StaffEng David Noël-Romas (@davidnoelromas) and Alex Kessinger (@voidfiles)

This episode is a celebration of the journey we have been on as this podcast comes to a close. We have had such a great time bringing you these interviews and we are excited about a new chapter, taking the lessons we have learned forward into different spaces. It's been a lot of work putting this show together, but it has also been such a pleasure doing it. And, as we all know, nothing good lasts forever! So to close the circle in a sense, we decided to host a conversation between the two of ...

The structures of an organization can often be self-reinforcing, and in a changing environment, this becomes a recipe for future vulnerabilities. That is why senior ICs need to play a slightly discordant role at times by alerting teams to issues conventionally outside of their bubble of concern. Peter Stout is a Technical Director at Netflix where he has a cross-functional role at the juncture of business and technology. He joins us on the show today to share some of the finer details around ...

Often the biggest impacts a Staff Engineer can make in their organization are not technical but rather people-related. When teams are value-aligned due to good leadership, they go on to make larger impacts than they would otherwise have. As Senior Principal Engineer at Dropbox for almost a decade, James Cowling learned a lot about how people think and work together, and he joins us today to share some of his insights. Joining this conversation, listeners will hear about James’ experience at t...

Staff engineers may not get much time to code anymore, but this does not mean problem-solving and system design is not an integral part of their day-to-day. Today’s guest is Bryan Berg, Staff Engineer at Stripe, and he joins us to talk about the nuances of his position and his unique approach to the many challenges it entails. As a Staff Engineer, Bryan acts as Tech Lead of the Traffic team, and we begin our conversation by hearing about how he landed in this role. Bryan describes the ambiguo...

Today we talk to Ben Ilegbodu, Principal Frontend Engineer at Stitch Fix, about how he manages to stay close to the code at a senior level. We hear how he arrived at Stitch Fix and what his first tasks were to identify the pain points in customer teams. From getting the IC's on his side to learning the importance of marketing your ideas to upper management, Ben talks us through his exciting career. He describes how he handles urgent tasks, and why it's crucial to do the important tasks first....

Moving from an architect role to a product-oriented one might seem like a big leap, but there are overlaps between the two roles. Today's guest, Ashby Winch, has recently made this transition, and in today's episode, they share what this has been like. Up until recently, Ashby was an architect, with their most senior role at a large logistics operation in the U.K. Now, they have shifted to a product management job, and they are using the skills from the previous role for this new position. We...