Foreword

When I wrote The Manager’s Path in 2016, I had many goals. I wanted to share lessons I had learned growing up as a manager. I wanted to show those who were interested in becoming managers what the job would be like. And I wanted to force a reckoning across the industry that we needed to expect more from our managers, and that the managers we were currently promoting often did not have the right balanced focus of people, process, product, and technical skills to do the job well. In short, I wanted to correct what I saw as a cultural failing in tech: to both take management seriously as a critical role and to discourage it from being the default path for ambitious engineers who want to grow their careers.

I would say that I partially succeeded. Every time someone tells me they read my book and decided not to become a manager, I do a little victory dance. From that perspective, at least some people read my book and realize that this path isn’t for them. Unfortunately, the alternative path of career growth for the individual contributor, the staff+ engineering path, has lacked a similar guidebook. This lack has led to many choosing to follow the management path despite knowing they would rather not have the responsibility for larger and larger groups of people, because they cannot see another way forward. This is a great frustration for engineers and managers alike: most managers want to have more strong staff+ engineers in their organizations but don’t know how to cultivate them, and many engineers want to stay on that path but see no realistic options beyond going into management.

vii

One of the core challenges of the staff+ engineering path is the unspoken expectation that part of being qualified to be on that path is figuring out how to climb it without much in the way of directions. If you were destined to be a staff+ engineer, conventional wisdom argues, you would figure out how to get there yourself. Needless to say, this is a frustrating and bias-ridden approach to career development. As more and more companies realize the need for staff+ engineers, we as an industry cannot afford to maintain a mysticism about the staff+ engineering career path that ignores the underlying skills that lead to successful technical leaders.

With this in mind, you can imagine how thrilled I felt when Tanya Reilly came up with a proposal for a book about career growth as a staff engineer, filling in the missing half of the career ladder that my book left unexplored. I know Tanya from her writing and speaking about technical leadership, and it is obvious that she wants to correct the cultural failings of the tech industry’s approach to staff+ engineering in the same way that I wanted to correct the cultural failing in the tech industry’s approach to management. Namely, Tanya wants to address the overfocus on coding and technical contributions and the lack of clarity around the skills that allow strong engineers to become successful multipliers without needing to manage people.

In this book, Tanya has stepped up to the task of articulating these underlying skills that are so crucial for successful staff+ engineers. She provides a framework that shows how, using the pillars of big-picture thinking, execution, and leveling up others, you can build impact that goes beyond your individual handson contributions.

Reflecting the multifaceted nature of the staff+ engineering path, Tanya does not try to dictate the precise mix of skills needed at each level above senior engineer. Instead, she wisely focuses on how to build out these pillars from wherever you are today. From developing technical strategy to leading big projects successfully and going from mentor to organizational catalyst, this book takes you through these critical pillars and shows how to increase your impact on the success of your company beyond writing code.

There’s only one person in the driver’s seat for your career, and that person is you. Figuring out your career path is one of the great opportunities and challenges of your life, and the earlier you accept that it’s up to you (plus a heaping dose of luck), the better set you are to navigate the working world. This guidebook shows you the skills you’ll need on the staff+ path, and it’s an essential addition to every engineer’s library.

—Camille Fournier Author, The Manager’s Path Editor, 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase Board Member, ACM Queue New York, NY, September 2022