I was recently asked how I, as a staff engineer, work with and upskill other developers on my team. It was a great question, and I thought I'd write down a longer form version of the answer I gave. A core part of staff engineer's role is to grow the team. A staff engineer who doesn't up-level other engineers is a bottleneck. Staffs look to accelerate their team and their growth, so training and upskilling is incredibly important. It is also not really talked about, with most staffs picking up the skills haphazardly. Is there a better way to do it? Well, if you want to help someone improve, the first step is to figure out their lev...
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Show me your reward mechanisms and I'll show you your problems. I've been thinking a lot about reward mechanisms, how they incentivise us and how they can be gamed. They exist to ensure we're going in the right direction, defining a win scenario as tightly as possible, and if they're poorly chosen they can lead to a company collapsing slowly over time. Like any tool they are both a blessing and curse. ## Reward Mechanisms So what is a reward mechanism? A reward mechanism is a process that encourages certain behaviours by offering a reward at the end. Exhibit the behaviour, get the reward. Typical examples are bonuses at work for r...
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This idea for this article came from a twitter thread by [@ErynnBrook](https://twitter.com/ErynnBrook/).

I’ve got some time today, thinking about doing a thread on mansplaining.

Dude followers, if the word mansplaining makes you a little uneasy, let me know and I’ll unpack it here :)

— Erynn Brook (@ErynnBrook) May 30, 2018

The t...
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