Progressing from Senior to Staff Engineering

At some point last year, I had a conversation with a talented Senior engineer centered around three growth areas in which his investment would reflect very well on him during his performance review and consideration for promotion. The advice I gave him mirrored advice given many other Senior engineers in my career. 

The three themes were,

1. Learn more about program management
2. Draw a line between all the work that you're doing
3. Step up as an authority; become an authority

I'll add more color to each of these items below. 

1. Learn more about program management

Imagine you're a senior engineer. In the past, your designs comprised a single document and a handful of diagrams. You’re hoping to be promoted to staff and are currently stretching your scope to be the tech lead for Project X. It’s a big project with wider scope and lots of smaller changes, dependencies, and stakeholders. 

At this scope, a single design doc won't suffice to keep track of what & how it's going to come to fruition. You need to invest time into clarifying the individual pieces & steps and their expected delivery dates. Then you need to figure out how those pieces are dependent on each other and on whom you might depend for approval & insight. 

Getting this all written down will do at least two things for you (1) help you see the bigger picture and more easily share that with others; (2) demonstrate to other folks the totality of what the project will accomplish (and has already accomplished).

2. Draw a line between all the work that you're doing

A big part of promotion and visibility is "story telling." Where most people get caught with story telling is realizing what what their story even is. As a senior engineer ready for staff, you’ll typically span more than one system. You’ll be involved in many facets along that between large projects, on-call, mentorship, or analytics. At the day to day level, the activities that make these up can feel completely disparate, but when you take a step back, you should see a common theme. Your job is to find that theme. Doing so will help crystallize your impact. It will also help you realize where you might be spreading yourself too thin and consequently losing focus. 

Once you have that theme, break it down into digestible sound bytes that easily match up to key objectives for your business unit. Doing this work makes it easy for your manager to make a promotion case for you. 

3. Step up as an authority; become an authority

By the time you’re ready for Staff, you likely have a wealth of knowledge about many product stacks and may have longer tenure engineers than many engineers on your team. Get involved in code reviews as an assertive voice. If there are areas where you don't feel confident enough to do that, figure out where your knowledge gaps are and fill them in. 

Lean on your manager to bounce around ideas or talk through the gaps. Do pairing sessions to learn together faster. Get feedback on how to be more assertive without being disrepectful -- your manager should be happy to help on things like phrasing and word choice. These areas of finesse have a larger and larger impact the more senior you are. 

In Conclusion

Being a staff engineer means thinking on a broader scale, knowing your value, and not being afraid to stick your neck out. These things often don’t come naturally and a manager plays a key role in guiding their engineers to success.