Being Staff Plus
summary
Explains what changes when engineers move beyond team-level senior roles to staff plus work: four archetypes (leader, designer/solver/translator via the architecture elevator), the need to influence without authority, and concrete practices like spending 20% coding, pairing or mobbing, doing a ride along month, and shipping internal open-source libraries. Gives measurable expectations (own cross-team problems, build an architecture runway, trade scope/time/quality) and pragmatic steps to prove impact so hiring managers keep paying for the role.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Staff plus roles intro
- 2:48Beyond coding contributions
- 10:03Staff plus archetypes
- 16:26Scope and progression
- 25:01Balancing tech and leadership
- 34:18Avoiding post-technical
- 37:51Technical leadership
- 44:11Navigating org politics
- 51:54Working on what matters to the organization
- 57:56Resources and closing
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