactive approach that makes the right thing the easy thing.
Remember: A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Monitor & Adjust Your Relationships
As data-driven professionals, we track system health obsessively but often rely on intuition for relationship health. This leaves us blind to subtle patterns—the one-way relationship where you're always giving, the work friend who helps technically but drains you with negativity, the manager who listens but never provides actionable feedback.
These aren't failures of intent—they're observability gaps.
Track relationship health by noting reciprocity (who initiates, who benefits), energy balance (who energizes, who drains), and influence flow (are your ideas gaining traction?). Conduct regular network health checks to ensure you're maintaining internal/external balance, cross-functional reach, and decision-maker accessibility.
But how?? Shouldn't we just know?
Well, truth is, sometimes our intuition can be off. That's why I've created a simple practice for tracking relationship health: After each meaningful interaction, I note both what happened and how I felt about it. These feelings are data! If I consistently feel drained after meetings with someone, that's a pattern signaling misalignment. If I regularly feel energized and inspired, that could be an indication that we can get stuff done together. Noting both facts and feeling ensures that my judgment isn’t getting clouded by one or the other.
This simple practice helps spot relationship patterns I'd otherwise miss. Not weird at all—just good observability.
Don't Forget External Networks
These principles apply to connections beyond your workplace, too. When we're deep in exciting work, external relationships naturally fade, not intentionally—there's just limited bandwidth.
Like disaster recovery, external professional relationships work best as ongoing practice, not emergency response. The painful truth is that professional networks take time to build. If you start building one when you suddenly need it, you're already months behind.
Put meaningful external connections on autopilot through recurring calendar invites with mentors, regular group activities that create natural touchpoints, etc. Your future self will thank you when career changes inevitably arise.
Engineering Your Path Forward
If you're struggling to get promoted, start your own venture, get other teams to take you seriously, be seen as a leader, or whatever it is—try approaching your professional relationships with the same intentionality you bring to technical systems, and see what changes for you!
Those who deliberately build their professional networks find not only greater career opportunities but deeper agency and satisfaction. This intentional approach to relationships is key to fighting burnout and creating a sustainable vision for your future.
Level Up Your Entire Team's Relationship Skills
Want to transform how your whole team approaches professional relationships? Bring your engineering group, product squad, or leadership team to our interactive workshop where together you'll:
- Build a shared understanding of effective network architecture
- Create team-specific systems for maintaining key stakeholder relationships
- Develop collaborative practices that strengthen internal connections
- Leave with an actionable team plan that improves cross-functional collaboration
Learning these concepts as a group creates a common language around relationship-building and provides built-in accountability for implementation. The shared experience allows your team to adapt these frameworks to your specific organizational context.
We'd love to help your entire team connect the dots between technical excellence and the relationships that will amplify your collective impact. Let's engineer better networks together!