
Latest
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AI-generated abandonware is hollowing out open source
When everyone can build, the scarce resource becomes maintainers.
Editor’s picks
What is a staff engineer? Technical leaders who aren’t managers
Staff engineers are technical leaders who have deep domain knowledge, walking the line between tech and the business.

New York • September 8 & 9, 2027
Loved LDX3 New York? Pre-sale tickets for 2027 are now available.
Essential reading
On our StaffPlus playlist
How to master the four Staff archetypes and elevate your impact
While the specifics of the job can vary widely, Will Larson has famously categorized the Staff+ experience into four archetypes: Tech Lead, Architect, Solver, and the Right Hand.
Understanding the role as a Staff engineer
How to define, develop and deliver in your role on the technical track.
How to balance technical direction and leadership work
But as is often the case in business, priorities constantly shift and where you focus your efforts will too. So how do you strike the right balance between working on the technical direction of the business and those tasks that require you to put your leadership hat on?
Start with an exit in mind: How to be effective by being selfish as a staff engineer
Staff engineers often get overwhelmed by long-term ownership of critical projects. This talk explores how to avoid burnout by starting every project with an exit strategy—whether transferring ownership, pausing or bootstrapping a team.


The festival for modern engineering leadership
New York • September 15 & 16, 2026
More for Staff engineers
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Should the daily stand-up die?
Will the real agile developers please stand up? Please stand up. Please, stand up.
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The CrowdStrike disaster is a lesson about testing
What’s been dubbed the world’s biggest IT outage should be a wakeup call to the industry.
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Why Zig is one of the hottest programming languages to learn
A recent Stack Overflow survey revealed Zig is highly-admired and developers are highly-paid – but why?
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5 lessons from CrowdStrike’s global outage
What can engineering leaders learn from one of the biggest IT disasters in history?
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Why OpenFeature is central to modern feature management
Get to know the open source project changing the game for feature flags.
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Streamline development processes with application templates
Increase efficiency, collaboration, and innovation.
Videos for Staff engineers
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Inclusive leadership across cultures: Practical patterns for global engineering teams
Concrete, repeatable patterns for leading global teams across cultures, reducing friction, building trust, and helping diverse voices contribute fully.
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Things fall apart – Architecture to avoid progressive collapse
How to design systems so small failures stay contained, preventing cascading outages and large-scale architectural collapse.
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30 to 70 PRs a day: How we managed to not wreck our systems
Practical platform practices that compound over time, helping teams ship faster, improve reliability, and make AI-assisted delivery actually work.
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In partnership with LaunchDarklyFrom code tsunami to controlled innovation: Launching software in the age of AI
How to harness the explosive speed of AI-driven development without losing control, compromising safety, or putting customer experience at risk.
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Mind the gap: Navigating the staff+ performance cliff
Explore why new Staff+ leaders often feel lost and how to rebuild confidence, clarity, and impact after the transition.
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“Us vs. Them” thinking
Why us vs. them thinking arises, how to spot it, and how – and why – to bridge the divide.
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Scaling AI for high-stakes, real-time payments
What does it take to run real-time AI in Stripe’s core payment flow? This is the story of scaling ML in a latency-critical system used by billions and built by multiple engineering orgs.
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From classroom to commit: How a one-year, industry-co-designed fellowship equips engineers to ship in the AI era
From classroom to commit: How a one-year, industry-co-designed fellowship equips engineers to ship in the AI era and the simple onboarding patterns partner teams use to turn early talent into durable performers.
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Coherent impact: The art of strategy
Explore how to turn short-term chaos into long-term impact through practical strategies for resilient, grounded engineering leadership.
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Scaling systems, scaling influence: Lessons from distributed architecture
Scaling systems and scaling influence share the same principles. Learn how distributed systems thinking can help you become a more effective technical leader at scale.
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In partnership with FastlyThe silent infrastructure crisis: AI bots and the future of web performance
A technical deep dive into AI bot traffic’s infrastructure, security, and performance impacts, backed by Fastly’s large-scale 2025 analysis.




