STAFF ENGINEER’S PATH RESOURCE LIST

INTRODUCTION

staffeng.com and Staff Engineer: Will Larson’s website and book on staff engineering.

StaffPlus conference: an annual conference by Lead Dev. I host this event so I'm super biased but I think it's so good.

An Incomplete List of Skills Senior Engineers Need, Beyond Coding: article by Camille Fournier

CHAPTER 1: WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOU DO HERE?

The Reality of Being a Principal Engineer: article by Silvia Botros. Not more-senior senior!

https://levels.fyi and https://www.progression.fyi: two websites that describe career ladders in various companies.

Creating a Career Ladder for Engineers: talk by Marco Rogers including the idea of the senior level being the “anchor”.

Engineering Growth: Framework Overview: article by the Medium Engineering team. Why levels matter.

The Effects of Employee Job Titles on Respect Granted by Customers: paper by Kipp Krukowski

The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM: article by Joan C Williams referencing a research paper, Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students, by Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoll, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Handelsman

Inverse Conway Maneuver: a description of the technique on the Thoughtworks Technology Radar

List of Software Bugs: Wikipedia’s article.

Boeing Promised Pilots a 737 Software Fix Last Year, but They’re Still Waiting: New York Times article by Natalie Kitroeff, Jack Nicas and Thomas Kaplan

Software Glitch Cripples Ambulance Service: Wired article by Tony Long about the classic systems failure. (I studied it in college; did you?)

An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accident: Computer Magazine article by Nancy G Leveson and Clark S Turner. (This one too.)

We Are Not Special: article by Hillel Wayne about how software engineering relates to other engineering disciplines.

Bastard Operator From Hell: the wikipedia article about Simon Travaglia’s 1990s web stories.

Kind Engineering: How to Engineer Kindness: wonderful website by Evan Smith

So You're Staff+ ... Now What?: conference talk by Sabrina Leandro. Finding the important work yourself and other topics.

When Your Manager Isn’t Supporting You, Build A Voltron: article by Lara Hogan

Side quest: the TVTropes description of the phenomenon. Beware: TVTropes is a time sink.

Role and Influence: The IC trajectory beyond Staff: conference talk by Yonatan Zunger. This opening talk from StaffPlusLive blew us all away.

The Trident Model of Career Development: article by Pat Kua

Being a Tech Lead-Manager is Hard: article by James Lim

Tech Lead Management Roles are a Trap: article by Will Larson

The Lure of the Tech Lead Manager and Why You Should Avoid it: article by Luciano H. Gomes

The Engineer/Manager Pendulum: industry -changing article by Charity Majors

Staff Archetypes: article by Will Larson and one that's been really formative for the staff engineer role.

Brooks’s Law: the Wikipedia article for the observation that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later”

Huge Customer Effort Keeps Flooded NYC Data Center Running: ComputerWorld article about Peer1’s datacenter flooding and Squarespace employees hauling diesel to keep it online.

CHAPTER 2: THREE MAPS

Fog of War: the section of the Wikipedia article that describes the video game meaning of the phrase

Average Familiarity: cartoon by Randall Munroe

Pushing Through Friction: conference talk by Dan Na

Principal Engineering Community Tenets: describing the principal engineer role at Amazon

“Nines don’t matter if users aren’t happy”: tweet from Charity Majors

Service-Level Objective: the Wikipedia article explaining SLOs

No User Left Behind: Making Sure Customers Reach Your Service: conference talk by Mohit Suley

Lead Dev, Staff Plus, and Leading Eng: upcoming conferences from the Lead Dev folks

SRECon: upcoming SRECon conferences

Welcome to Rands Leadership Slack: how to request an invite to RLS

The Software Architects’ Newsletter: newsletter from InfoQ

Announcing the VOID: article by Courtney Nash introducing The Void's incident report. We should all learn from each other's outages.

SRE Weekly: newsletter from Lex Neva

Raw Signal: newsletter from Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale

Technology Radar: quarterly report from Thoughtworks

Map of Earth's principal tectonic plates: SVG file on Wikipedia Commons

Myth of meritocracy: Wikipedia’s article on the idea

Is Tech A Meritocracy: list of articles exploring the topic curated by André Arko

A Typology of Organisational Cultures: paper by Ron Westrum

A User’s Guide To Getting Things Done in Government: article by Alexis Wichowski

The Politics of Mapping: article by Ross Holland

The Room Where It Happens: lyrics for the song from Hamilton annotated on genius.com

Coordination Headwind: How Organizations are like Slime Molds: slide deck by Alex Komoroske

Getting in the Room: article by Will Larson

Manipulating Your Organization: section from Debugging Teams by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman

Lead Manufacturing: the Wikipedia article on the technique

DevOps culture: Westrum organizational culture: an explanation of Westrum’s model on Google’s DevOps site

Civilization: the official website for the game

Civilization II Technology Tree: downloadable high resolution posters at civfanatics.com

CHAPTER 3: CreatING THE BIG PICTURE

Tragedy of the Commons: the Wikipedia article on the phenomenon

Fundamentals of Software Architecture: book by Mark Richards and Neal Ford

Writing the Good Vision: Chapter 4 of Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun

