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The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

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Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#151

Post by cjsplat »

er4hn wrote: post #122
biscuits1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stamina isn't the word I would go for. It would be commitment. For those that have loads of stamina, it's the commitment to continuous creative encounters that leads to the perceived magic. From "Courage to Create" by Rollo May: "It is said that the novelist Thomas Wolfe, who was one of the highly creative figures of the American scene, that he was a "genius without talent." But he was so creative because he threw hi…

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” - Calvin Coolidge

And with Coolidge's great persistence, he helped build the foundation for the Great Depression.

It is possible to "press on" in the wrong direction.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#152

Post by raydev »

cjsplat wrote: post #151
er4hn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” - Calvin Coolidge

And with Coolidge's great persistence, he helped build the foundation for the Great Depression. It is possible to "press on" in the wrong direction.

Sure, but we're talking about "persistence" and dedication on the scale of "I built a complex piece of software"

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#153

Post by YesBox »

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 roller-coaster tycoon creators?

Hello!

I'm making a roller-coaster tycoon inspired game, in the form of a city builder. I ended up creating my own path finding algorithm that 10x's the performance of A*. I felt this would be useful since pathfinding is one of the major slowdowns of simulation games.

https://twitter.com/YesboxStudios/status/1647224184597102592

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#154

Post by msoad »

Swizec wrote: post #28
pc86 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious your thoughts on who a Staff should report to. I've been at a handful of places where there were Staff Engineers (some of them even deserved it!) and it always seemed like the promotion from Senior to Staff came with a change in reporting structure, where now instead of reporting to a Manager you're reporting to a Director or a VP, even the CTO in smaller orgs. I think this is a good indication of increased a…

As a staff in practice, but not in title, here's how it works for me: My manager and I are at the same level. We work as peers. They handle the people stuff of the team, I handle the technical stuff of the team. They help with routing people/HR/management questions, I help with routing technical questions. If you think "Gosh, that person (on another team) sure was rude" , that's a question for my manager. If you thin…

You're describing being a Senior Engineer. Staff (according to this book) goes beyond that.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#156

Post by basisword »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #3
msoad wrote: post #2

I'm a Staff Engineer, but I hardly do anything that this book describes. Maybe it's my company, but we have so many Staff Engineers that if we all were to do this stuff, nobody would have time to do the actual work and there would be too many people trying to lead. Perhaps the levels are diluted and my title doesn't match my actual role at my company, but it feels like this is an industry-wide phenomenon.

Staff engineer is the new senior engineer.

Can confirm. Didn’t want to be staff and don’t think I’m at that level, but it was the only way they could give me the raise I was demanding within the rules of the silly HR system they’d built.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#157

Post by nonethewiser »

withinboredom wrote: post #131
nonethewiser wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> People have recreated that core game many times with fairly trivial code > Yes, because they have something to reference. But you couldn't reimplement podman in a few hundred lines of code. > Ideas are easy Not all ideas have the same quality. Should be self evident. Nevertheless you should be able to see that I understand ideas are cheap in some sense - that's what the comment about decoupling "this was an iterat…

> But you couldn't reimplement podman in a few hundred lines of code. You don't even need a few hundred: https://github.com/p8952/bocker And then there's 'dokku' which IIRC, started as a bash version of Heroku. > Not all ideas have the same quality. They really do. I've heard all kinds of things in my career, but almost none I would want to dedicate a portion of my life building. Not because they are bad ideas or won…

That would prove my point though. If it actually is that easy to implement then podman is more in the “good idea” than complicated implementation category as well.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#158

Post by brookst »

cjsplat wrote: post #151
er4hn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race” - Calvin Coolidge

And with Coolidge's great persistence, he helped build the foundation for the Great Depression. It is possible to "press on" in the wrong direction.

Yes. Determination is essential for success but does not guarantee success.

Kind of like how virtually all great cooking requires salt, but use of salt goes not guarantee a great dish.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#159

Post by yieldcrv »

JackMorgan wrote: post #12
msoad wrote: post #2

I'm a Staff Engineer, but I hardly do anything that this book describes. Maybe it's my company, but we have so many Staff Engineers that if we all were to do this stuff, nobody would have time to do the actual work and there would be too many people trying to lead. Perhaps the levels are diluted and my title doesn't match my actual role at my company, but it feels like this is an industry-wide phenomenon.

Titles are very much diluted. I've seen companies hire college sophomores who have never heard of the concept of a database and make them Sr Engineers on a analytics teams. I've seen Sr Engineers hired with one year of relevant experience. At this point, "Sr Engineer" is just the new "Jr Engineer". There's nothing wrong with this, but indeed, Staff Engineer tends to mean 8+ years of experience.

Thats because nobody can get hired as an entry level or junior engineer

If you arent internalizing the senior title immediately then you will get nowhere

If you’re not forming an LLC and putting yourself as an junior employee of that shell company with some verifiable information or project, then I dont know how to help you

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#160

Post by closeparen »

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…

Dogma in the tech industry is that the ceiling on individual contributions is close to the median. That the leverage is all in coordinating larger groups of engineers. Belief in, affection for, or aspiration to be the lone-wolf super-genius coder who does something transformative in his own editor is a negative signal, associated with "brilliant jerk" and "not a team player" archetypes. Tech companies are generally set up to socialize it out of younger engineers and to have an immune system to reject any more senior engineers who endorse it.
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