StaffEng

During today’s conversation, we speak with Ben Edmunds, Senior Staff Engineer at Wayfair. You’ll hear all about his role at Wayfair, from his day-to-day active projects and how he goes about setting OKRs to the legacy and new deploy tooling he uses, and the method he has adopted to guide engineers. Ben shares ample advice for young engineers and stresses the value of learning more than one coding language. He reveals the finer details of life at Wayfair and the tools he uses to make sure that goals are reached, which include surveys, direct conversation, and partnership. We talk about the role of auxiliary engineering, the templates engineers build for application in partnership with an engineering team, and Ben points listeners in the direction of topics they should research, depending on whether they are looking to improve their software engineering or technical leadership skills. We hope you join us for an action-packed episode today!Linksbenedmunds.com@benedmunds

Today’s guest is a principal software engineer at Microsoft who works at the interface between external and internal elements of the organization. Nell Shamrell-Harrington works on the ClearlyDefined open source project, which tracks open source licenses across open source ecosystems, and is also part of the Rust Foundation's Board of Directors. In today’s episode, you’ll hear about the “field commander” role that Nell plays in both of these organizations, and some of the major learnings they have had along the way (with particular emphasis on the importance of ensuring that technical interventions are responding to the needs of the business and the community). Nell also shares their experience of mentoring veterans through Operation Code, their approach to mentoring in general, and how this impacts their day-to-day job. LinksNell Shamrell-Harrington on LinkedInClearlyDefinedRust FoundationOperation CodeTanya Reilly on TwitterSylvia Botros on Twitter

Oscillating between the roles of individual contributor and management has been a recurring theme on this show. Our guest today, Rich Lafferty, has some special insights into this pattern that can help anyone looking to improve their work. Rich works as a Staff Site Reliability Engineer at PagerDuty and has spent many years interfacing with various departments and building projects and proposals. In our conversation with Rich, we discuss how his past roles have informed his work at PagerDuty and how he gets the most out of his teams without exploiting the authority that comes with his more senior role. We delve into Rich’s process for building proposals and learn some of his tips and tricks for ensuring the best possible outcome by investing in the foundation and design phase. We also explore the importance of early feedback, why you need to include a diverse group of individuals, and how to gradually grow your feedback group. Tune in as we discuss everything from risk management to high and low context culture, and much more!LinksRich LaffertyBeing GlueBehind Human ErrorThe Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and ChangeJohn Allspaw

Mason Jones, a senior staff SRE who moved systems from monoliths to microservices and led cloud migrations, discusses cross-team orchestration and technical writing. He talks about scouting high-impact work, balancing reliability, security, and developer velocity, and mentoring engineers through growth and organizational challenges.

Guest Lorin Hochstein, Netflix engineer, shares insights on resilience, peer-to-peer learning, and close call value. Discusses grassroots programs at Netflix, measuring negative outcomes, and driving cultural change. Emphasizes knowledge sharing, career transitions, operational expertise, complexity management, and influential resources.

Stacey Gammon, a Principal Software Engineer at Elastic, discusses scalability challenges in rapid growth, project management, the value of saying no to new projects, retrospectives, formal mentorship programs, one-on-one meetings, and team communication. Insights on tech leadership roles, Kibana platform, career transitions, prioritizing technical debt, API documentation evolution, and effective project management in a remote-first company.

Please note that this episode contains brief mention of suicide.Today's guest needs no introduction! Of course, they will get one anyway:Will Larson is the CTO of Calm and has worked at Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He is also an author and has written two books, one of which is on Staff Engineering and serves as the inspiration for this podcast! In our conversation with Will, we discuss one of his earliest blog posts on a catastrophic launch at Digg and why he felt it was important to write about his experiences. We talk with Will about the expanding role of Staff Engineers and how that is affected by the rate of change in the field of startups and technology companies as a whole. Later, we explore the tracks of technical leadership and management within technology companies and the pros and cons of the pendulum model. Will shares what he’s learned about the skills needed for leadership positions and why working with a team of managers versus a team of engineers requires a completely different skillset. After that, we talk about Will’s career in writing and public speaking. We loved having Will on the show, so join us for engaging conversation spanning many topics from the potential for leadership in technology companies to the joy of writing!LinksWill Larson on LinkedInWill Larson on GithubWill Larson on AmazonIrrational ExuberanceCalmStaff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management trackAn Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering ManagementDigg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessityHigh Output ManagementThe Engineer/Manager Pendulum

Mahdi Yusuf, Tech Lead for the Server Architecture Team at 1Password, shares his insights on navigating complex organizational dynamics. He discusses the balance between coding, project design, and mentoring, emphasizing the importance of empathy in tech leadership. Mahdi explores how to foster collaboration and address stakeholder needs while handling challenging conversations. He also touches on career growth, the necessity of psychological safety, and the importance of continuous learning in a tech environment.

Amy Unger from GitHub discusses her transition from academic programming to for-profit tech, the differences between tech lead and deep diver roles, trade-offs in engineering projects, and the importance of value and service ethic in developer tooling. She shares insights on managing rushed feature requests, navigating product failings, mentoring, balancing coding with non-coding work, and learning from peers in a male-dominated environment.

Today we welcome Brian Lawler, who is a Principal Engineer at Iterable! Brian has a load of experience with software architecture, having worked in the space for over 25 years, at a number of different companies and amassing a large amount of wisdom and expertise in the process. The rise of Iterable stands as a testament to the great ethos and community at the company and Brian generously shares a lot of insider info on how the teams and processes work. We get to talk about his specific role as it stands, his first period of employment at Iterable, and his thoughts on leadership style and problem-solving. Brian underlines the way they approach meetings and the feedback that follows before we hear how he divides his time as Principal Engineer. The conversation also covers how to keep a multidisciplinary organization in alignment, processes for flagging bugs, and the inextricable importance of mentorship in a company such as this. So for all this great stuff and much more from a seasoned pro, be sure to join us!LinksBrian Lawler on LinkedInIterableAccenture