Will Larson's Blog, page 29

Picking problems for programming interviews.

Someone recently send me a note asking about whether their internal process for interviewing Staff engineers was a good one. They were particularly concerned that they were encountering a number of Staff-plus engineers who were struggling to write code for finding palindromes or reversing an array.

There is an oral tradition of programmers who simply cannot program, captured back in 2007 when Imran Ghory coined the idea of Fizzbuzz problems, along with the most canonical Fizzbuzz question:

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Minding our stories.

If you took a minute to think back and pick your favorite conference talk, I have no idea what it was about, but I bet the talk was designed to tell a story. Likewise, I bet your favorite book, even if its non-fiction, is lanced through by a crisp, continuous narrative. If you wanted to explain your best or worst job, I bet youd start by telling a story that captures the experience.

Humans love stories, which makes stories a powerful medium of communication, and like all powerful things, they...

Testing Python projects for Google Cloud Run.

I've been using GCP's Cloud Run for a handful of projects recently, including staffeng.com, and have generally been really pleased with it. Now that I'm familiar with it, I can get all of this working for a new Python project in about twenty minutes:

New private Github repository Build triggers for Google Cloud Build that automatically start when a new commit to master branch is pushed to Github Those triggers build a Dockerfile in the repository and upload it to Google's container registry...

Staff engineer archetypes.

This is a draft guide for staffeng.com

Most career ladders define a single, uniform set of expectations for Staff Engineers. These career ladders attempt to identify the commonalities across many folks performing similar roles in their organization, but in the end these ladders are a tool that apply better against populations than people. In the case of Staff-plus engineers, career ladders paper over a number of distinct roles clustered under a single moniker.

The more folks I spoke with, the...

Poking around Contentful.

Slightly related to my notes on build versus buy decisions, I spent some time specifically getting a feel for Contentful over the weekend, and have written up some notes here.

Why Headless CMSes?

There are a lot of headless CMSes out there, the one I've personally used most is Airtable. You could argue Airtable isn't just a headless CMS, and sure, that's a fine argument to make. As a category, I think headless CMSes do a bunch of things particularly well:

There are many of them, so it's...

Build versus buy.

A few years ago I was working on a contract negotiation with Splunk, and we kept running into what felt like a pretty unreasonable pricing structure. They wanted some number of millions of dollars for a three year license, which felt like a high price to pay for thirty-two ascii characters in a particular sequence. Even with the license, we'd still be the ones operating it and paying for the capacity to run it.

We decided to negotiate by calculating the cost of running our own ELK Stack...

Staying aligned with authority.

This is a draft guide for staffeng.com

Its a common misconception that authority makes you powerful. Many folks aspiring towards more senior roles assume theyll finally get to do things their way. They believe that the title inherently creates flexibility and autonomy. They believe that the friction holding them back will burst into a whirl of butterflies that scatter into the wind.

The reality is a bit more nuanced.

Titles come with the sort of power called organizational authority, and that...

Getting in the room.

This is a draft guide for staffeng.com

One of the most common frustrations Ive heard from engineers is that theyre not in the room where important decisions are being made. They dont understand the company decisions, and have important context that seems to be missing or ignored. Staff-plus engineers frequently cite access to the room as a major benefit of their level, and titles do increase the likelihood that youll be involved in decisions that impact you.

However, its important to remember...

Learn to never be wrong.

This is a draft guide for staffeng.com

Most folks have worked with someone who thinks theyre never wrong. In each discussion, they lean in, broaden their shoulders and breach their way into the role of the decider. Theyll continue debating until their perspective wins the day or time runs out. They are often right, but right in a way that sucks the oxygen out of the room. As their tenure at a company increases, they may fancy that theyve become very persuasive, but frequently its a form of...

How do folks reach Staff Engineer?

At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior Software Engineer, the so-called career level, in five to eight years. At that point your path branches, and you have the opportunity to pursue engineering management or continue down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer.

Over the past few years we've seen a flurry of books unlocking the engineering manager career path, like Camille Fournier's The Manager's Path, Julie Zhuo's The Making of a Manager and my own An Elegant...