Engineering leadership

Staff-plus paths, team topologies, RFC culture, hiring bars, and decisions that compound.

• "Hiring bars for senior engineers: what the bar is really made of" · Note · Every company claims a high hiring bar. Few can say what it's made of. Ask a hiring manager what distinguishes their senior bar from their mid level bar and you'll usually get vibes:…
• "Platform team topologies: organizing for leverage, not tickets" · Note · Every platform team starts with the same noble intent: build the paved road so product teams can move fast. And nearly every platform team ends up in the same place: a ticket queue.…
• "RFC culture that actually decides" · Note · Most engineering organizations have an RFC process. Few have an RFC culture. The difference: a process produces documents; a culture produces decisions. I've seen RFC repos with…
• "Staff-plus archetypes: the four paths that actually exist" · Note · Ask ten staff engineers what their job is and you'll get ten different answers — not because they're confused, but because staff plus isn't one job. It's a scope band containing several…