Notes on Books

The Staff Engineer's Path

I started reading The Staff Engineer's Path. It's awesome.

Introduction

A few things that really called to me:

Engineers considering this path may have never worked with a staff engineer before, or might have seen such a narrow set of personalities in the role that it seems like unattainable wizardry.

Basically, the lesson is:

• Embrace uncertainty.

Three pillars of staff engineering are offered:

• Big-picture thinking
  • think beyond the current time
  • see the forest but sometimes....you'll need to closely inpsect a tree
• Execution
  • projects get messier and more ambiguous, they'll involve more people and be harder
• Leveling up (the folks you work with)
  • intentional influence: teaching, mentoring
  • accidental influence: being a role model/example

The rest of the book is broken up into parts based on those three pillars.

Based on the links:

• https://staffeng.com/
• An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding