StaffEng

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

Conversations with software engineers who have progressed beyond the career level, into Staff levels and beyond. We discuss the areas of work that set Staff-plus level engineers apart from other individual contributors; things like setting technical direction, mentorship and sponsorship, providing engineering perspective to the org, etc.Hosted by David Noël-Romas (@davidnoelromas) and Alex Kessinger (@voidfiles).

  1. 2021. 12. 14.

    Peter Stout (Netflix)

    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 what inhabiting this position in the above manner looks like. We start by hearing Peter describe himself as a generalist, and share how this played out in the broad focus of his college degree as well as in his career pivot from Chemistry into Software Engineering. We discuss the rapid growth of the engineering team at Netflix, how this has led to less tightly-defined roles for junior and senior engineers, and how this factors into the way Peter approaches his place in the organization. Peter talks about the shift he made from technician to technical director and how much of the skills he learned from the former position he brings into the latter. He talks about his tendency to seek out the blank spots in the organization and how he tries to focus on a long-term vision, using that to guide him as he connects the dots between teams and influences decision making. Here Peter considers his role as a disruptor and how he gauges how much pressure to apply while still staying largely in sync. We also have a great conversation about Peter’s approach to mentorship and his philosophy around how he grew into the leadership position he occupies. Tune in today! Links Peter Stout on LinkedInNetflixRangeThe Leadership Pipeline

    52분
  2. 2021. 11. 30.

    James Cowling (Convex)

    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 the helm of numerous high stakes projects at Dropbox, such as migrating the company off Amazon S3 by building their own distributed storage system. For James, the main job of a tech lead is getting their team to have a firm grasp of the why behind a project, and to become completely values-aligned as a result. James takes us through his approach to diagnosing struggles within teams and how he helps groups to step back and course correct by drilling down on their purpose within the larger organization. We talk about the strong culture that gets built as a result of this approach and the power it has to keep teams robust. In today’s conversation, James also gets into how Staff Engineers themselves can stay in tune with the larger company, the single most important quality to nurture in Software Engineers who hope to grow into leadership positions, and a whole lot more. Links James Cowling on LinkedInJames Cowling on TwitterConvexDropbox'Stepping Stones not Milestones'

    48분
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Conversations with software engineers who have progressed beyond the career level, into Staff levels and beyond. We discuss the areas of work that set Staff-plus level engineers apart from other individual contributors; things like setting technical direction, mentorship and sponsorship, providing engineering perspective to the org, etc.Hosted by David Noël-Romas (@davidnoelromas) and Alex Kessinger (@voidfiles).

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