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The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

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Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#121

Post by JaumeGreen »

swozey wrote: post #40
danwee wrote: post #11

I certainly like that companies are introducing yet another step in the IC ladder. Before it was like: junior1 -> junior2 -> senior1 -> senior2 -> manager. And the money you get by being junior2/junior2/senior1 is not that much. Nowadays I see companies doing: ... -> senior1 -> senior2 -> staff1 -> staff2 -> manager. So, in the past I have quit a job at level staff1 (decent money), just to go to another company where…

I'm staff and I don't consider Manager a vertical step at all. It's a horizontal. Completely different type of job and I really doubt they make much more if more at all money than me. I would never go manager.

I'm a manager now and it was a lateral move from development, no salary increase. So yeah, sometimes managers earn around the same as the top people they manage.

Heck, I wouldn't mind earning less than some of the most brilliant ones. In fact I think I do earn less than someone that reports to me.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#122

Post by er4hn »

biscuits1 wrote: post #120
timacles wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that separates those guys from everyone else is simple. Its stamina. No there isn't some higher level of understanding or deep perception. Every one of the all time great programmers had 1 exact thing in common with no exceptions. Stamina. You will not find a single outlier. They did their craft every day, for many hours, year after year. So sure, any of us could have taken the individual small steps. But w…

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

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#123

Post by pc86 »

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…

You're right, they'd pay probably 25% more in payroll, get a lot less done in terms of features businesses need (compared to neat tech stuff we devs want to build), and the business would eventually go bankrupt.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#124

Post by nonethewiser »

withinboredom wrote: post #100
nonethewiser wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something I learned relatively late in my career was that really impressive work is the result of iterations in tiny steps. I think you are right. Really impressive work is generally the result of a longer journey than you realize. The time and effort put into it is probably underestimated. But my mind immediately tries to think of exceptions (which totally prove the rule). I'm curious if others would agree with th…

> People have recreated that core game many times with fairly trivial code Yes, because they have something to reference. It was like Notch took a level editor and made it into the game itself. That isn't an easy thing to figure out and takes time. > Sometimes there are just really great ideas. Ideas are easy and usually it's really stupid ideas that turn out to be great ideas. Who would think that an FPS level edito…

>> 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 iterative process" from "I could never do this." You can transfer an idea effortlessly - it's more about implementing it. But if its it trival to implement clearly more of the brilliance was on the idea side of things.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#125

Post by throwaway1777 »

swozey wrote: post #40
danwee wrote: post #11

I certainly like that companies are introducing yet another step in the IC ladder. Before it was like: junior1 -> junior2 -> senior1 -> senior2 -> manager. And the money you get by being junior2/junior2/senior1 is not that much. Nowadays I see companies doing: ... -> senior1 -> senior2 -> staff1 -> staff2 -> manager. So, in the past I have quit a job at level staff1 (decent money), just to go to another company where…

I'm staff and I don't consider Manager a vertical step at all. It's a horizontal. Completely different type of job and I really doubt they make much more if more at all money than me. I would never go manager.

At meta and google they certainly don’t make more, the L6 manager and engineer bands are the same. Same for l7. At director level the bands are so wide it may not be the same between ic and managers even if it is in theory.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#126

Post by nvarsj »

Everyone in this comment thread seems to have a different definition of staff engineer. And that is kind of the problem with this term. It's almost devoid of any meaning now, like the ubiquitous VP title at a bank.

This book should probably be titled "Being a staff engineer at big tech - how to navigate the performance process to get promoted as an IC". From my brief skim, that seems to be what it's about.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#127

Post by agentultra »

Xeoncross wrote: post #82
ughitsaaron wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m assuming Rust here refers to the game and not the programming language?

Graydon Hoare created Rust as a personal project while working at Mozilla Research in 2006 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language) Not many devs create the core of what is arguably the best programming language available today as a personal project. However, it's true that what it has become today is now the work of many.

A good deal of programming languages started out this way. A few that come to mind: C, C++, and Python. Javascript.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#128

Post by agentultra »

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…

You could read the main linux kernel git log and see who the top contributors are.

If you prefer system level programming there are jobs out there and plenty of work to do. I dunno if this counts as, "hardcore engineering." To me, engineering, involves many other skills other than writing code: being able to specify systems clearly and, as the occasion demands, formally is a part of engineering; communicating with others; Knowing which trade offs to make depending on a situation, etc.

Re: The Staff Engineer's Path – Book Review

#130

Post by rmk »

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…

There aren't too many hardcore engineering jobs. They are being done in startups where hard problems are being solved, and even there the average startup is just a website which is acting as a broker in a two-sided marketplace, or some variant thereof.

If you step back and think about it, it makes sense. The majority of companies are one-trick ponies, maybe following up with a few additional products. Incremental development is the path of least risk once product-to-market fit in a large market with high growth is achieved. As public companies (and late-stage startups or private companies) are incentivized to reduce risk, the majority of the people will be doing incremental work. The growth of the pseudo-technical managerial class in the form of Product Managers, Project Managers, and umpteen levels of mid-level managers further encourages the relative lack of 'hardcore engineering'.

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