The Pragmatic Engineer on YouTube · Open on YouTube
Staff-level impact and technical strategy · Expert · Lesson 96 of 98 · 1 h 13 min video, then about 3 hours of practice
Working with leadership and product
After this you can translate technical concerns into business terms, stay aligned with your management chain, and disagree with a decision constructively.
Why it matters
Staff engineers fail most often not technically but by drifting out of alignment with leadership: working on things their director does not value, or surprising them. Keep your manager and their manager informed, understand the business goals, and frame technical work in terms of the outcomes they care about. The principal engineer conversation shows what this looks like at the highest IC levels in a large company. Trap: going around your manager to win a decision. It works once.
How to use this resource
What a principal engineer at Amazon actually does, including how they work with leadership.