Spotting the Spark: 7 Indicators of High Potential

Cultivate These Traits to Get Noticed by Leaders and Accelerate Your Impact

About 12 years ago, when I was a senior engineer at Amazon, I’d been temporarily loaned out to another team, a platform team, to help with a critical project. The pressure was on and the timelines were tight.

While getting up to speed, one junior engineer, let’s call him David, caught my attention. There was an undeniable spark with David. There’s an internal tool at Amazon where you can look people up and see what role and level they are. I simply could not believe that David was a junior engineer.

After the project wrapped up, and I returned to my home team, keeping David's impressive performance in mind. About two years later, curiosity got the better of me, and I looked him up again in PhoneTool. My jaw nearly hit the floor. David was already a Principal Engineer.

Instead of two levels below me he was a level above me.

To this day, that’s the fastest trajectory from junior to Principal I’ve ever witnessed in my career.

I later learned after speaking to David that he had been under …