Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track

Wow, REALLY resonated with so much in this. Sure, it's got some padding and fluff. I didn't read every single staff eng interview in the appendix (though I may revisit - especially the Tech Leads). But I got a LOT out of this book. It kinda met me exactly where I was at.

In brief: this is one of those capitalism self-help books, but aimed at a very specific audience - folks working in (large-ish) tech companies, who are (1) engineers or eng adjacent (CRAFTSPEOPLE, I like to say), and (2) at or near a “Staff” level title. I'm a Staff Data Scientist, which was a title I yearned for for many years (!), mostly because I want to keep advancing along the “IC” (individual contributor - aka, CRAFTSPERSON) path, and tech is an industry that allows me that (as opposed to eventually switching into managing people). But now, indeed, I face the question: does Staff DS mean... my stats is more fancy? Or I tell people to do fancy stats? Or... what, exactly?

Hence this book. I especially enjoyed (1) the highlighting of many many women (yaaaa boiiii), and (2) the very practical discussions of career, life spans, and archetypes, and (3) the occasional cheek. I've now been also recommending this book to everyone who'll listen, and have also felt WAY more empowered (and inspired) at work - honestly, just removing that confusion and anxiety around “but what am I supposed to be doing?!” really helped.