The Staff Engineer’s Path
A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change
Top Ideas in This Book
- The three big pillars of Staff Engineer are big-picture thinking, project execution, and leveling up other engineers
- Staff engineer is a leadership role, usually equivalent in seniority to a line manager
- Staff engineers often work on ambiguous and difficult problems, solving them just enough to hand off to another engineer
- Human problems slow down software companies, not tech problems
- Good technical strategy is usually boring and you are responsible for writing it
- To address project ambiguity, find one person you can be open and unsure with
- Make project milestones usable, demonstrable, and always have a milestone within sight
- Writing code is rarely the best use of a Staff Engineer’s time
- The more senior you get, the more you need to embrace being the grown-up in the room
- Be the engineer that everyone wants to work with
How strongly do I recommend this book? 9/10
