Filling the void
summary
Back Market Staff Engineers step into a leaderless scope and run an eight‑month cloud migration that forces program practices: eight months to migrate, daily 30‑minute standups for 10–15 engineers, iterative rollouts starting in pre‑prod, and explicit handoffs of dropped responsibilities. They mentor relays, accept some casualties, document every program for the incoming VP, and form broader support like staff community of 160 members. Outcome: the migration is completed on time and on budget with no major incident, revealing which archetypes scale into leadership.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:25Platform team context
- 2:49Leadership void after VP
- 3:51Cloud migration project
- 4:54Daily standups for alignment
- 6:17Balancing responsibilities
- 7:21Mentoring engineers
- 8:46Risk and fatigue management
- 10:11Running premortems
- 11:17Post-migration challenges
- 12:23Sustaining momentum
- 13:26Platform engineering standards
- 14:09Preparing for new VP
- 15:13Staff engineer archetypes
- 16:59Influence without authority
- 18:24Post-migration gaps
- 19:26Relationships feedback changes
- 20:52Staff engineer collaboration
- 21:54Staff engineering community France
- 22:36Final reflections Q&A
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