Staff engineer who cares about the why, not just the how. Writing about frontend, productivity, and growing in tech.
Design Engineering with Maggie Appleton
Podcast Episode · The Pragmatic Engineer · September 23 · 1h 27m
Staff archetypes
Most career ladders define a single, uniform set of expectations for Staff engineers operating within the company. Everyone benefits from clear role expectations, but career ladders are a tool that applies better against populations than people. This is particularly true for Staff-plus engineers, whose career ladders often paper over several distinct roles hidden behind a single moniker. The more folks I spoke with about the role of Staff-plus engineers at their company, the better their experiences began to cluster into four distinct patterns. Most companies emphasized one or two of the patterns, and one pattern only existed in companies with many hundreds or thousands of engineers. A few companies didn’t feature any technical leadership pattern and pushed all their experienced engineers towards engineering management. In literature, recurring character patterns are called archetypes, such as the “hero” or the “trickster,” and the archetype term is helpful for labeling these frequent variants of Staff-plus engineers.
Mozilla Tech Speakers: A pilot for technical evangelism
The six-week pilot version of the Mozilla Tech Speakers program wrapped up at the end of May. We learned a lot, made new friends on several continents, and collected valuable ...
Why I Ignore The Spotlight as a Staff Engineer
An alternate path for Staff+ engineers that optimizes for systems over spotlights and stewardship over fungibility.
A practical guide to frontend System Design
Sam, a passionate frontend developer, had been in the job market for what felt like...
The engineering manager's attention budget
Every Engineering Manager has 5 jobs - most distribute their 100 'attention points' across only 2-3 of them
Are We Really Engineers?
This is part one of the Crossover Project. Part two is here and part three is here. A conference talk based on this work is now available here. I sat in front of Mat, idly chatting about tech and cuisine. Before now, I had known him mostly for his cooking pictures on Twitter, the kind that made me envious of suburbanites and their 75,000 BTU woks. But now he was the test subject for my new project, to see if it was going to be fruitful or a waste of time.
Engineering Career Paths at Big Tech and High-Growth Startups
Levels at big tech, the most common career paths, and what comes after making it to Staff
Robin Spielmann — Design Engineer
Design engineer at the intersection of code, design and art. My own little space on the internet: side projects, writing, photography and postcards.
Intentions have a surprising amount of detail
Auteur managerialism, the myth of one-shotting, and the chindogufication of engineering
The Programmer Identity Crisis ❈ Simon Højberg ❈ Principal Frontend Engineer
On AI, Creativity, and Craft
Bailey Townsend | Software Developer
Bandaid Engineer and open source software developer.
Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track
At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior Software Engineer, the career level, in five to eight years. At that point your path branches, and you have the opportunity to pursue engineering management or continue down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer.