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The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

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Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#141

Post by jacurtis »

never_inline wrote: post #38
eatonphil wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One area to find great engineers (and interesting jobs) is at database, infrastructure and devtools companies. Places like Cockroach, PlanetScale, Docker, JetBrains, CodeWeavers, Fastly, etc. And the databases, infrastructure or tooling teams within Meta, Microsoft, etc.

Out of curiosity, do they have junior engineers too? I would love to work on docker or jetbrains for example.

Both Docker and Jetbrains are working on software projects just like the rest of us. There is still boring shit work to do that no one else wants to do, so they need junior devs to shovel it off to. So yes, they have juniors, mid-levels, and everything up to staff and beyond. They are no different than any other company.

The difference is probably that it is harder to get those jobs because everyone wants to work for the flashy exciting companies. I was considered for a job at Docker a long time ago (when I was an early-midlevel) and the recruiter told me that over 1,200 people applied in 5 days. For entry-level/intern positions I assume it is similar or even worse.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#142

Post by ZephyrBlu »

feoren wrote: post #99
pc86 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most companies seem to be consumers instead of creators and only offer Jr.-to-Sr. level roles around making a CRUD API micro-service collection. That's because this is what 90% of companies need. Even at big tech or any nationally-known tech brand, I'd bet at least half the work in maintenance, support, incremental improvement, and integrations.

Sure: nobody wants the car, they just want faster horses. > Even at big tech or any nationally-known tech brand, I'd bet at least half the work in maintenance, support, incremental improvement, and integrations. That's because they are extremely inefficient. Most people build software badly, most companies expect software to be bad, and they hire a bunch of bullshit jobs to do inefficient things to support that bad s…

> These people do stupid CRUD API micro-service bullshit because they're blissfully ignorant of how tremendously amazing their software could be if they fired 90% of their boot-camp dev ops and replaced them with a handful of 10x staff-level developers

I wish this was true, I really do. But a few staff developers cannot physically handle the volume of work required to replace that many developers.

Staff developers are good at solving complex problems that many other developers combined could not solve. They are not good at writing 10x more LOC than other developers.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#143

Post by greenthrow »

Xeoncross wrote: post #15

Where do all the hardcore engineering jobs live? I've been bothered by the fact that most advanced engineering roles like "staff" actually mean "manager who does system design as well" Where are the docker/redis/next.js/linux kernel/qt/roller-coaster tycoon creators? Where are the people creating amazing software and do they get a special "advanced developer" title? I guess, I'm curious if there are actual roles in c…

Have you read the book in question? The whole point of it is that it is not a manager position.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#144

Post by MobiusHorizons »

Xeoncross wrote: post #15

Where do all the hardcore engineering jobs live? I've been bothered by the fact that most advanced engineering roles like "staff" actually mean "manager who does system design as well" Where are the docker/redis/next.js/linux kernel/qt/roller-coaster tycoon creators? Where are the people creating amazing software and do they get a special "advanced developer" title? I guess, I'm curious if there are actual roles in c…

What you are talking about are engineering investments. Generally you have to make the case for those. Management will generally not want to make those, because they are costly, and require long term maintenance. You have to prove that it will be good for business somehow. No one gives this to you, you fight for it, or build it without asking

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#145

Post by hgsgm »

jacurtis wrote: post #137
lhorie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech companies have entire departments dedicated to this sort of engineering, usually developer platform/experience/productivity, or other similar infra/platform orgs. I'm an author of an open source framework who got scouted to work at one (and I'm currently a staff eng). IME, yes there's comparatively far more CRUD roles than platform roles. But bluntly speaking as someone who's been on both sides of the fence,…

> sometimes your job as a BDFL may be to say "no" to your most ardent supporters. This also happens a lot for staff level platform work. You hit the nail on the head. You've heard of a "yesman" (i recognize the sexism in that phrase, but it is the colloquial term), people that simply say yes to everything. I always joke that I am a "no-man". My job is literally to say "no" to probably 12-15 people a day. I say "yes"…

Why are your people asking so many bad questions?

Good questions are "how can we X?" And good answers are "here's how: Y"

Then the asker decides if they are willing and able to Y.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#146

Post by varjag »

etamponi wrote: post #70
simonw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been bothered by the fact that most advanced engineering roles like "staff" actually mean "manager who does system design as well" The definition I have generally seen for "staff engineer" is an engineering leadership position without direct reports - I see "manager" as generally meaning "has direct reports". I think this is important: leadership and management are not the same things!

Can you explain better the difference? I am trying to figure this out myself for a while...

Leadership: you can tell them what to do.

Management: you can change their pay grade.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#147

Post by hgsgm »

etamponi wrote: post #70
simonw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been bothered by the fact that most advanced engineering roles like "staff" actually mean "manager who does system design as well" The definition I have generally seen for "staff engineer" is an engineering leadership position without direct reports - I see "manager" as generally meaning "has direct reports". I think this is important: leadership and management are not the same things!

Can you explain better the difference? I am trying to figure this out myself for a while...

Manager gets evaluate by the performance of their reports.

Engineer gets evaluated by the products they contribute to that launch.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#148

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

withinboredom wrote: post #96
mywittyname wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked at mega corps, I'd see a "new" tech emerged that was always very similar to a software that our company had developed to solve similar issues. I remember terraform getting released and seeing that it was just an inferior version of the Cloud Formation Template generator someone at my company had invented years prior. I've seen this happen so many times and every time, I'm surprised that more businesses…

I could have a really cool time-travelling database to sell you, but I can't because I signed away my right to invent. So, if you really want to > built by the engineer who decides to venture on their own and replicate what they were building as a stand-alone product. We need to change our contracts.

I think this is the key: employment contracts/ip policies should be designed to encourage spinning off internal projects (that are ‘distractions’ front he core product) as separate business units or as open source projects.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#149

Post by zmj »

ergocoder wrote: post #61

This cult of staff engineers really need to go away. People read it and all of them like to act like a staff engineer when in fact there are only available slots for a fraction of the engineers. Now nobody wants to fix bugs and improve product quality. Why? Because those tasks are not staff-level work. The reward system and the definition doesn't work.

Those can be some of the most fun problems. Fixing deeply rooted reliability or scalability problems in the business's core product without disrupting users? That's absolutely a path to recognition and rewards.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#150

Post by trelane »

Xeoncross wrote: post #15

Where do all the hardcore engineering jobs live? I've been bothered by the fact that most advanced engineering roles like "staff" actually mean "manager who does system design as well" Where are the docker/redis/next.js/linux kernel/qt/roller-coaster tycoon creators? Where are the people creating amazing software and do they get a special "advanced developer" title? I guess, I'm curious if there are actual roles in c…

> Where are the docker/redis/next.js/linux kernel/qt/roller-coaster tycoon creators?

Unless they're very fortunate, they're wishing they could do the groundbreaking stuff that's in their bones, whilst they get ordered to ignore it, to other stuff that's higher immediate priority.

So they do the needful while tinkering as they can find time to.

> Where are the people creating amazing software and do they get a special "advanced developer" title?

No, they get no special title. They just get ignored, unless they get lucky and find a manager that supports them.

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