How to Set the Technical Direction for Your Team: article by James Hood

Writing our 3-Year Technical Vision: article by Daniel Micol about how Eventbrite approached writing a tech vision

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: book by Richard Rumelt

Technical Strategy Power Chords: StaffPlusLive conference talk by Patrick Shields

Getting to Commitment: Tackling broad technical problems in large organizations: conference talk by Mattie Toia

A survey of engineering strategies: article by Will Larson

Technology Strategy Patterns: book by Eben Hewitt

Welcome to Rands Leadership Slack: how to request an invite to RLS

Build Your Own Radar: resources from Thoughtwords for building your own organization’s tech radar of recommended technologies

“writing about engineering strategy is hard because good strategy is pretty boring”: tweet from Camille Fournier

Guides / Writing Engineering Strategy: article by Will Larson

To Lead, You Have to Follow: article by Will Larson

Primus Inter Pares: Wikipedia article about having a “first among equals”

Architecture Characteristics Defined: chapter 4 of Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Mark Richards and Neal Ford

Technical Decision Making: article by Cindy Sridharan

Manifesto for Agile Software Development: the homepage for the Agile Manifesto

On Consensus and Humming in the IETF: RFC-7282 from the Internet Engineering Task Force

“in a few cases it was agreed that moving forward was more important than one person’s argument carrying the day, so we made decisions by flipping a coin”: Mark Nottingham’s Foreword to Learning HTTP/2 by Stephen Ludin and Javier Garza

The Decider: decision-making app

Overton Window: Wikipedia’s article about the concept

The Long Con And The Overton Window: explanation of the Overton Window by Neil Waytowich, and a useful graphic for thinking about it (also a discussion of Canadian politics which isn’t relevant to the chapter :-) )

Nemawashi: Wikipedia’s article about the technique

Nemawashi – Toyota Production System Guide: explanation from Toyota UK Magazine

Getting Big Changes Implemented at the Staff+ Level: article by Zach Millman

Making the Case for Cloud Only: article by Mark Barnes including their use of a memorable slogan, “Cloud only 2020”

Landing projects successfully: talk by Sarah Wells about the same migration

CHAPTER 4: FINITE TIME

The Sims: official EA game website

What phrases make you assume someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about?: a twitter thread about credibility

Impact for the Impatient: article by Carla Geisser

Jane Jacobs: Wikipedia article about Jacobs

Pierre Bourdieu: Wikipedia article about Bourdieu

Bin packing problem: Wikipedia article about the optimization problem

Ron Swanson: Wikipedia article about the Parks and Recreation philosopher

The first rule of prioritization: no snacking: article on the Intercom blog about a conversation with Hunter Walk

OPP (Other People’s Problems): article by Camille Fournier

The Myths and Traps of "Managing Up": article by Katie Wilde

Observational learning: the Wikipedia article about the method of learning

The New Manager Death Spiral: conference talk from Michael Lopp

10 ways to politely say 'NO': article from India Today

How to Say No to a Work Request: advice from the Ask A Manager blog

Being strategic about accepting requests for your time and tracking when you say no: Twitter thread from Amy Nguyen

Work on What Matters: article by Will Larson

CHAPTER 5: Leading Big Projects

“That feeling of discomfort is called ‘learning’”: tweet quoting Polina Giralt

Working with Product Managers: Advice from PMs: article by Gergely Orosz including advice from Ebi Atawodi and others.

Product requirements document: Wikipedia’s article describing PRDs

The Challenges of Migrating 150+ Microservices to Kubernetes: keynote conference talk from Sarah Wells

Responsibility Assignment Matrix: Wikipedia’s article describing RACI

Team Leader Venn Diagram: article by Lara Hogan

Sustaining and Growing Motivation Across Projects: Panel discussion from Lead Dev Together.

Project Management Triangle: Wikipedia article about the triangle of time, cost, and scope

Estimating: Topic 15 from The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

Avoid the Lake: conference talk from Kripa Krishnan about driving massive projects

The Art of Travel: book by Alain de Botton

Ubiquitous Language: an explanation of the topic by Martin Fowler

“a written design or an API one-pager may feel like it costs a lot to write, but it is a very cheap iteration”: tweet by Cian Synnott who is so freaking wise

The Power of “Yes, if”: Iterating on our RFC Process: an article about evolving RFC processes (by me :-) ). It includes a sample RFC template

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right: book by Atul Gawande

What I Think About When I Edit: article by Eva Parish

“If you can insert "by zombies" after the verb, you have passive voice.”: tweet by Dr. Rebecca Johnson

Overview of technical writing courses: Google’s technical writing courses

Write the Docs: community homepage

C. Northcote Parkinson: wikipedia page about C. Northcote Parkinson and his “Law of Triviality”–where bikeshedding comes from

Should Staff+ Engineers Be Writing Code?: article by Joy Ebertz

99 Bottles of OOP: book by Sandi Metz, Katrina Owen, and TJ Stankus

CHAPTER 6: WHY HAVE WE STOPPED?

