Lead Time Chats

Will Larson on the path of the senior engineer

Episode Summary

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Will Larson, CTO at Calm, about getting into management early in his career and how it impacted his professional evolution and his books An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management and Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track.

Episode Notes

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Will Larson, CTO at Calm, about getting into management early in his career and how it impacted his professional evolution and his books An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management and Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track.

Jean and Will discuss: 

• Negotiating their first tech jobs (or not negotiating their first tech jobs)
• The false expectation that the staff engineering route will be more predictable than the management route
• How getting external support is key
• Increasing difficulty of switching between the paths as you become more senior
• How to approach non-work work (books, talks, blog posts, etc).