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

One of the questions I have is product manager same as the project manager (TPM)? It means a bit hazy between companies and has always puzzled me when looking at a job opening.

Another question was around what are the natural progressions for each of these titles in the career?

How to seek manager or TL’s support on project unblocking or career growth?

What topics I should talk in 1:1s with my manager/TL?

How to build the connections with leaderships?

I would love to hear problem-solving stories from the Staff and Principal Engineers on here, that illustrate:

1. How you spotted a problem and went about assessing the impact of solving it
2. how you went about solving the problem, (optional: how you managed the execution)
3. how the buy-in happened

Answering this would help a lot of us staff and SWEs understand the scale and size of problem solving at this level. Not to mention inspire us to do similar things!

I have realized that I need a very high level overview of the current system and what other systems it communicates with. I have no idea on how to do it; I'm currently planning to have a meeting with my EM.

I have access to the Quip, Google Drive, and some brown bag sessions. I have watched a few of them, but it all seems very fragmented. After I figure all this out, I plan to create a doc which can help others better in the future.

Recruiters often mention that a staff engineer interview involves a deeper dive compared to a senior software engineer interview, but it's not clear how much deeper it needs to go. Are there any resources that can clarify this?

I see some senior engineers getting promoted to staff within 2 years. Whereas other senior engineers take 5-7+ years.

What are some hurdles that senior engineers face when getting promoted to staff engineer? How to watch out for and avoid these hurdles to get promoted within 2 years?

What’s the biggest skill to start mastering or how to set yourself up for success at an early stage to make this promotion faster?

Is it easier to get this promotion in big tech or a startup?

Does changing teams or orgs or companies delay this promotion? 

Recently our app has been having navigation issues. An engineer picked up the ticket to fix these bugs, and I provided the context and starting point. However, they had trouble with it, so I’m checking out their branch and helping them debug. We just want to make sure it’s not broken as it’s a big change. Is this too in the weeds?

I’m not sure if I should be on top of everything - I don’t think it’s possible. Another instance is an engineer working on coroutine migration. Should I be working on it?

I just watched . Great material! In a couple of session, it was mentioned that Infra teams works differently, e.g. there is not as much XFN. Can you shed some light on how Infra team promo works?

• How to get involved in strategic initiatives that align with the company's long-term goals? This could involve working on new product developments, exploring new technologies, or improving internal engineering processes.
• Where to find those projects and with sponsors?
• Building effective alliances takes time and consistent effort. How to be patient and continue to foster relationships even when immediate benefits are not apparent?

I learned that my whole team is kind of new (Salesforce acquired this product), and they have just started contributing to the core platform. There are currently a lot of approvals necessary to merge front-end code into the system. This is rough as there's many epics connected to front-end work, and there is not a single senior person in the team which can take charge of looking into the high level architecture, following best practices, and doing better planning to release the code to prod.

I am the only full-stack Staff engineer here, and this is why my EM wants me to create a master front-end tech spec for the team. As an example of something this doc can cover: At Salesforce, there are multiple ways to communicate with the back-end API, each of which has their pros and cons but that information is scattered - We can consolidate that info into this doc.

Given that I haven't written any front-end code here at Salesforce, this task seems hard and I'm unsure how to do this without looking stupid.

As you climb up the career ladder (senior -> staff), this soft skill becomes more and more important. What are some ways I can keep honing it? Are there any professional courses I can consider?

I would learn to be effective and efficient at it, specially in scenarios such as public speaking, team meetings, project status, emails etc.

Also, English is not my first language.

I recently stumbled upon a post on LinkedIn that some experts are not anticipating writing code by 2030.

While this prediction may not materialize in the same way, let's assume the relevance of DSA and coding may not be the most significant skill.

How would you suggest we develop skills for relevance in the future?

Please share inputs to be worked on tech domain, while I agree business impact would be an important metric, I am more curious to know the group's thoughts on tech.

PS: Someone which experise strictly in backend development.

How to identify my gap to next level?

How to narrow my gap to next level?

I have been with my current team (a platform team) for about almost 3 years now, and I believe I have build good relationships with others in the org. I am thinking about projects that can get me to E6.

So far, the projects that I come up with, feels underwhelming after talking to more senior IC. The IC either think there the ROI is not high enough, or the project is too much of BE. For other ideas, it feels like that I would have scope collision with other ICs. I sometimes feels too tired to churn through more ideas. I am not sure if this is normal, or if I would be able to succeed in my current team to get to E6. How would you decide it is time to change teams?

How to define the priority and work on your projects?

How to setup clear expectations for yourself and your team?

Hey! I am joining a startup as a Staff Engineer. I understand, titles can be inflated at a start up. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get to staff at big tech, without a supportive team.

My eventual goal is to be a staff engineer at a FAANG, or a very high achieving Senior at a FAANG. I want to use this startup "Staff" as a way to really hone my skills, learn and grow. Purely focussing on my love for coding, software engineering and learning, and not motivated by money.

Keeping the above in mind, how can I ensure, I have staff level scope ( & not just a title) at this startup.

