Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 11] - Define The Roadmap

All the way to senior, engineers are almost entirely given projects to work on. This dynamic flips as you grow from senior to staff. This lesson teaches you:

- The differences between senior and staff engineers when they participate in the team roadmapping process
- The skills you need to become a leading, staff-level influence in roadmapping

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 10] - Oncall

"Oncall" is a term that strikes fear into the heart of engineers. However, it's crucial for engineers to embrace oncall as an honorable duty and a place of opportunity as they become more senior, especially as they progress to staff. This lesson teaches you:

- The differences between senior and staff engineers when it comes to their scope within oncall
- How senior and staff engineers respond differently to oncall issues

Watch Alex's oncall case study here: [\[Case Study\] Revamping Oncall For 20 Instagram Engineers - Senior to Staff Project](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/esVxIGXYC5BdgxXUkO6H/case-study-revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 9] - Build Technical Systems

As a staff engineer, it simply isn't enough to write standard product code. You need to write code that helps other engineers write code. This lesson teaches you:

- The mindset shift that staff engineers have made with regard to technical systems that junior to senior engineers haven't
- Why technical systems work is so impactful and deserving of staff engineer scope
- Exactly what it means to demonstrate staff level behavior with technical systems instead of senior level behavior, shown with an in-depth examples
- Common technical systems within a team that staff+ engineers are responsible for building and maintaining

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 8] - Create Scope

The best engineers don't need to be told what to do. Creating scope is a behavior that usually develops as an engineer hit senior, and it's sharply refined as they grow to staff. This lesson teaches you:

- Why staff engineers often write less code than their senior engineer counterparts
- The difference between senior and staff engineers when it comes to creating scope
- A trap senior engineers often fall into when trying to creating scope
- The more graceful way competent staff engineers create scope within their organizations

Watch Rahul's internal tool case study here: [\[Case Study\] Building A Meta Internal Tool To Empower An Entire Org: Staff Promotion Story](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/qvp2quodqAEWSkN7sayt/case-study-building-a-meta-internal-tool-to-empower-an-entire-org-staff-promotion-story/?playlistId=EWIo3USNcsgXbCs5PS0h)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 7] - Own The Goal

As a senior engineer, you are used to getting large, impactful projects and delivering them well, even if the initial project is incredibly ambiguous. However, this isn't nearly enough to get to staff. This lesson teaches you:

- The difference between senior and staff engineers between what they own on their teams and how staff engineers have a fundamentally higher altitude with their perspective
- What it means to own impact at a staff level instead of a senior, explained with an in-depth example
- The core, high-level behavior shift you need to make from an ownership perspective to grow from senior to staff

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 6] - You Need Tenure

Software engineers like to give up when their team isn't going perfectly, often interviewing with another company entirely to jump ship. While this can work earlier in your career, it almost always stops as you're approaching staff. This lesson teaches you:

- Why job hopping to a staff uplevel at a top company is almost impossible
- Why you need to be in the same team for 2+ years in order to have a real case for staff
- The ingredients to develop the presence and impact of a staff engineer

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 5] - Finding The Right Team

As a senior engineer, you can work hard and do everything right and still not have a real case to get promoted to staff engineer. This lesson teaches you:

- Why certain teams are far better for a staff engineer promotion than others
- What you need on a team from a seniority perspective to get to staff
- Why it's important for a team to have engineers more junior than you to grow to staff

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 4] - Structuring Your Growth

When going from senior to staff, you need to develop a *ton* of new skills across several difference categories. This lesson teaches you:

- A framework for organizing the improvements you need to make to grow to staff, based off of Meta's engineering performance axes
- The most important axis engineers need to grow in order to get to staff
- A healthy way to understand this course and your overall progression to staff in general

Take Jordan's course here: [\[Course\] Become The Go-To Expert As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/become-the-go-to-expert-as-a-software-engineer/)

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 3] - At A Glance: Senior Vs. Staff

As a senior engineer, you have probably gotten generic guidance on how to get to staff, advice like *"Do more leadership"*. Let's rise above the meaningless engineering career matrix standards and provide something concrete. This lesson teaches you:

- How the dynamic evolves between an engineer and their manager as they grow from senior to staff
- The core behavioral difference between senior and staff engineers as they tackle problems
- The difference between senior and staff engineers with the projects they work on
- The difference between senior and staff engineers with their ownership reach
- The difference between senior and staff engineers with their organizational reach

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 2] - Why Is The Staff Promotion So Hard?

