Staff Engineering (ft. Will Larson, CTO of Calm)

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) ---- 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? Lara Hogan - the Voltron Manager Julia Evans' Wizard Zines Tanya Reilly - Being Glue Dan Na - Pushing Through Friction Julia Grace, Director of Eng at Apple : "Don't play team sports alone, you'll lose." The Staff level is a leadership role, you don't get promoted on the basis of your work alone. 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 Duretti Hirpa at Mailchimp Ras Kasa Williams at Mailchimp Michelle Bu at Stripe 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 ? Will Larson's Intro to Systems Thinking Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows Engineers should have both an abstract Systems Thinker and a practical Solver toolkit Incident programs overfocus on compliance rather than remediation Incidents -> Response -> Review -> Management (catalog, tag) -> Remediation Don't focus on moving from stage to stage 32:33 Metrics: The subtle art of Measuring Engineer Productivity Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations 1. Delivery lead time 2. Deployment frequency 3. Change fail rate (defect rate) 4. Time to restore service How they dynamically run tests to improve productivity at Stripe 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

You can listen to Staff Engineering (ft. Will Larson, CTO of Calm) online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Staff Engineering (ft. Will Larson, CTO of Calm) is an episode from Career Chats with Swyx and Randall by Swyx and Randall.

This episode is 41:16 long.

This episode was published on Dec 2, 2020.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Career Chats with Swyx and Randall when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.