Episode 2: What is a Staff Engineer Anyway?

The Main Thread

So... what is a Staff Engineer anyway? What even is the job description? In this episode, we’re joined by Abhishek Mistry–Staff Engineering Leader at Hudson River Trading–to discuss exactly that. What is this job ICs aspire to? How is it different from management? How do you influence and lead people when you actually have no real authority? Is it better to go broad or to go deep? How does the Staff Engineer scale their impact and provide, like Tom Brady, tremendous value above replacement? Abhishek has been in the tech industry for many years. He has tons of insight, and he’s genuinely a very fun guy to talk to.

Plugs

JammText.com: text-to-screen software to use at your next party.

Resources

LifeLabsLearning: classes on influential communication

The Pragmatic Programmer, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

JavaScript Jabber Podcast, on Top End Devs

Refactoring, by Martin Fowler

Functional Programming Simplified, by Alvin Alexander

The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly

Elasticsearch Documentation

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