Countless senior engineers hit a wall as they push for staff. This lesson teaches you:

- How the Staff Engineer role in and of itself is special by being a relatively new career invention
- The easiest way to tell if a Senior Engineer isn't ready to become a Staff Engineer
- Why the Staff Engineer promotion is fundamentally different from prior promotions
- Why many teams can't support an additional Staff Engineer promotion
- How you can be performing as a Staff Engineer and still not get the promotion

Grow From Senior To Staff Engineer [Part 1] - How This Course Works

If you work hard enough and play your cards right, you will eventually become a senior engineer. However, the same isn't true for staff, and this is why most engineers will never make it to the equivalent of a Staff Engineer at a top tech company like FAANG. Here are the core parts of the lesson:

- Your instructor [Rahul Pandey](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-chiou/) walks you through his extensive 10+ year Silicon Valley background with rapid career advancement, ending up as a high-performing Staff Engineer making +$800k at Meta.
- You'll understand what it means to be a senior engineer vs. a staff engineer in the market, including the interview space.
- We walk you through the course objectives. By the end of the course, you will understand:
  - 💡 Truly understand the **difference** between a senior engineer and a staff engineer (more than a career matrix)

  - 🧠 Create **clear mental models** to develop L6 behavior

  - 📃 Identify your **fundamental gaps** to staff

  - 🗺️ **Chart a path** to Staff Engineer

  - 🧐 Go through Staff Engineer **archetypes** to find your fit

The How of the Engineering Career Ladder: Five Essential Foundations for Advancement

Session led by [Shine Garg](https://www.linkedin.com/in/shinegarg/)

Engineering career ladders lay out the “what” of the software engineering career path—what competencies and behaviors are needed at each milestone. However, they often lack guidance on the “how.”

Understanding how—and how quickly—you can acquire and exhibit these competencies significantly impacts your career trajectory, financial future, and sense of fulfillment in life.

This talk demystifies the process of climbing the engineering career ladder. Join us to learn the five essential foundations for advancing your career and achieving your goals.

Asking Great Questions [Part 26] - Go Deeper: Follow Through

Asking great questions is a skill that takes months, if not years, to develop. So let's take the knowledge from this course and apply it! You get better by doing, not just consuming.

Take the related courses:

- [\[Course\] Level Up Your Code Quality As A Software Engineer](https://www.jointaro.com/course/level-up-your-code-quality-as-a-software-engineer/)
- [\[Course\] Effective Communication For Engineers](https://www.jointaro.com/course/effective-communication-for-engineers/)

Asking Great Questions [Part 25] - How You Should Evolve

It's important to make sure that you're always getting better - As long as you're improving, you will eventually become a rockstar engineer. So how does that work when it comes to judging your question asking ability? This lesson teaches you:

- What seniority does not mean when it comes to asking questions
- What seniority actually means when it comes to asking questions
- A simple framework you can use to evaluate the level your questions are at, split by junior/mid-level/senior+

Asking Great Questions [Part 24] - Give More Than You Take

The counterpart to asking a question is answering a question, but it's not exactly right to call them opposites as they actually go hand-in-hand! This lesson teaches you:

- How engineers fail to attract and even repel the best engineers to help them
- What you should do to make altruistic, high-performing engineers (i.e. the people you really want answering your questions) want to help you
- Why answering others' questions is one of the best ways to get great people to answer your own questions
- A very tactical self-serving benefit to answering questions and teaching others

Asking Great Questions [Part 23] - Deep Thanks

Your journey doesn't end after you get an answer to your question, quite the opposite. The follow-through after getting a great answer is absolutely critical. This lesson teaches you:

- What a basic thanks looks like and an easy way to level up past it
- 5 more creative ways to give deeper thanks
- Why giving thanks is also a skill with tremendous depth that can unlock tremendous opportunity if you truly become one of the best in the world at it (with one of those opportunities being making everyone want to answer your questions all the time)

Asking Great Questions [Part 22] - Learn To Fish

Getting the answer to your question isn't enough: If you want to respect the person who helped you, make sure to follow through on the end-to-end learning. This lesson teaches you:

- A common mistake engineers make when getting an answer that's too shallow
- What engineers should do to follow-up on an answer and get full value
- Why it's better to potentially annoy your helper with more questions now instead of later
- The difference between knowledge and mastery, why the latter is so critical for your career, and how asking great questions is intrinsically tied to mastery-building

Asking Great Questions [Part 21] - Follow The Golden Rule

There is no free lunch, and this is certainly the case when it comes to asking favors. Favors in the tech industry are often harder to get as well given that they're higher leverage: A strong referral or a 1 on 1 meeting could easily be worth +$100. This lesson teaches you:

- What it means to follow the golden rule with your favor request question, explained with an in-depth example
- How to share equivalent value with 3 common favors that software engineers ask for
- A simple 3-step process you can use to add value to anyone and make them want to help you more, particularly when you can't return equivalent value

Asking Great Questions [Part 20] - Make Fulfillment Easy

In order to get what you want, you need to know *exactly* what you want. This can be harder than many engineers realize. This lesson teaches you:

- The importance of reducing fulfillment friction, presented through the perspective of the person fulfilling the favor
- What it means to make fulfillment of your favor easy, shown with an in-depth example covering a common engineering ask
- How the spectrum behind fulfillment friction reduction is actually incredibly deep, especially if you're creative
- Ideas to make fulfillment easier with examples covering 3 more very commonly asked for favors

Asking Great Questions [Part 19] - Give Them An Out

Most engineering favors don't get fulfilled. If you're cognizant of that and incorporate it into your question, you can counterintuitively *increase* your chances of getting the favor. This lesson teaches you:

- Why making it easy for your favor to be turned down increases your standing with the person you're asking for a favor from
- What it means to give the helper an out with your question, explained with an in-depth example

Tech Career Growth Videos

Our instructional videos provide software engineers with insights needed for career growth. Masterclasses go incredibly in-depth on a specific tech topic while case studies are real examples from established engineering leaders.