The Staff Engineer's Path

When the path is undefined and confusing, sometimes you need to get the group to agree on a plan and create the missing map. This map often comes in the form of a technical vision, describing a future state you want to get to, or a technical strategy, outlining how you plan to navigate challenges and achieve specific goals.

When two or more teams need to work closely together, their projects can fall into chaos if they don’t have the same clear view of where they’re trying to get to. The lack of alignment can lead to power struggles and wasted effort as both sides try to “win” the technical direction.

You need to measure success from your users’ point of view.

But technology is a means to some end.

To pass through the fortress gates, you might need to bring a token of sponsorship from someone the gatekeeper respects, or know the password to lower the drawbridge. (Common passwords include proving that you’ve mitigated all of the risks of your proposed change, completing lengthy checklists or capacity estimates, or replying to huge numbers of d

Whenever I interview a job candidate, their first question is often, “What’s the culture like?” I used to struggle to answer; where do you even start? Tomes have been written on organizational culture. Now, though, I think most of the time people are really asking these questions: How much autonomy will I have? Will I feel included? Will it be safe

If your organization has published a statement of values or principles, that can help you see what the leaders care most about. But these values are aspirational: the real values of the company are reflected in what actually happens every day.

Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb, often hands out stickers that say: “Nines don’t matter when users aren’t happy.” “Nines” here refers to service level objectives (SLOs), a common mechanism for measuring system availability. “Three and a half nines of availability” means that 99.95% of the time, the service is up and running. SLOs are useful, but a

Knowing the cultural expectations around sharing is crucial. In a culture that keeps knowledge locked down, you’ll lose your boss’s trust if you reshare something they told you in confidence. In a more open company, you’ll be considered political or untrustworthy if you withhold information or don’t make sure everyone knows what’s going on.