Overall I'd say the first half of the book is full of very dense good advice but it's missing context and examples. It's a book one can never completely finish reading (I'm keeping it for myself 🙈, now I've marked it with highlighter and I'll send another copy for Zoa's library).
I'm summarizing the key parts of the book here to help me remember them better and to help you decide if you need to read this book:
1. Types of Staff Engineer and how a Staff Engineer should operate
This is the most valuable part for anyone to get better as an engineer.
The book identifies the following archetypes:
1 - Teach Lead: More Managerial or closer to Management around a single team.
2 - Architect: More focused on Tech Strategy and software evolution in the organization.
3 - Solver: Huge depth on strange and hard to solve technical problems.
3 - Solver: Huge depth on strange and hard to solve technical problems.
4 - Right Hand: Someone with more business vision and likely becoming part of the executive team.
There's a lot of emphasis on strategy but examples are lacking. To cover this gap, I'm going to delve into Aleix Morgada's work to learn and hopefully discuss real engineering strategy examples and their successes and failures.
Main ideas:
- It's a very different role, a Staff engineer is not just a faster Senior Engineer.
- The title won't give you more control over what you work on, you'll be responsible for identifying important missing areas the company isn't paying attention to. What you do get though, is access to the room and conversations earlier in the process which allow you preventing bad decisions being made.
- Being glue and sponsoring others are more important than working hands on. Allowing groups to move forward and find their own solution without imposing yours and helping them implement such solutions.
- There are ways to optimize how you communicate with executives, learn their learning style and adapt so communication flows more easily. There are specific tricks for this in the book such as The Pyramid Principle or the SCQA format. They're worth re-reading once in a while.
- Build relationships, keep a network of peers both inside and outside your company so that you can keep each other on top of latest trends and give each other honest feedback.
2. How to become a Staff engineer within a company or by switching jobs
Within A company
Reaching Staff Engineer right where you are is harder than Senior and even harder for minorities.
Creating a Promotion Packet is a key aspect of reaching Staff and such Packet should be reviewed and edited with your manager's and your peer's help. Finding a Senior Sponsor will be key to your success.
Identify where opportunities are in the company, some times you may need to change teams to a team that is more valued by the business.
Work on skills that get you invited into the room and help you stay in the room, there's a few notes on how to do so.
By Switching companies
It's uncommon for employees going after a Staff Engineer role to switch companies, instead those folks stay and are rewarded for staying at a given company as long as the circumstances support their success. If those circumstances change, they tend to either leave or spend a while burning out and then leave after exhausting their emotional reservoir.
Leaving can feel like starting over from scratch but it's also possible and common for folks to attain their first Staff+ role by joining a new company, sometimes it's the most effective way.
Leaving can work for multiple reasons: Your current company may not need more Staff engineers and prefers to keep only Senior Engineers, lack of funding, lack of growth opportunities...etc
This part helps you define your criteria for evaluating opportunities, navigate interview processes effectively, and negotiate offers strategically. It provides insights into common challenges faced during the job search for leadership roles and offers guidance on how to navigate them successfully.
3. Stories and interviews from other Staff Engineers.
You could start reading from this part if you wanted to. This section has long interviews to the following Staff engineers:
- Michelle Bu - Stripe
- Ras Kasa Williams - Mailchimp
- Keavy McMinn - Fastly
- Bert Fan - Slack
- Katie Sylor-Miller - Etsy
- Ritu Vincent - Dropbox
- Rick Boone - Uber
- Nelson Elhage - Stripe
- Diana Pojar - Slack
- Dan Na - Squarespace
- Joy Ebertz - Split
- Damian S - Auth0
- Dmitry P. - Stripe
- Stephen Wan - Samsara
They can all be read here along many others. https://staffeng.com/stories/
Notes on not looking like a stereotypical engineer:
It's uniquely challenging to gain a leadership position if the existing leadership team doesn't identify with you as a potential member; folks with the privilege of seeming like they are already part of the existing leadership team have a much easier time making the transition. If you don't communicate like they do, if you don't drink beer or are part of their jokes (so many male engineers have a bit misogynistic humor and sense of value), you're automatically out of the sponsorship and promotion landscape. Similarly, when minorities feel so outside of the group, having and transmitting leadership and confidence to their usual levels requires extra energy.
Overall rating 8/10:
This book is a great condensed bunch of advice but it's so dense that, as I mentioned at the beginning, you may never completely finish reading and you'll need to revisit it a few times each year to check some parts and read the links, stories and references as you navigate certain situations!
I've found it could do a better job at giving specific examples when talking about things like "A Staff Project" but it's a great book and I recommend having it on your shelf. By the way, it's available and completely free online in https://staffeng.com
Here's a Good Reads review highlighting the same issue:
If you have any opinions or comments to add please reach me by email or in the contact form. Thanks for reading!