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

Recently had an interview with big tech where I proposed a solution that was pretty much textbook from the Alex Xu books. I have had similar experiences with educative. They are all undeniably detailed and great but I feel there are some edge cases that are hard to figure out unless you have worked in those systems.

Educative and Alex Xu books are not perfect representations of system design either. There are some small gotchas that a big tech experienced interviewer would catch. This also happened with cochroach db interview where this very senior engineer figured out the material I was using and asked a targeted question that he knew was a flaw in design but not discussed in educative course

So I guess the question is how do I do better?

I have studied DDIA, alex xu books, Educative.

This is question for staff interviews for senior engineers

I see a lot of emphasis on being :linkedin: famous these days. While a lot of it is valuable content, I wonder what's the motivation behind it? What's in it for very senior engineers?

So, in the past, whenever a job switch happened, it was comparatively easier to align all the interviews and get the offer timing synced up to some extent. But with team matches now, especially with the big companies, how do you manage the timeline for offers, and also, how long should one wait on any of the offers, given there is no assurance of a team match?

I am wondering if there is a strategy that can be applied in this scenario. Let's say one accepts an offer at company A, and there is a lengthy team match process with company B. At what time is it okay to let go of company A? To make things clear, this means you have already started at company A and less than a month to a year into working there, you leave it for company B.

This is assuming that the candidate is joining in a senior role and both companies A & B are big Tech firms.

Recently I got pulled into an org wide project which is basically a tussle between senior architects.

There is a lot of back and forth on the approach, cost, implementation and roll out. Every point being presented by one is being contested by other.

What inputs can you give me to how to disagree and share my inputs and to steer the conversation to a conclusion.

I am already working as an SDE3 in a mid-size tech company with 10 YOE, I have recently applied to a Staff-SE Role at Google, and have been contacted by the recruiter,

Now I am not sure what to study, I interviewed twice with Google around 4 years back, but that time they contacted me for L4, and I wasn't able to clear the coding rounds both times. I think I am a good Software engineer, it is just that, solving these Leetcode problems is not my cup of tea. And to be honest, with my current workload and other responsibilities, grinding leetcode feels not worth the effort.

So now I am clueless, would they still ask the same kind of coding questions even for Staff role, or how to go about preparation?

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!

It's been hard for me to draw the line between work and life with their current involvement. Here's some examples:

1. They had a meeting where staff engineers (myself included) had to review a junior engineer's code.
2. They ping me at odd hours, sometimes after midnight.

I also have calls with a team in a very time zone, stretching out my workday and making it start pretty early and end pretty late. Any ideas on how I can improve this situation?

I need some advice on how to navigate my situation. I have recently joined a staff engineer role and its has been 2 months. My manager mentioned today that I would be put under PIP. He mentioned that there is gap in the expectations.

To give a context, I am the only one person here and everyone else including manager (who is a director) are in different country (in europe), completely different time zone and it has been every hard to get any time from them to discuss anything. I have been left out of important meetings because of the time zone. Now, I am working alone here on a new project independent from others. When I created PRs, they were stuck for ever (sometimes a week or so). I posted in multiple channels, etc. Even sync meeting with team mates sometimes were cancelled because of they were busy and it has been hard. I have raised this with manager but nothing changed. For onboarding, I didn't have a buddy to begin with and manager was my buddy.

I am supposed to talk with HR tomorrow and discuss my options. PIP or mutual termination. I am not sure what should I ask HR and what should I do? Any advice would be greatly helpful.

I was an SDE-3 at Amazon until last year. Lack of exciting work and fear of layoff made me switch to a late stage startup as a Sr Software Engineer.

Now I am part of a very small team (3 engineers including me) and have been working on small scale projects which won't look great on my resume. I feel like I am stuck at my level and not sure how to move ahead. If I want to level up at my current company, I might have to spend a few years. My manager just got into her role and doesn't know what growth would be like for me. When I look at staff engineers in my company, I feel I am not at their level. I have thought about making a move again but I am immediately discouraged by the thought of wasting days and months in interview preparation after doing it just last year. Feeling really lost and looking for suggestions.

