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While true, the onus of making tough calls should be on the person with the title. Less code is a proxy for not really understanding the ground reality. Often

While true, the onus of making tough calls should be on the person with the title. Less code is a proxy for not really understanding the ground reality. Often staff engineers end up with hand wavy designs with no clue about how it would get executed. They get defensive/frustrated when some senior engineer points out a flaw in their plan. To be an effective staff, the staff has to be in the trenches, lead by example. Not by writing a few docs and brushing off their hands.

tobyjsullivan 5y ago
> Often staff engineers end up with hand wavy designs with no clue about how it would get executed. They get defensive/frustrated when some senior engineer points out a flaw in their plan. This sounds like you've described an Architect (circa ~2003), rather than a Staff engineer of any standard. Perhaps your company has a serious engineering leadership problem. I'm sure this problem is common at many companies but I'm not sure this can be generalized to the Staff title.