Hercules Lemke MerscherI read this book a little while ago. It was an interesting reading since I could recognize many of the topics and situations discussed in the book and correlate them with my day-to-day work.
Going into staff+ positions requires a different mindset and approach when it comes to the work that needs to be done, and since you’re in a position of leadership you need to multiply your impact by influencing other engineers around you and doing a lot of coordination and cross-collaboration.
This book is an excellent resource on understanding the social conventions within the workplace and the nuts and bolts of how to get promoted to staff+ roles and what they mean. Whether you consider such conventions fair practices or not, it's good to be cognizant of them.
It helps demystify that you're not tied to the managerial path and that technical individual contributors also have more options within the leadership route and how it impacts your team(s) and company.
If you're already carving your path toward a future promotion, the archetypes presented will help you identify yourself and the type of work you've been doing or will have to do to achieve your goal(s).
I’m not often reading books about management, leadership, and the like, but it was definitely eye-opening for me to read about other software engineers’ experiences!
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