Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track Paperback – 31 Jan. 2021

This book reads very easily, and was very engaging. It's not necessarily full of practical tools, but it is very good at helping challenge your perspective on how you see yourself within the context of your position. Recommended for anyone in, or considering this job role. Also has a section useful for those managing staff engineers.

Will Larson’s staff engineer archetypes didn’t really resonate with me and neither did the use of the word “staff”, which isn't really explained. Some of the descriptions of operating as a staff engineer were really good. They taught me a few things and reaffirmed some others. I loved the idea of a Right Hand, which is like the Hand of the King in Game of Thrones. Also, the importance of ‘being in the room’ was well explained.The book overplays alignment with seniors to the point of sucking up to get what you want, which I found disingenuous. If you’re operating at that level you should be prepared to challenge authority. I didn’t relate to the suggested guidance for getting promoted to staff engineer, perhaps because I’ve always done it by moving to a new company - which Larson also covers, but only really gets a light touch.Just over half the book is stories from other staff engineers. I wasn’t sure I’d get value from reading those, so I abandoned the book at that point. I may go back to it in the future.

I wish I had read this book years ago. I love development, but Senior Development is the end of the road for many developers. Sure, you can get paid well, but it's about growth? I joined IBM in 1977, and have been programming ever since - IBM was the only company that did career management, and actively grew its employees. So when you move elsewhere, you need to look at what comes next?Replace your compilers with Spreadsheets, Outlook and Teams, or go into Architecture?This is a good book to help you choose. Just because you are old does not mean that you have to do management; there is a certain calm temperament required and for an architect to get to the nub of the problem quickly AND to be able to communicate it well to different audiences.People dont tell you this stuff any more.There isn't career guidance or mentoring in companies - only YouTube, and who reads books these days except you?

The perceived career fork when reaching senior engineer pushes employees into engineering management or into an individual contributor role as a staff engineer. This second book by experienced engineering leader and software engineer Will Larson covers the Staff+ roles (covering different naming conventions – principal, staff, architect, lead, fellow, etc.).The first part of the book includes a role overview, operating at Staff and how to gain the title – either internally or by switching companies. The second half of the book contains stories from staff engineers across the software industry (Stripe, Mailchimp, Fastly, Slack, Etsy, Dropbox, etc.).This is a well-written book covering an often overlooked and complex role. I enjoyed the split of intelligent role analysis and interesting real-world perspectives. The extensive reference section is useful but the use of QR codes against each of the 343 links expands the section to a needless 51 pages. Great book and highly recommended if you covet a staff engineer role.

It is rare that I finish a non-fiction book in a single sitting, but that is exactly what happened with this book. It is a must-have for those engineers who are planning to make their next career move.After brining the contents in this book to practice, I have been offered a position as a staff engineer. It was money well spent.

Staff+ is such a broad church, and this book helpfully helps those aspiring or currently doing the role tangible inputs into the what/why and how of the roles.Recommended for any aspiring career IC who wants to maximise their pathway.

Amazon is printing these on demand as low quality versions of the original.It's unreadable in places and a terrible waste of money.Please buy this book somewhere else.

*Content*There are some useful bits of information in this book about what it means to be a staff engineer and the necessary skills. But this is not communicated well - there are far too many words and irrelevant quotes. I think the main chapters could be condensed by about half and still convey the same information.*Layout*The book is a wall of text. No thought has been given to layout of the pages - such as fonts, headings, diagrams, chapter pages etc. It looks like a word document just sent to the printer.*Physical book*The printing quality of this book is appalling for something selling for £20. The cover immediately started to curl, the front is smudged, the margins aren't equal, there are lines down the text pages.