Five channels for scaling influence:

1. Teaching — Tech talks, lunch-and-learns, workshops, pairing sessions. Direct knowledge transfer that multiplies across everyone who attends. The most effective teaching is specific and practical, not abstract. "Here's how I debugged a memory leak in our service mesh" beats "Introduction to Distributed Systems" every time.

1. Writing — Design docs, Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), blog posts, runbooks, READMEs. Writing outlasts your presence in a meeting. A good design doc gets read by 50 people. A good runbook saves hours during every on-call incident for years. Writing is the most underrated influence multiplier in engineering.

1. Code Review Standards — You establish norms by reviewing consistently. What you approve becomes the baseline. What you push back on becomes the boundary. If you always ask for tests, people start writing tests before submitting. If you always ask for error handling, error handling becomes the norm. Your review patterns shape the entire codebase over time.

1. Cultural Shaping — Model the behavior you want to see. Write thorough tests, craft clear commit messages, engage in constructive disagreement, admit mistakes publicly, ask questions you don't know the answer to. People notice what senior engineers do far more than what they say. If you cut corners, you've implicitly given everyone permission to cut corners.

1. Sponsorship — Actively advocate for people who are overlooked, especially those from underrepresented groups. Use your visibility and credibility to create opportunities for others. Recommend someone for a stretch project. Mention their work to leadership. The difference between mentorship ("let me give you advice") and sponsorship ("let me put my reputation behind you") is enormous.