What happens after you go past Senior? Will Larson, CTO of Calm, has been interviewing Staff-plus engineers across the industry for his new book, Staff Engineering.
This is our first full-length interview podcast episode! If you enjoyed it, please help us share with a friend and let us know your feedback! (Links at bottom)
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1:00 Why research Staff Engineering?
- Most bigcos make up their ladders as they go along, or cargo cult from FB/Google.
- We have to separate management from leadership.
4:31 Who are Will's role models?
11:08 How do you find someone to help you grow?
- 3 types: Role Models, Mentors, and Sponsors
- Sponsors: Lara Hogan on Sponsorship
- The key question: "Do I need to develop myself" or "Is the company evaluating my work fairly"?
- Mentors: Some mentors give generic answers, others know your specific context. The second one is harder.
- Role Models: Helps you know someone with your background can accomplish something. Lighthouse hires are important as proof.
- Retention is most important here
- Look externally on Twitter and on StaffEng.com
- The best people may not be writing online
16:30 Being Visible
- Books are bought, not sold
- If you aren't visible, your work won't be valued.
18:12 Career Management
- Most people don't manage their careers at all
- Most companies are set up to assume Fungible Developers which is exactly what you don't want to be
- But also blaming your manager is a self limiting belief. You personally have to be managing your own career.
- Write your own promotion packets on an ongoing basis.
- Julia Evans on Brag Documents
- Tip: Make your own achievements channel in Slack and log all that info for later
20:39 Architects - How do you lead without authority?
- Silvia Botros at Twilio
- Katie Sylor-Miller at Etsy
- Spend a huge amount of time soaking up context
- Reduce communication and coordination costs
- We rarely understand the problems we are solving when we design the solution
- One directional communication doesn't work - gathering context and providing a common interface helps solves this
- Architects are powerful bc they are aligned with their engineers, Managers have to align with their orgs
- Similar to a Product Manager role - all of the responsibility, none of the authority
24:37 Solvers and Matching Archetypes to Company Stage
- Opposite of Architects? It depends on the company's approach - do they plan and then ship, or do they ship and learn. Architects cannot function in the second type.
- 4 archetypes: Team Leads, Architects, Solvers, and Right Hands.
- Calm is all Team Leads - the majority of the value is not in operating or creating infrastructure - it is in creating product
- It's pointless to bias too much to Architect or Right Hand early on
- You don't see Right Hands except at much bigger companies - for scaling out
29:10 What should Senior Engineers know about Systems Thinking?
32:33 Metrics: The subtle art of Measuring Engineer Productivity
36:30 Career Advice
- Will Larson's Career Advice
- Think about the teams you've worked with with the highest density of people you want to be working with
- Yahoo story
- Digg v4 story - your network will outlast your job
- Your manager and team matters more than the company
Thanks for listening!
Speaker Links
- Will Larson (@lethain): Blog, An Elegant Puzzle, StaffEng.com
- Randall (@randallkanna): The Standout Developer
- Swyx (@swyx): The Coding Career Handbook
- Podcast Episode discussion on Circle
