[rockmeamedee]

The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component) is emotional management.

Staying in a long debugging session without ragequitting and getting to the fix.

Pushing through when I feel really dumb for not knowing how a react hook works or how to test a particular feature.

Not getting bored (or recognising it and pushing through) when fixing a bug that is "trivial" but complicated.

Not getting angry when the codebase is not architected well or is hard to understand.

In every one of these situations, better emotional management has made me more productive, calmer, and I had a better outlook of the situation in the end, so my suggestions to external stakeholders about what to do next were more accurate.

And I'm still learning! I get bored and take 3x too long all the time.

This is maybe an exaggeration, but after you learn about for loops and functions, the rest of the job is emotional management.

Ok, maybe EQ becomes important a little bit after for loops, but way earlier than you think. Maybe after 1 year of experience.

[aunty_helen]

> The number one thing that got me to senior engineer, and will get me to staff as I improve (though staff has more of a relationship management component)

I love the little rat race we’ve created for ourselves. When did staff engineer become a thing? I’ve just noticed it but feel like it’s probably been around for a few years.

Next question when you get to staff engineer what next? Do you become a lead engineer or staff engineer II?

Jokes aside

> Not getting angry when the codebase is not architected well or is hard to understand.

This is the most important job hack for a software engineer of any artificial title. Even more important when your title starts with a C.

[lazyasciiart]

Usually I see Staff Engineer followed by a title like Architect. Never ever by anything about Lead or Manager because that's the whole point, you should be able to increase your scope so you're making tech decision across the whole org without also becoming a good people manager.

[likpok]

Staff engineer is the name for a “rank” but the rank has existed for a long long time. Staff is the first “leadership” engineering role - roughly equivalent to a manager in scope.

Some places have a manager equivalent of senior engineer but that’s also sometimes a role you’re expected to rapidly leave: either via promotion or back to IC.

[rpmisms]

This spoke to me. Thank you for the check on my own imposter syndrome.