The Staff Engineer's Challenge: Balancing Impact
Ever feel pulled in two directions at once? You’re needed to fix a critical bug right now, but you also know you should be designing a system that will prevent future ones. This is a struggle many staff engineers face: the constant effort to balance immediate, hands-on contributions with broad, long-term strategic influence.
Two Modes of Leadership
A staff engineer operates in two essential leadership modes:
1. Direct Leadership (The Hands-On Contributor)
This is the hands-on approach where your impact is immediate and visible. It involves solving critical problems, unblocking a team, or personally driving a project to launch. The connection between your effort and the business outcome is clear, making this a reliable way to get a measurable return on your time.
When to Use It: To establish a high standard of quality, build team confidence by showing a path forward, or resolve a time-sensitive technical crisis.
2. Leadership by Proxy (The Strategic Influencer)
This is a more strategic approach where your impact is scaled through others. You design systems, define architectural standards, or mentor engineers. Your work enables others to be more effective, making the impact less direct but potentially much larger.
When to Use It: To address systemic organizational or technical problems, define long-term roadmaps, or design systems that support years of future growth.
The challenge is that it’s easier to measure the expected return on investment (ROI) for direct leadership. You can often estimate the effort needed for hands-on work and see the immediate results. This makes it easier to avoid getting stuck in strategic work with little potential for a good ROI. However, being able to operate effectively by proxy is essential for achieving impact at scale.
Switching Between Modes
The ability to switch between these two modes is critical for most staff engineers. Ultimately, every decision should be guided by one question: where can you have the greatest impact? This applies to both short-term and long-term outcomes.
Once you’ve decided on your focus, act deliberately. A great place to start is your job description. Ensure it clearly outlines your primary focus and gets support from your manager and sponsors. For example:
I will spend 80% of my time as a tech lead on project X to unlock a critical growth opportunity.
I will spend 20% of my time in architectural design and review, noting that the impact of this work will likely take longer to see.
Next, focus on time management. There are two levels to consider:
Thematic Focus: To achieve effective outcomes, it’s wise to schedule work in themes that run for several weeks before you switch. This protects your focused time. For example, spend four weeks on Project X and then one week on architectural design.
Maintaining Balance: Even with a thematic focus, you still need to set aside time each week for tasks outside of your current theme—the “keeping the lights on” work.
Watch out for ad-hoc tasks, as they can quickly derail your plans. By using time management and scheduling, you can ensure you dedicate time to both modes and avoid neglecting the high-impact, long-term work.
Planning Your Time
Here is a sketch of how these two approaches might look on a calendar:
Week 1 (Project X Focus):
Monday: 50% focused coding on Project X; 50% on weekly team syncs and ad-hoc requests.
Tuesday: 100% deep work on Project X.
Wednesday: 50% focused coding on Project X; 50% on mentoring and code reviews for other projects.
Thursday: 100% deep work on Project X.
Friday: 50% strategic planning for a future project (part of your 20% theme); 50% wrap-up tasks.
Week 5 (Architectural Design Focus):
Monday: 60% on architectural design review; 40% on team syncs.
Tuesday: 100% deep work on system design.
Wednesday: 50% on architectural design; 50% on unblocking the Project X team.
Thursday: 100% deep work on system design.
Friday: 50% on a communication about the new architecture; 50% on ad-hoc requests.
Conclusion
Ultimately, staff engineering leadership is a dynamic skill, not a fixed role. The key isn’t to be one or the other, but to master the continuous dance between direct and strategic work. Embrace this challenge, because your ability to switch fluidly between immediate contribution and long-term influence is what will define your impact and leadership as a staff engineer.