This episode is a celebration of the journey we have been on as this podcast comes to a close. We have had such a great time bringing you these interviews and we are excited about a new chapter, taking the lessons we have learned forward into d

Peter Stout (Netflix)

Dec 14th, 2021 52m 11s

The structures of an organization can often be self-reinforcing, and in a changing environment, this becomes a recipe for future vulnerabilities. That is why senior ICs need to play a slightly discordant role at times by alerting teams to issue

James Cowling (Convex)

Nov 30th, 2021 48m 28s

Often the biggest impacts a Staff Engineer can make in their organization are not technical but rather people-related. When teams are value-aligned due to good leadership, they go on to make larger impacts than they would otherwise have. As Sen

Bryan Berg (Stripe)

Nov 16th, 2021 50m 46s

Staff engineers may not get much time to code anymore, but this does not mean problem-solving and system design is not an integral part of their day-to-day. Today’s guest is Bryan Berg, Staff Engineer at Stripe, and he joins us to talk about th

Ben Ilegbodu (Stitch Fix)

Nov 2nd, 2021 35m 52s

Today we talk to Ben Ilegbodu, Principal Frontend Engineer at Stitch Fix, about how he manages to stay close to the code at a senior level. We hear how he arrived at Stitch Fix and what his first tasks were to identify the pain points in custom

Ashby Winch

Oct 19th, 2021 40m 15s

Moving from an architect role to a product-oriented one might seem like a big leap, but there are overlaps between the two roles. Today's guest, Ashby Winch, has recently made this transition, and in today's episode, they share what this has be

Josh Kaderlan (Lob)

Oct 5th, 2021 33m 44s

Today’s guest is Josh Kaderlan, Staff Software Engineer at Lob, a direct mail and address verification API company that automates and simplifies direct mail and address verification, giving businesses greater flexibility, visibility, and accura

Ben Edmunds (Wayfair)

Sep 21st, 2021 43m 46s

During today’s conversation, we speak with Ben Edmunds, Senior Staff Engineer at Wayfair. You’ll hear all about his role at Wayfair, from his day-to-day active projects and how he goes about setting OKRs to the legacy and new deploy tooling he

Nell Shamrell-Harrington (Microsoft)

Sep 7th, 2021 42m 33s

Today’s guest is a principal software engineer at Microsoft who works at the interface between external and internal elements of the organization. Nell Shamrell-Harrington works on the ClearlyDefined open source project, which tracks open sourc

Rich Lafferty (PagerDuty)

Aug 24th, 2021 49m 53s

Oscillating between the roles of individual contributor and management has been a recurring theme on this show. Our guest today, Rich Lafferty, has some special insights into this pattern that can help anyone looking to improve their work. Rich

Mason Jones (Credit Karma)

Aug 10th, 2021 45m 49s

Credit Karma is a company that helps people understand their credit. Today’s guest, Mason Jones, was brought onto the Credit Karma team to move the company from a monolith to microservices. The company has grown almost four-fold since he joined

Lorin Hochstein (Netflix)

Jul 27th, 2021 48m 16s

Today’s conversation is about resilience, and as today’s guest, Lorin Hochstein, notes; “Resilience is about the stuff that isn’t visible through the metrics.” Lorin is a senior software engineer at Netflix who is on a mission to improve the co

Stacey Gammon (Elastic)

Jul 13th, 2021 46m 18s

What works for a small company may not work for a large company, so what do you do when your organization experiences rapid growth, and the old way of doing things is no longer sustainable? In today’s episode, we speak with Stacey Gammon, a tec

Will Larson (Calm)

Jun 29th, 2021 48m 45s

Please note that this episode contains brief mention of suicide.Today's guest needs no introduction! Of course, they will get one anyway:Will Larson is the CTO of Calm and has worked at Stripe, Uber, and Digg. He is also an author and has writt

Mahdi Yusuf (1Password)

Jun 15th, 2021 49m 54s

Today’s guest is Mahdi Yusuf, Tech Lead for the Server Architecture Team at 1Password. Our conversation is about what it means as well as what it takes to navigate the needs of the org, client, and staff in order to find the best path forward.

Amy Unger (GitHub)

Jun 1st, 2021 36m 3s

Amy Unger, our guest on today’s show, is passionate about providing a high-quality service to the customers who use the products she is working on. Amy has a diverse skill set and an equally diverse set of tasks that she undertakes weekly for G

Brian Lawler (Iterable)

May 18th, 2021 45m 49s

Today we welcome Brian Lawler, who is a Principal Engineer at Iterable! Brian has a load of experience with software architecture, having worked in the space for over 25 years, at a number of different companies and amassing a large amount of w

Matthew Bilotti (Twitter)

May 4th, 2021 49m 2s

On today’s episode of StaffEng, we speak with the formidable Matthew Bilotti who works as a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Twitter and has been at the company for 11 years. Matthew currently leads a team that plays a critical role in user sa

Natalia Tepluhina (GitLab)

Apr 20th, 2021 54m 36s

As today’s guest, Natalia Tepluhina walks us through her professional history and describes her experiences at GitLab. After getting to know Natalia a little better, we talk about the challenges she has faced as a staff engineer. We then get in

Jam Leomi (Honeycomb)

Apr 13th, 2021 31m 47s

Today we are joined by the inspiring Jam Leomi, who is currently the Lead Security Engineer at Honeycomb. Jam has worked in tech for over ten years, holding positions in both operations and security, and we get to hear about some important mile

Mike McQuaid (GitHub)

Apr 6th, 2021 47m 45s

Today we have a great guest to talk about his transition to, and current role as, a staff engineer: Mike McQuaid from GitHub! Mike is also a project leader at Homebrew, and brings a wealth of expertise and experience to the table, as well as th

Sarah Dayan (Algolia)

Mar 19th, 2021 50m 22s

A promotion might be a climb up the ladder but, in actual fact, it’s a step in many directions. Today, we speak with staff plus engineer Sarah Dayan, about the many nuances of her current role at Algolia, both subtle and overt. In this episode,

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