Guides / Work on what matters: article by Will Larson

Lightweight Architecture Decision Records: explanation of the technique on the Thoughtworks site

Debugging Teams: book by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman

“the art of the rollup”: Twitter thread by Denise Yu

State the Problem Before Describing the Solution: memo from Leslie Lamport

Definition of Done: description from the Agile Alliance

Coaching Drills and Exercises: thinking about the meaning of “done”, from Bill Wake

Eating Your Own Dog Food: Wikipedia’s particle about the practice

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Wikipedia article about the classic 1979 book. I just reread the book after a couple of decades and it’s still pretty great :-)

Why Marketing Matters: conference talk by Michael Bernstein

CHAPTER 7: YOU’RE A ROLE MODEL NOW (SORRY)

ACSE Guidelines for Engineering Grades: comparing engineering grades in civil engineering including typical years of experience

Engineering Management: The Pendulum or the Ladder: article by Charity Majors

Implicit Stereotype: the wikipedia article about the implicit bias

Regular Expressions: xkcd comic by Randall Munroe

Explain It Like I’m Five: The subreddit that gave us the concept of ELI5 explanations

On Being A Senior Engineer: article by John Allspaw

Don’t Ask Forgiveness, Radiate Intent: article by Elizabeth Ayer

Being Glue: talk/article on glue work by me

Embrace Your Inner Incident Commander: Increment Magazine article about incident command also by me

Bastard Operator From Hell: the wikipedia article about Simon Travaglia’s 1990s web stories.

Social Rules: The Recurse Center’s four social rules

Choose Boring Technology: illustrated article/talk from Dan McKinley

Software Engineering at Google: book curated by Titus Winters, Tom Manshreck and Hyrum Wright

Ship of Theseus: Wikipedia explanation of the concept

Spooky Action at a Distance, How an AWS Outage Ate Our Load Balancer: incident retrospective written by Fran Garcia

Fallacies of Distributed Computing: Wikipedia page about the fallacies

Long-term Nuclear Waste Warning Messages: Wikipedia page about the various approaches

Chaos engineering: Wikipedia page explaining Chaos Engineering

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code: book by Martin Fowler

Getting Credit for Invisible Work at the Staff+ Level: article by Ryan Harter

CHAPTER 8: INFLUENCE AT SCALE

Building a Better Bridge: conference talk by Bryan Liles at StaffPlus 2021

Mentor, Coach, Sponsor: a Guide to Developing Engineers: article by Neha Batra

Resilient Management: book by Lara Hogan

Rubber Duck Debugging: Wikipedia article about the concept (quack)

Implicit Stereotype: Wikipedia article about implicit bias

Providing Feedback: sage advice from Project Include

Introducing "Testing on the Toilet": article on the Google testing blog

Creating a Code Review Culture, Part 2: Code Reviewers: article by John Turner on the Squarespace engineering blkog

How Do Good Leaders Give Advice? The Short Answer: They Don’t: article by Lenora E. Houseworth quoting Julia Milner’s TEDx talk.

Kotlin Koans: short Kotlin exercises, super fun

Codelabs: codelabs from Google for various languages and technologies

Delegation is an Art not a Science: article by Lara Hogan

Google Style Guides: style guides for the languages written at Google and an explanation of why style guides are useful

Thoughtworks Technology Radar: “An opinionated guide to technology frontiers” from Thoughtworks

Help Protect Your Data Centers with Safety Constraints: conference talk by Christina Schulman and Etienne Perot

Delegate Messy and Unscoped Projects: advice from Lara Hogan’s post Manager Energy Drain

‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups: article by Molly Graham

Don’t Just Mentor Women and People of Color. Sponsor Them: article by Rosalind Chow

Kapor Center for Social Impact Responds to Twitter’s Diversity Numbers: statement by the Kapor Center

Hiring: advice on hiring from Project Include

CHAPTER 9: WHAT’S NEXT?

How I Think About Career Development: article by Cian Synnott

Engineering Management: The Pendulum or the Ladder: article by Charity Majors

Engineering Leadership With a Little Help From My Friends: conference talk by Yvette Pasqua

The Science of People: website by Vanessa Van Edwards with step by step advice for socially awkward person who need to do humaning things

How to Network: 18 Easy Networking Tips You Can Use Today: article by Vanessa Van Edwards

5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job: article by Cate Huston with advice on when to stay and when to go

Being the DRI of Your Career: article by Cate Huston

From Software Engineering ⇒ Product Management (A 3 Month Reflection): article by Lou Bichard

The Engineer/Manager Pendulum: article by Charity Majors

Tech Lead Management Roles are a Trap: article by Will Larson

Choosing Your Next Job: article by Molly Graham

‘if you’re not happy or burnt out, you have a tendency to pick a “rebound job”’: LinkedIn post by Molly Graham

6 Things I Learned Interviewing For Staff Positions: article by Amy Unger

https://levels.fyi: website that compares career ladders in various companies

Focus Retreat Center: a place to focus with supportive peers without distractions

Why Success Is Often Elusive at the Highest Echelons: article by Cindy Sridharan about a common failure mode of leaders changing jobs

Automating Inequality: book by Virginia Eubanks

Iron Ring: Wikipedia article about the ring worn by Canadian engineers