Staff Engineer Career Development Videos, Forum, and Q&A

Hi

I am thinking that if I also start to show the basics of a staff engineer, it might be helpful to reach a senior engineer status.

For purely technical projects/platform work, how do you convey the impact to leadership/performance review committee? During performance review, do managers care about the impact of technical projects?

One thing we try to do is treat platform teams as enablers of delivery teams, i.e any platform work should impact product work directly. Sometimes we can quantify direct impact, but most of the time the impact is indirect which is hard to back by data and quantify.

Another angle is that delivery team engineers are the customers of platform team - If we enable them to deliver valuable feature faster and cheaper, we succeed. Again, this is hard to quantify with concrete data.

So my overall question is: How do you link and quantify technical projects like app optimization and performance improvements to direct product and business impact?

I'm a relatively new engineer at Salesforce (been here just ~4 months), and I'm having trouble clearly understanding my expectations.

What's the ideal ramp-up/onboarding strategy for a Staff engineer at a Big Tech company like Salesforce; in particular, what should the first 3-6 months look like? Are there any specific artifacts you would expect such an engineer to have produced during this time?

Hey,

I have 10 years work experience, and I have previously worked at a FAANG that had no levels (big clue here!). So regardless of the scope of work, we were Senior. That kinda played at a disadvantage to me when I found my self looking for a job due to a layoff and visa issues.

I believe I am working at staff capacity, leading 5 folks, driving initiative. But I feel like I am unable to "show" Impact. We have metrics at each level. I have addressed the same with my manager, went over the metrics and identified gaps and took action.

I got lukewarm response, at best from other staff engineers and management. No idea if at all I will be considered for promo, and I get no response besides stating, it is a lagging promo.

Right now, I have no visa issues, so I can hop around other companies, I want to move back to a FAANG+ company because of higher pay.

Question is :

How do I ascertain my promotion?

and which of the following is a good bet:

1. Move to staff at Intuit -> Move to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L6
2. Move to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L5 -> work towards L6
3. Move to staff at Intuit -> Move to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L5 (as they down-level, at this point might as well move now)
4. Move directly to (Meta / Google/ Netflix) as L6 ( Highly optimistic, almost delusional )

What if manager is asking more things that you could accomplish?

What if most of the people accomplish only P1 priorities and do not have time for anything else in the org?

What if there are kids that need more attention and work life balance is not great, how to set strict boundaries and if you are not caring as much about level and total compensation?

Knowing that, how should I tailor my career path - What companies should I work for and what skills should I get to set myself up for success against this goal? Should I continue working at Salesforce or should I go work for a different company?

I've been a senior engineer for a while, so I would like to start making real progress towards that level. I see a lot of other engineers in the company making it to Staff or an equivalent level, and I'm wondering what I can do to make that same level up.

I have a follow-up coding interview with Meta after the Onsite rounds. Under what circumstances is a follow-up round requested? Is it because there were some strong hire rounds and some weak hire rounds? I am looking to gather inputs/tips on how I should be preparing for this interview. Would this interview be different from the other coding interviews that have already been completed?

I've just accepted an offer from a crypto startup, before my Meta interview loop is completed. Even if I got an offer from Meta, I would choose the crypto startup over Meta, so I'm debating whether or not to terminate the loop. If I continue the loop there are of course two potential scenarios:

1. If I pass the loop and get an offer and decline, I have read that if I apply again within a year the process would be easier to get through -- maybe I could go directly to hiring committee/team matching? Is that true?
2. If I fail the loop, then I would not be able to interview again for 6-12 months?

I feel like scenario 2 isn't such a big risk, while there are significant benefits in case scenario 1 happens to offset the risk of 2. I'm not sure though about how true the assumptions above are.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

How would you spend you first 30 days to achieve the an impactful start (ideally from a staff perspective):

• What would you prioritize?
• What questions would you ask?
• When given your first tasks, what additional/beyond scope extras would you consider?
• What would you be mindful of NOT to do?
• How would you start prepping to figure out what to become an SME in?