As a Senior engineer, how do I know if I’m operating at the Staff level?
When you’re a senior-level engineer (i.e., focused on being impactful in a single team), it’s hard to tell how far you are from being Staff+ in impact. Here are a few questions I ask folks around heuristics that can indicate when you’re near or at a Staff+ level.
Does it feel like you have one foot in the team and one foot out of it?
When you’re operating at a Staff+ level, you’re taking fewer tickets from the team’s sprint/backlog because the rest of your workload is cross-team. It should feel like you’re contributing less to your team. It should feel like your standup updates on the cross-team work are not relevant/important to your main team (your manager should find them important though).
Do you feel like you’re doing work equivalent to a Staff+ engineer?
Look for an existing Staff+ engineer that aligns with your engineering archetypes. Comparing yourself to an engineer that is stronger in different archetypes than you will be an unfair comparison and may skew your interpretation of Staff+; e.g., if you’re a business partner or leader and compare yourself to a technologist, you’ll think you need to build something heavily used in the company to be Staff, which isn’t the only path.
Are you talking like a Staff+ engineer?
If you (or a mentor) find that you’re frequently talking about issues or tactics around projects navigating more than one team, that’s a good sign of doing work beyond the scope of your home/single team.
Said differently, if you’re largely only talking about other engineers on your team, or work related to tickets in your sprint, you might be too skewed toward “senior” (team-level) impact.
Are you a go-to in your domain?
If you’ve spent a sufficient amount of time in coding/execution to understand the domain you work in, you will likely have folks reach out to you for your opinion or for clarification on how things work. “The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position.” When you actually know how things work, people view you as the go-to. Being a go-to for folks across teams (as in, teams that depend on your team’s work) is a sign that you’re in the space of multi-team impact.
Are engineers from other teams asking you questions often?
As stated above, if you’re the go-to, people will come to you with questions. Teams flock to those who know the truth. You should be getting public pings in chatrooms or direct messages from other engineers/managers/product. If no one comes to you for answers or opinions, you may not know enough in your domain and should actively work on filling gaps through reading and writing code.
Is your engineering manager asking for your opinion?
Similar to above, you might notice your EM messaging you for your understanding of the systems. Your EM relationship may start to transition into a partnership, where you’re helping each other figure out how to navigate multi-team issues or the rough level of effort for upcoming cross-team initiatives.
Making sense of the answers
The more yeses you have to these questions, the higher the chance you’ll get that Staff+ title. No’s here aren’t quick fixes though; it’ll take at least 6 months to a year to change the work and people dynamics. Have patience and enjoy the journey.
