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>> How do you keep in touch with how things really work as you spend less time on hands-on development? > As someone who still does write code occasionally, th
by User23 6y ago
>> How do you keep in touch with how things really work as you spend less time on hands-on development?
> As someone who still does write code occasionally, this is something I struggle with. Our codebase shifts underneath me constantly, in ways I often don’t see. It has been my goal for the year to make sure I say “I’m not sure, let me check” even when I feel confident.
This is not at all consistent with Staff Software Engineer at any of the several Big Tech Companies You've Definitely Heard Of I've worked at. It would be more of a Distinguished Engineer level sinecure[1]. Staff is usually expected to spend at least 50% of their time actually writing software.
[1] Not pejorative. If I were the relevant hiring manager I'd be happy to let someone like, say, Leslie Lamport, to pick a name out of the hat, spend as much or as little time as he felt like writing software just to have him around.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoIsn’t Leslie Lamport a distinguished researcher, not a distinguished engineer? Research tracks are fairly different from engineering ones.
- spenczar5 6y agoDefinitely extremely consistent with Amazon’s Principal Engineers. Internal surveys on time spent coding support it.
- YorickPeterse 6y agoThis is also how we do Staff Engineering at GitLab: you're expected to spend most of your time writing code. What changes is how you go about doing that, how you communicate things, what responsibilities you have, the expectations of you, etc.