This is a book brought to the office from one Principal engineer. It is interesting to read to learn from the experience of several people climbing the technical ladder instead of the management one. I have a doubt, as the book was written during COVID and I would like to know if the boom of AI has changed anything.
From the ego side, yes, it is cool to be Staff/Principal but I really want to pay the price for that (working long hours…)? Maybe 10y ago, the book would have helped me to figure out the path although looks more focus to software developers, but as a network engineers, you can learn many things.
Four common archetypes of staff-plus roles:
- Tech lead: focus in one team and report to the team’s manager.
- Architect: as I say, big-picture guy.
- Solver: deal with complex problems, can stay a short or longer time dealing with the problem
- Right Hand: of executives.
Personally, I can see more attraction to the tech lead or solver. The others two look too political and not too “techie”
It is critical to find the archetype that energize you! And something that is repeated often is sponsorship and mentorship. You become “glue”, you don’t code much and the time frames for any project is longer that you are used before and that creates frustration.
Operating at Staff level:
Work on what matters:
- Avoid snacking: after doing the low effort high impact things, you need to do high effort high impact ones. Anything else is “snacking” and just gives you a false feeling of accomplishment.
- Stop preening: This is doing low impact, high visibility work. Unfortunately some companies just care about visibility.
- Stop chasing ghosts: As a senior leader, you need to maintain hold on your ego to avoid investing in worthless work on a grand scale. Take the time to understand the status quo before shifting it.
- Existential issues: If something dire is happening , that’s the place to be engaged.
- Work where there’s room and attention.
- Foster growth: onboarding, mentoring and coaching are mainly neglected, you can give a bit of time to this and leave a legacy.
- Edit: Sometimes projects are nearly done, just one thing pending. Use your power to complete.
- Finish Things: This is a bit more than “Edit”, is unblocking and leading to the end
- What you can only do: if not, it will not be done
- Why it matters: focus on work that matters, do projects that develop you, and find companies that value you for that.
Writing engineering strategy:
Write five design docs (decisions and trade-offs), then 1 strategy doc.
The design doc format:
- Start form the problem
- Keep the template simple
- Gather and review together, write alone
- Good over perfect.
The strategy format:
- Start where you are
- Write the specifics
- Give your opinion
- Show your work to back your opinion
Once you have 5 strategies, write a vision
- Write about 2/3 years ahead.
- Ground in your business and users
- Be optimistic rather than audacious
- Stay concrete and specific
- 1 or 2 pages long.
Managing Technical quality:
Follow best practices, focus in evolution than in mandate. One change at a time. Leverage points: interfaces (contracts between systems), stateful systems and data models (intersection between interfaces and state
You need to measure quality, get your metrics, listen to your users, do few but better.You need to track the progress of you quality program, you need to get a sponsor and show the work, build the tools and documentation to support the work, keep your program lean to cancel if doesnt get results. Be self-critical.
Stay aligned with authority:
Now you are one of the people responsible for company, team and manager success. Staff-plus roles are leadership roles. An effective long-term leader, has to follow first. Listen to questions, define purpose and read the room. You will have to deal with jerks. Relationships are more important than success (hard for me to digest) . Create space for others to show up, make the work theirs. Create a network a peers (again difficult to digest), create an ambient for learning.
Present to executives:
How to communicate effectively: Follow the SCQA format
- Situation
- Complication
- Question
- Answer
Mistakes to avoid
- Never fight feedback
- Dont evade responsibility or problems
- Dont present a questions without an answer
- Avoid academic-style presentations.
- Dont fixate on your preferred outcome.
Path to Staff:
Maybe you will have to deliver a Staff-level project, or work in important projects, you need to deserve to be in the room where the decision are made (and leave it if it is not for you) and you need to be visible (difficult to digest)
There is no a shape match all based on the interviews with Staff-plus people.
Staff = work, timing and luck. Takes time, you need to build relationships, you need a mentor, sponsorship,