And any tips for successful onboarding at a startup helps, from your personal experience.! ( Yes, I went through Rahul's course already :) )

It is a series B start up, with 70 people.

In the past two years, I've been employed at an Indian company in the role of Engineering Manager. However, my experience was marred by a lack of learning opportunities and a restrictive culture that limited my decision-making authority. Despite these challenges, I chose to stay due to personal commitments, particularly with a baby on the way.

Recently, I decided to transition to a Staff role at a European startup, embracing remote work and a more supportive culture (I loved this job and role). While the change has been positive, I find myself facing the challenge of underdeveloped skills and falling short of my expectations (It's my feeling).

How can I effectively overcome this situation and make the maximum impact in my new role? Specifically, I need to enhance my technological proficiency, deepen my understanding of business dynamics, and integrate seamlessly into the organizational culture. What strategies should I employ to bridge this gap swiftly and justify my position within the company?

How to avoid working closely with others on projects that does not allow you to demonstrate your skills in a team context, emphasizing collaboration over competition?

What are the common mistakes to overstep and to look like you are showing off?

How to highlight more of collaborative success that often speaks louder than individual achievement?

Put on an exciting Staff level project for the last 6 months. Now, asked to make a tough choice - move out of Org or stay in current Org and give up scope.

Pros of moving:

• Scope: getting multiple jr level engineers to carry out the scope I created.
• Exciting product.

Cons of moving:

• Current manager turned down the scope expansion.
• Have built relationships within current team. Enjoy working with them (more familiar)
• Less depth AI/ML work but more product heavy (which is high impact as well but slightly less interesting from ML standpoint)
• Lots of unknowns with new team - unknowns beyond staff scope IMO

TLDR; What would others in the same situation recommend? From taro courses, Option 1 seems better. But there are unknowns especially with current manager refusing the offer.

In our operational workflows, business users aim to update rules in a SharePoint-stored spreadsheet. This sheet influences diverse data processing workflows. I'm contemplating to do it on a version-controlled repository like Git.

The dilemma is whether granting users editing freedom enhances usability or if control via Git ensures thorough tracking and review of changes.

How do I delineate between business processes open to user modification and those mandating Git control for optimal balance?

Just went through Rahul's amazing . Excited to learn the different staff engineer archetypes that exist.

I'm curious what your Staff Engineer archetype is. At what point in your career (and how) did you start identifying your archetype, and strengthening it? Once a staff engineer falls into an archetype, do they generally change over time, or do they fix on their archetype for the rest of their life?

I joined Cisco Meraki like a year ago as a Sr. SWE and got promoted to a Technical Leader.

I kinda did the role of a Technical Leader as a Sr. SWE like mentoring junior engs, doing lots of code reviews, keeping up the code quality, contributing to org wide projects and such. I learnt all these things from working for Meta as a L5.

Now that i got a new "Title", i have a feeling that i should do something more and different - I am not sure if i should feel that way because this is the first time i am at this level in my career. I am wondering what i should do to keep up with the expectations. When i had this convo with my Manager, got some tips but all around, it was the same things what i did before but i got repeateadly said that expectations for a Technical Leader is going to be much higher than a Sr. SWE.

I saw a whole bunch of youtube videos and blog post reg Technical Leader role but i kinda know that already, I am sure a bunch of engs already been through this already.

Any advice would be super helpful.

Offering advice or solutions without being asked, especially when you may not be fully informed about the situation, can come off as know-it-all behavior. Offer help or advice when it’s requested or when you're sure it's needed.

Hello! I'm in the final stages of my interview process at a few companies. I heard two days ago that I'd be getting an offer from a public company and just today a Series B company said they were going to extend an offer. (I have 30 minute chat with a Series A CEO tomorrow and an offer seems likely) The Series B company today gave me their comp range for Staff, but did not make a specific offer. The recruiter asked me to come up with what I wanted my comp to be now that I know the band for Staff. It felt odd not getting a specific number.. but I suppose I can consider for the purpose of negotiation that they are offering the top of the range and I can negotiate from there? The recruiter did say I was their best interview (!) so I feel like I have a fair bit of leverage here to potentially get an offer well above the stated band.

This is a bit further complicated however by the fact that I disagree with the methodology the recruiter used to value their options & tokens. I.e. if I agreed with their valuation the TC at the top of their range is what I am targeting, but according to my calculations the TC at the top of the range is 35% too low. So I'd probably need them to double the equity/token package to make this worthwhile. The top of the range for base is also below my base target, but not that dramatically. . . more like 5%.

Am I better off asking for a Sr Staff leveling or just ask for comp that's above the band for the Staff title? I imagine bands are more strict at public companies than they are at a Series B.

Finally, I'm wondering what people think about adding acceleration & severance upon termination w/o cause as a negotiation lever. Given the volatility of the cryptocurrency market I am concerned about job security in this role, so some security that would be provided by an acceleration upon termination clause in my contract would help me swallow the somewhat low base & illiquid equity that they are offering. Do Series B companies ever provide that to non-VP/C-level hires?