Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

lalitm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 188 posts

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#51

Post by geodel »

sandeepkd wrote: post #44
wpasc wrote: post #6

The author notes: > One caveat: my experience comes mainly from working on infrastructure and developer tools at large companies, on teams where engineers have a lot of bottom-up autonomy to influence their roadmaps. In a more top-down environment, there may simply be less room to work this way. I wonder if the overall trend in tech is that engineers are experiencing less bottom-up autonomy and more top-down controll…

Its a good thing that the Author pointed out the caveat cause most companies/teams/people do not operate in this mode. Subtle in the details is a fact hidden that the author is able to manage what he wants to do, most people do not get that kind of luxury. This either means that the author has earned enough political reputation based on past work or they are aligned with their management chain. tldr; this advice is p…

Agree. It is to author's credit that he shows self awareness about this kind of autonomy and privilege.

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#52

Post by mcv »

Not a staff engineer, but this sounds very much like what I do and then am not allowed to follow up on. One particular company where I've been several times as senior or lead developer, I just keep stumbling over problems I would love to take on. I'd love to be a staff engineer there with the freedom to take on these sort of problems, but that's apparently just not how they work.

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#53

Post by cube00 »

geodel wrote: post #47
wpasc wrote: post #6

The author notes: > One caveat: my experience comes mainly from working on infrastructure and developer tools at large companies, on teams where engineers have a lot of bottom-up autonomy to influence their roadmaps. In a more top-down environment, there may simply be less room to work this way. I wonder if the overall trend in tech is that engineers are experiencing less bottom-up autonomy and more top-down controll…

This sounds about right. At least I feel it acutely in my career. And the more experienced I got instead of more autonomy it has decreased. So to me it seems autonomy is decreasing at a rather fast clip. Even outside projects and general work condition it is worse. 10 years back I could just decide when to work from home, or do a few interesting projects show to managers get approval afterwards. Today I have to expla…

>Supporting , fixing project which I delivered over years and just take it easy, start day late, leave early until retirement.

My experience has been you'll be regularly moved around to mitigate the "bus factor"

If you're seen as highy capable you'll be moved on to firefighting duty.

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#54

Post by mcv »

wpasc wrote: post #6

The author notes: > One caveat: my experience comes mainly from working on infrastructure and developer tools at large companies, on teams where engineers have a lot of bottom-up autonomy to influence their roadmaps. In a more top-down environment, there may simply be less room to work this way. I wonder if the overall trend in tech is that engineers are experiencing less bottom-up autonomy and more top-down controll…

I've certainly seen that shift in some places. 8 years ago I started on a project as a freelance software engineer, to build something they couldn't really envision yet. I had a ton of freedom, built a prototype, chose my own tech stack, designed every part of it. A team was built around it, and I migrated to a leadership role where I decided the direction, addressed issues I saw, redesigned parts that needed improvement. We had an enormous amount of freedom, and used it to build great things fast.

A bit over a year ago, I joined that same company again, as lead of what's technically the same team, this time as an employee, but everything had changed. It was very hierarchical, very top-down, very little freedom, lots of red tape and office politics, and a tedious, slow pace.

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#55

Post by girvo »

wpasc wrote: post #6

The author notes: > One caveat: my experience comes mainly from working on infrastructure and developer tools at large companies, on teams where engineers have a lot of bottom-up autonomy to influence their roadmaps. In a more top-down environment, there may simply be less room to work this way. I wonder if the overall trend in tech is that engineers are experiencing less bottom-up autonomy and more top-down controll…

This is my current world, at least. Bit of a shame. But they pay me well enough still and the work is interesting enough that I don’t mind too much.

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#56

Post by cube00 »

austin-cheney wrote: post #17
wpasc wrote: post #6

The author notes: > One caveat: my experience comes mainly from working on infrastructure and developer tools at large companies, on teams where engineers have a lot of bottom-up autonomy to influence their roadmaps. In a more top-down environment, there may simply be less room to work this way. I wonder if the overall trend in tech is that engineers are experiencing less bottom-up autonomy and more top-down controll…

Most of my career has been spent in JavaScript and then MuleSoft. I have only ever seen top-down authority in about 20 years of doing this, except for when I was at Travelocity early in my career. The general perception is that JavaScript work in the corporate world is for young people who have no idea what they are doing and lack the maturity to write original solutions. This perception is common from developers who…

> more ambitious than putting text to screen

And you will be ordered exactly where to put that text down to the pixel.

However your design system will be built around a twelve column bootstrap layout which your designer won't follow because "an experience can't be constrained by columns"

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#57

Post by punnerud »

“I start to see what’s really slowing people down and what my team or I can do about it.”

I often tell engineers that employees will never go to an “innovation center” in a company to say that their job could be made obsolete. And by definition the workplace is not 100% effective as long as there is employees. Still there is most likely always more that can be done, so think that the existing people can be automated away and be used in new positions.

A good way to find problem from top-down is to look for similar jobs done. Often a department with a lot of employees. 10% more efficient for 100 is better than 100% for two, unless those two indirectly slow the rest of the company down.

And I like to think that when companies expand rapidly it’s easy to spot problems, the contrary is slow growth, then problems is often someone’s job and they will not complain if it’s not stressful. The last part is often solved over time with even more people.

Re: How I find problems to solve as a staff engineer

#60

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I have a different problem: I can find all the problems, but I can't solve them, because they aren't within my control. The people whose control they are within aren't interested in solving them (or letting others work on them). The political and psychological games required to get people to just let you solve problems seems like a second job.
Post reply on HN