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mjfmjfmjf's review
3.0
Well huh. That was definitely the best I've ever read on the subject. Or even the best book I've ever heard of on the subject. And if you are thinking this is damning with faint praise, you'd be right. I'm glad this book exists. I wish it were better.
So I recently got the title of Staff Engineer. Actually years ago I was made Member of Technical Staff and Senior Member of Technical Staff. At another job I was Chief Software Architect. But in between those jobs, I've been a Senior Software Engineer for 18 additional years.
So I was curious what people thought the role of Staff Engineer and for that matter Technology Leadership should mean. And the answer was clearly lots of different things.
This book seemed to be primarily based on interviews and in fact the latter part of the book was all direct interview transcripts. And these were not all at the same level of quality or relevance.
One recurring pattern was clearly Impostor Syndrome. Another pattern was writing in such a way that the language was not intended for general use. Mostly it was jargon driven. And of course one of the key missions that everyone agreed on for Staff Engineer was communication.
This book had ridiculous quantities of links and probably would work better reading in a browser on a large monitor. But reading it on a kindle was difficult. First I didn't expect I'd make it through a first read if I even tried to follow the links. And just selecting the next page without touching a link was a pain.
But was there value here? Yes. How to think about this role, how to select someone for the role, what success looks like. These are all important to me and this book is a starting point.
And the next step might be to follow those links. Or network with other Staff Engineers. Thanks Travis.
So I recently got the title of Staff Engineer. Actually years ago I was made Member of Technical Staff and Senior Member of Technical Staff. At another job I was Chief Software Architect. But in between those jobs, I've been a Senior Software Engineer for 18 additional years.
So I was curious what people thought the role of Staff Engineer and for that matter Technology Leadership should mean. And the answer was clearly lots of different things.
This book seemed to be primarily based on interviews and in fact the latter part of the book was all direct interview transcripts. And these were not all at the same level of quality or relevance.
One recurring pattern was clearly Impostor Syndrome. Another pattern was writing in such a way that the language was not intended for general use. Mostly it was jargon driven. And of course one of the key missions that everyone agreed on for Staff Engineer was communication.
This book had ridiculous quantities of links and probably would work better reading in a browser on a large monitor. But reading it on a kindle was difficult. First I didn't expect I'd make it through a first read if I even tried to follow the links. And just selecting the next page without touching a link was a pain.
But was there value here? Yes. How to think about this role, how to select someone for the role, what success looks like. These are all important to me and this book is a starting point.
And the next step might be to follow those links. Or network with other Staff Engineers. Thanks Travis.
darkbackground's review
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Great information, but a substantial portion is interviews which can become repetitive when reading too much as once.
togdon's review
3.0
This book felt, more than anything else, like an extended blog post. That's not actually a criticism, more of a warning of what you're getting into (I'd absolutely read it electronically). So few books exist on the topic of Staff+ Engineers that it was nice to actually have one to read. The interviews felt like padding though, and the first part seemed like it could've been expanded to include things from them instead.
ornitie's review
2.0
Maybe my expectations made my experience worse than it had to be. So I thought this book would be more about the role of Staff Engineers and how exactly do they fit in and what kind of qualifications they ought to have. And I got that...for about 25% of the book, after a certain point, the book turns into a guide on how to achieve that position, like a "Cracking the Coding Interview" for Staff Engineers, don't get me wrong, it's good, but it's not what I expected and after a while I feel the author just kept repeating the same talking points with different formats.
magnetareggblackhole's review
5.0
Great introduction to staff eng role
I really like how Will writes: he explores relevant systems and tried to distill them. As a newly minted staff eng, this book really helped jumpstart my modeling of how to be effective.
I really like how Will writes: he explores relevant systems and tried to distill them. As a newly minted staff eng, this book really helped jumpstart my modeling of how to be effective.
jlandis's review
The last half of the book (the stories/interviews) was tedious, redundant, and unhelpful.