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Title: What Do Staff Engineers Actually Do Authors: staffeng.com Category:articles Number of Highlights: 5 Source URL: https://staffeng.com/guides/what-do-staff-engineers-actually-do/ Date: 2024-07-06 Last Highlighted: 2024-07-06
Highlights
The most straightforward answer is that Staff engineers keep doing much of what made them successful as Senior engineers: building relationships, writing software, coordinating projects. However, that’s a misleading answer. Staff engineers do those same tasks, but whereas previously they were the core of their work, now they’re auxiliary tasks. Their daily schedule varies a bit by archetype, but there’s a shared foundation across all archetypes: setting and editing technical direction, providing sponsorship and mentorship, injecting engineering context into organizational decisions, exploration, and what Tanya Reilly calls being glue.
Note: Interesting that at this level we are finally seeing “being glue” as a positive.
Tags:work
However, I’ve found that often people have some vague sense of wanting better without having a clear idea of what that thing they want is.
Note: “Technical direction” as a form of systems implementation?
It can be helpful to think of this as being a part-time product manager for technology.
Tags:work
One constant across all roles is that the reality of setting technical direction is far more about understanding and solving the real needs of the organization around you and far less about prioritizing technology and approaches that you personally are excited to learn about.
Tags:technology,leadership
You’re far more likely to change your company’s long-term trajectory by growing the engineers around you than through personal heroics.
Tags:team,10x_engineer