StaffEng

Conversations with software engineers who have progressed beyond the career level, into Staff levels and beyond. We discuss the areas of work that set Staff-plus level engineers apart from other individual contributors; things like setting technical direction, mentorship and sponsorship, providing engineering perspective to the org, etc.Hosted by David Noël-Romas (@davidnoelromas) and Alex Kessinger (@voidfiles).

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StaffEng

Lorin Hochstein (Netflix)

July 27, 2021

Today’s conversation is about resilience, and as today’s guest, Lorin Hochstein, notes; “Resilience is about the stuff that isn’t visible through the metrics.” Lorin is a senior software engineer at Netflix who is on a mission to improve the company’s engineering department through creating a culture within which peer-to-peer learning and the process of reflecting on past mistakes are foundational. Lorin is responsible for the development of a few grassroots programs at Netflix which address the company’s lack of deliberate knowledge sharing, which he talks about today. We also discuss the value of close calls as opposed to incidents, and how Lorin works around the challenge of measuring the negative outcomes which didn’t occur. Although he makes sure to point out that he does not bear a "staff" title (Netflix does not have them), he is certainly doing some interesting staff-type work, and his passion for value creation is inspiring.

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Lorin Hochstein