Staff+: Career Progression Without Management

The traditional route for progression in the software industry is from a senior-level individual contributor (IC), e.g. a senior engineer/marketer/data scientist/designer, into a management role. 

Unfortunately, the required skills for success drastically differ between ICs and managers. Do you need to transition into a position you may not enjoy or excel at to progress in your career?

In this talk, I'll present another way: the staff-plus IC career track, allowing career progression without people management, inspired by my experiences moving through Senior and Staff positions to my current position as a Principal Engineer at GitHub.

Transcript

1. Staff+: Career Progression Without Management 👋🛤🧐🙄📚 @MikeMcQuaid
2. me 👋
3. Principal Engineer in Communities (GitHub Engineer 2013 – Present)
4. Project Leader on Homebrew (Homebrew Maintainer 2009 – Present)
5. 2003-7 2007-8 2008-9 2009-12 2012-13 2013-Present (2009-Present) 👨🎓 CS + MS BSc, UoE 📞 BT 🔬 Mendeley 🐧 KDAB 🥾 AllTrails 🐙 GitHub (🍺 Homebrew)
6. 2013-16 2016-18 2018-20 2020-22 2022-Present Senior Engineer Senior Marketer Senior Engineer Staff Engineer Principal Engineer
7. career tracks 🛤
8. 🏚 Traditional
9. 🐙 GitHub
10. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland Expectation
11. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland Reality
12. differences 🧐
13. Management people management (performance reviews, 1:1s, etc.) other leadership/management evaluated on your team
14. IC no people management individual contribution evaluated on your work
15. Staff+ IC no people management technical leadership (work e.g. review, mentorship) evaluated on your impact
16. my role 🙄
17. Senior Engineer feature coding work feature team code review feature product feedback
18. Staff Engineer cross-organisation coding work mentoring mid-level engineers 💩 umbrella for other engineers unplanned fixes for manager
19. Principal Engineer company-wide coding work mentoring senior+ engineers company-wide architecture work company-wide unplanned fixes
20. 🐙 GitHub
21. resources 📚
22. https://noidea.dog/glue
23. https://staffeng.com
24. https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/
25. https://mikemcquaid.com/2021/10/01/what-is-a-staff-plus-principal-engineer/
26. questions? 🙋 @MikeMcQuaid mike@mikemcquaid.com