Will Larson's Blog, page 22

Measures of engineering impact.

My engineering leadership circle met yesterday, and like usual, we talked about our current challenges before segueing into a deeper discussion. This time, Jack Danger brought up the challenge of measuring engineering impact, which is a fascinating topic that most engineering leaders have to tackle.

Measures of engineering impact are not Accelerate’s measures of developer productivity: lead time, batch size, failure rate, and time to revert. Those measures support understanding and optimizing y...

Digital gardening at Exuberant Sketches.

Last year I read Weinberg on Writing, and I’ve been thinking about its ideas a lot since. It focuses on the concept of “The Fieldstone Method” of writing, which I’d summarize as (1) writing things that energize you and (2) approaching writing organically rather than linearly. Lose the excitement for your current project? Work on something else for a while. Find a fantastic idea that doesn’t fit into this article? Add it to a pile of related concepts to come back to later.

Some of Weinberg’s spe...

Self-publishing Staff Engineer.

After I published An Elegant Puzzle, I consolidated my notes into What I learned writing a book. That was my first book writing and publishing experience, and I learned a great deal. When I started working on Staff Engineer, I sort of knew what I wanted to do, but because I ended up self-publishing, I ended up learning at least as much as with my first book.

There are a bunch of great articles on writing technical books out there like The Economics of Writing a Technical Book, Writing a book: i...

Mailbag: Building alignment around a new strategy.

Another question regarding Staff Engineer that came in recently:

There was a bit in your book where you mentioned after you finished writing your vision - that you shared it out because you were very excited (and then trying not to be let down by not hearing much back in terms of response). Was curious if you could share more about how you think about sharing larger technical visions or strategies. Do you start with smaller circles? Do you send out to everyone at once? Do you introduce it at an...

Mailbag: How to encourage good documents rather than perfect documents?

A great question on Staff Engineer that I received recently:

When you’re writing docs (and reviewing them) I really resonated with the idea of pushing for them to be good and not perfect. Was curious how you go about fostering that culture beyond yourself? I feel like since we’ve shifted to a remote culture, doc grooming has reached an all time high. Also curious if that’s something you’ve felt at all?

There’s an increasingly pervasive belief that written communication is the “obviously best” ...

The curious case of the missing regretted attrition.

Over the past year, most of my writing time went into Staff Engineer, and I’ve accumulated a long backlog of topics that I didn’t find time to write about. Staring down that list of topics, I looked for something that inspired some energy and would be quick to write. My list of topics to write about is mostly just titles, occasionally with a supporting sentence to decode my forgotten intentions.

The first topic on that list that jumped out at me was recorded simply as, “The curious case of the ...

Staff Engineer.

Buy Staff Engineer on Gumroad and Amazon.

After a bit of a lead up, so deeply excited that the Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track book is done.As of today you can buy the digital version on Gumroad,as well as the digital and paperback versions on AmazonThis project overlapped with a new job (at Calm), our first child (now eight months), and a global pandemic.In some ways, I'm surprised it got finished, but in another sense it was nourishmentduring a difficult year, an...

Why not create a StaffEng Slack or Discord?

I’m in the process of releasing Staff Engineer, and a really great question I’ve gotten a few times recently has been, “Are you planning to create a Slack or Discord server focused on creating a Staff-plus engineering community?”

The answer is no, but the longer answer is more interesting.

One of my focuses last year was learning more about creating new communities, and towards that end I did two experiments in community creation. In January, I created a handful of CTO/VPE/Staff Engineer lea...

How to be a tech influencer.

In a one-on-one before the holidays, a coworker expressed an interest in being more influential outside of the company and wanted my advice. There’s a similar email I get semi-regularly asking whether folks looking to advance their career should start blogging, write a book, or whatnot.

Although few folks meaningfully influence the industry through content creation, a vast number of folks further their careers by creating content. Create a small number of meaningful pieces, develop a distributi...

How to present to executives.

Have you presented to company executives about a key engineering initiative, walking into the room excited and leaving defeated? Maybe you only made it to your second slide before unrelated questions derailed the discussion. Maybe you worked through your entire presentation only to have folks say, “Great job,” and leave without any useful debate. Afterward, you’re not quite sure what happened, but you know it didn’t go well.

Early in your career, you probably won’t interact with company executi...