Is the "Code Machine" archetype an oxymoron?
I enjoy reading case studies on how people were promoted to senior and staff but one archetype that stands out is the "Code Machine" archetype.
Writing code is inherently not scalable, so if someone is writing and reading a large amount of code, how are they able to consistently work on projects that have the largest impact? Wouldn't that time be better spent?
- Talking with stakeholders and finding out what the highest impact problems are
- Project planning
- Writing status reports to keep everyone updated
- Delegating work to others as well as mentoring/unblocking them
Essentially, doesn't the archetype of "Code Machine" contradict traditional staff-level engineer behaviors?
![Mid-Level Software Engineer [SDE 2] at Amazon company logo](/_next/image/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffirebasestorage.googleapis.com%2Fv0%2Fb%2Ftech-career-growth.appspot.com%2Fo%2Fcompany_logos%252Famazon_logo.jpg%3Falt%3Dmedia%26token%3Dff5f2302-08be-43bc-b7b1-d381ba508d99&w=48&q=75){kind=logo}
Discussion
(2 comments)- 1
a month agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroYes, code machine is definitely the odd one out among the archetypes. At Meta, I would say maybe 1-2% of Staff+ engineers fell purely into that archetype.
It is a hard archetype to sustain as it requires many conditions:
- Extremely high technical complexity (so delegating is near impossible)
- Lots of greenfield areas where a ton of code can be written
- Spaces where large amounts of alignment aren't needed. Many code machines at Meta focused on making high-fidelity prototypes super fast
At Big Tech, very few organizations meet those conditions. My org at Instagram Ads certainly didn't so we had 0 code machines. Portal did, so we had 2-3.
- 0a month agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Code Machine was a later addition to the various templates of very senior engineers. In fact, it was created at Meta for a specific engineer, Michael Novati, who I've spoken to a bunch! (Michael now runs Formation.dev, a Taro partner)
Gergely interviewed Michael about his role here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQFNYCO1MqM
From the video description:
Michael spent eight years at Meta, where he was recognized as the top code committer company-wide for several years. The “Coding Machine” archetype was modeled after Michael at the company.
