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I was under the impression that to be staff+ you had to be a leader (technical direction) but not a manager (performance reviews, people stuff). How accurate i

• nostrademons 14y ago
  That's true, but usually being a technical leader of a large project implies managing the people on it, if only because it's good for people to have managers that actually know what their day-to-day accomplishments are. I do know of exceptions. There are a few people who get to staff and even beyond without managing people, but I've heard it's very hard and usually involves TLing a project of the scope of Google Instant (and then you frequently get made a manager afterwards, unless you really strenuously object). TLing is a completely different skillset from engineering anyway - it's much more interrupt-driven, people-focused, and basically involves being a mentor, teacher, and shit umbrella. When I've TLed projects, I usually find myself spending about 30% of my time coding and 70% communicating with other departments, debugging obscure bugs, managing up, and making sure all the critical parts are covered. Coworkers that are staff+ and TL larger projects usually find it's 0% coding and 100% dealing with politics & coordination.