Sorry if the question is too open ended or vague

I know Alex has talked about his experience mentoring 10-20 folks at once and handing out work to people as he went. Videos have talked about "decentralized power" where you figure out how to do something really well and then hand it off to someone else so they grow AND you grow by managing it.

I'd love to hear more folks' experience about how this has gone! I imagine there are some stories where this has been an easier process than others. For instance how have you handled a scenario where you hand someone something and then they dropped the ball because they were too busy? Or what about a scenario where you had a clear vision but early on during handoffs you didn't have a system in place to communicate all the details that you knew but they didn't - how did you fix this?

I'll also share my two cents on this one - hope to discuss more in the comments!

I'm hoping to pivot into gen-AI companies later this year. I'm wondering if anyone/know of any who has done it? Not necessarily doing it for the immediate $$$$$, although it is certainly highly motivating too.

Looking to start a private group on this if people are interested in sharing network/resources. The goal is to land in OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Adept, etc within next 6 month to capitalize on the wave ASAP. Focus is on getting foot into the door via whatever means necessarily (Leetcode/System Design/Building LLM projects at work/Networking). The wave is too good to ignore currently.

Hi,

I got promoted last half to IC5 and have been leading impactful work streams within our team. I am enjoying my new role and work. In our last 1:1, my manager asked if I wanted to lead a very high priority org level initiative that has impact across multiple teams and suggested this could be a potential staff level project. While this is a great and unique opportunity for promotion, I am also nervous about taking this up because:

1. I am scared this might be more challenging than I am ready for and failing this would put our Org's key launches in risk.
2. I just got promoted and didn't want to actively pursue promotion as I wanted some time to settle in and become a solid IC5 first.

Wanted to get your thoughts on this and what you would do in my position? And if I say no, should I be worried about my manager passing me up for potential opportunities in the future? Thanks!

I currently have about 5 years of experience.

I plan to stay in my current role for about 2 more years before I think about a change.

The way I see it there are 2 components:

1. Interviewing Skills
2. Real Skills (I'm most curious about these - what does this look like?)

Additional Context / Questions

At what point in my role should I begin looking to focus on interviewing skills? I was thinking the 18 month mark.

I have never been at a company much longer than 2 years. Should I prioritize staying for longer before the move? The next level is Staff here, but there's no guarantee of promotion.

I don't have a 100% clear vision I want in terms of the technical domain I'd like to build focus in. My current role is giving me good experience in developing technical leadership/stewardship but the domain is not of huge interest. Would it make more sense to target E5 and join the technical domain/team of my choice and then shift into a Staff position? e.g I have always been interested in VR, but never worked in a VR role.

So what are the things I should be focusing on in order to be effective in an E6 role in the future? Accounting for culture, PSC, etc.

What real skills should I prioritize building?

Hi All,

I have a situation, can you help me on how you'd navigate it?

I have a potential project idea that has staff level scope.

There's a pain point across our company and this project would help the entire company.

I want to lead this project because it'd be a tremendous opportunity for my growth.

Given that I'm mid-level and lack of experience leading projects, I fear ownership of the project will be given to someone else to lead if I speak on it. This project shouldn’t be done in silo, this project needs to be part of the engineering priority because it will span across multiple teams.

Can you help me navigate how to maintain ownership/lead this project?

Hi! I have been working at pre-Series A AI/ML startup for nearly a year. I was hired at a Principal Engineer level and then was promoted to Director level. Currently, nearly 15 engineers report to me. Despite the growth opportunities, I am not very sure of the overall success of the company. I am more keen to switch jobs and, hopefully, work at L6+ level at a Big Tech company. Any advice on how to go about that?

Right now I have 25 min per week in our 1:1 and after quick top of mind exchange it is usually 15 min left. So I am getting only one hour per month of quality time to discuss what is important. I feel it is not enough, and my manager has 11 reports.