Latest
-
Need-to-know tactics for managing up successfully
Managing up can be difficult – even more so when you have a distant leader. Here’s how to make the best out of the situation.
-
How to push back when execs are all-in on AI
When AI is seemingly everywhere, how can you make sure your org takes thoughtful steps?
-
Who is going to fill the engineering leadership vacuum?
As the tech industry continues its assault on middle management, staff engineers are being asked to step up.
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.
Prices for all New York conferences increase on Monday, August 25 ⏰
Essential reading
Who are staff, principal, and distinguished engineers?
Understand the differences between staff, principal, and distinguished engineers. Job description and salaries included.
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.
Agendas for New York events are live!
Lineup includes Addy Osmani, Kevin Goldsmith, Robin Bonatesta, and more…
New York • October 15 & 16, 2025
More for Staff engineers
-
Influencing influencers: Powerful strategies to scale your impact at work
If you looking to widen the breadth of your impact, you’ll want to brush up on some of these areas to see the best results.
-
The best feature management and experimentation software 2025
Feature flags and experimentation are critical for progressive developer teams who want granular control over their feature delivery. But which tool is the right one for you?
-
How to handle difficult conversations as a leader
Difficult conversations are never anyone’s favorite pastime. For many, it can be an anxiety-inducing trip…but it doesn’t have to be.
-
Be careful with ‘open source’ AI
Open source AI models may be appealing for developers, but there are still plenty of complex risks to assess.
-
Should the daily stand-up die?
Will the real agile developers please stand up? Please stand up. Please, stand up.
-
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.
Videos for Staff engineers
-
The Pragmatic Engineer live podcast: How AI is changing engineering at Shopify with Farhan Thawar
Listen to a candid chat exploring Shopify’s AI strategy, remote velocity, and a unique approach to career growth.
-
Software engineering with GenAI
A look at how AI coding tools are reshaping software engineering, how teams are adapting, and what remains unchanged in the development process.
-
From dashboard soup to observability lasagna: Building better layers
Transform chaotic dashboards into a layered observability strategy that improves reliability, streamlines incidents, and builds real on-call confidence
-
Building scalable systems in a complex compliance world
Gain actionable insights to build scalable, compliant systems that adapt to evolving regulations while maintaining engineering speed and agility
-
Being secure by design: Engineer-led security
This talk shares how the secure-enough software challenge can be solved by building an engineer-led security culture, leading to a culture of collaboration and confidence in good security choices.
-
The creative technologist
Learn how to build a creative practice to help you become a more creative leader.
-
Using postmortems to break out of infinite loops
Our experience is our best resource when it comes to incident prevention, so why are we so resistant to learning from our past mistakes?
-
Growing pains: Scaling and re-architecting systems under fire
Explore how stakeholder buy-in can make or break your system re-architecture during high-pressure scaling challenges.
-
FORTRAN’s AI Playbook: Leadership lessons from history
Learn proven leadership strategies from FORTRAN’s history to successfully adopt AI, upskill teams, and drive lasting transformation at scale
-
From monitoring to mastery: Building an observability-driven culture
This talk explores how Phorest shifted to an observability-driven culture by aligning technical vision with customer pain, empowering teams through proactive ownership, and embedding observability into software practices to enhance customer trust.
-
Escaping the rewrite trap
Gain practical frameworks to assess rewrites vs. evolution, plan successful migrations, and align teams and stakeholders without losing momentum.
-
Technical Steering Groups: Balancing autonomy, technical alignment, and speed through strategic collaboration
Learn how technical steering groups drive technical alignment while fostering ownership – balancing autonomy and collaboration to fuel speed, innovation, and impactful decision-making across teams.