Managing Staff+ Engineers: Opportunities and Challenges

Staff+ engineers can be a powerful force in your organization…if you let them. Effectively managingStaff+ engineers requires different strategies than many managers are used to employing.

Having managed many Staff+ engineers and worked as a Staff+ engineer myself, I’d like to share my experiences (especially my mistakes!) so that you can get maximum value from your Staff+ engineers (and keep your sanity while doing so!).

In this talk, we’ll cover a range of stories and examples of effective and ineffective Staff+ management, such as:

• The “transparent umbrella” strategy for providing context
• What happens when you treat Staff+ engineers like senior engineers
• Handling mismatched IQ/EQ in your Staff+ engineers
• Leading without authority vs. lending authority
• For aspiring & current Staff+ engineers, understanding what you can expect from your manager
• “Talk tracks” to help aspiring and current Staff+ engineers get the support they need