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).
Episodes
22 episodes
Alex Kessinger (Stitch Fix) and David Noël-Romas (Stripe)
This episode is a celebration of the journey we have been on as this podcast comes to a close. We have had such a great time bringing you these interviews and we are excited about a new chapter, taking the lessons we have learned forward into d...
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1:07:58
Peter Stout (Netflix)
The structures of an organization can often be self-reinforcing, and in a changing environment, this becomes a recipe for future vulnerabilities. That is why senior ICs need to play a slightly discordant role at times by alerting teams to issue...
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52:11
James Cowling (Convex)
Often the biggest impacts a Staff Engineer can make in their organization are not technical but rather people-related. When teams are value-aligned due to good leadership, they go on to make larger impacts than they would otherwise have. As Sen...
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48:28
Bryan Berg (Stripe)
Staff engineers may not get much time to code anymore, but this does not mean problem-solving and system design is not an integral part of their day-to-day. Today’s guest is Bryan Berg, Staff Engineer at Stripe, and he joins us to talk about th...
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50:46
Ben Ilegbodu (Stitch Fix)
Today we talk to Ben Ilegbodu, Principal Frontend Engineer at Stitch Fix, about how he manages to stay close to the code at a senior level. We hear how he arrived at Stitch Fix and what his first tasks were to identify the pain points in custom...
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35:52
Ashby Winch
Moving from an architect role to a product-oriented one might seem like a big leap, but there are overlaps between the two roles. Today's guest, Ashby Winch, has recently made this transition, and in today's episode, they share what this has be...
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40:15
Josh Kaderlan (Lob)
Today’s guest is Josh Kaderlan, Staff Software Engineer at Lob, a direct mail and address verification API company that automates and simplifies direct mail and address verification, giving businesses greater flexibility, visibility, and accura...
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33:44
Ben Edmunds (Wayfair)
During today’s conversation, we speak with Ben Edmunds, Senior Staff Engineer at Wayfair. You’ll hear all about his role at Wayfair, from his day-to-day active projects and how he goes about setting OKRs to the legacy and new deploy tooling he ...
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43:46
Nell Shamrell-Harrington (Microsoft)
Today’s guest is a principal software engineer at Microsoft who works at the interface between external and internal elements of the organization. Nell Shamrell-Harrington works on the ClearlyDefined open source project, which tracks open sourc...
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42:33
Rich Lafferty (PagerDuty)
Oscillating between the roles of individual contributor and management has been a recurring theme on this show. Our guest today, Rich Lafferty, has some special insights into this pattern that can help anyone looking to improve their work. Rich...
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49:53
Mason Jones (Credit Karma)
Credit Karma is a company that helps people understand their credit. Today’s guest, Mason Jones, was brought onto the Credit Karma team to move the company from a monolith to microservices. The company has grown almost four-fold since he joined...
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45:49
Lorin Hochstein (Netflix)
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 co...
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48:16
Stacey Gammon (Elastic)
What works for a small company may not work for a large company, so what do you do when your organization experiences rapid growth, and the old way of doing things is no longer sustainable? In today’s episode, we speak with Stacey Gammon, a tec...
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46:18
Will Larson (Calm)
Please note that this episode contains brief mention of suicide.Today's guest needs no introduction! Of course, they will get one anyway:Will Larson is the CTO of Calm and has worked at Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He is als...
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48:45
Mahdi Yusuf (1Password)
Today’s guest is Mahdi Yusuf, Tech Lead for the Server Architecture Team at 1Password. Our conversation is about what it means as well as what it takes to navigate the needs of the org, client, and staff in order to find the best path forward. ...
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49:54
Amy Unger (GitHub)
Amy Unger, our guest on today’s show, is passionate about providing a high-quality service to the customers who use the products she is working on. Amy has a diverse skill set and an equally diverse set of tasks that she undertakes weekly for G...
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36:03
Brian Lawler (Iterable)
Today we welcome Brian Lawler, who is a Principal Engineer at Iterable! Brian has a load of experience with software architecture, having worked in the space for over 25 years, at a number of different companies and amassing a large amount of w...
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45:49
Matthew Bilotti (Twitter)
On today’s episode of StaffEng, we speak with the formidable Matthew Bilotti who works as a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Twitter and has been at the company for 11 years. Matthew currently leads a team that plays a critical role in user sa...
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49:02
Natalia Tepluhina (GitLab)
As today’s guest, Natalia Tepluhina walks us through her professional history and describes her experiences at GitLab. After getting to know Natalia a little better, we talk about the challenges she has faced as a staff engineer. We then get in...
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54:36
Jam Leomi (Honeycomb)
Today we are joined by the inspiring Jam Leomi, who is currently the Lead Security Engineer at Honeycomb. Jam has worked in tech for over ten years, holding positions in both operations and security, and we get to hear about some important mile...
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31:47