Speaker: Blanca Garcia Gil

Congratulations on landing your staff-plus role! The first question that many people ask themselves once they land the role is: what does it really mean? The role can vary even within the same organisation.

You want to figure out how to be a staff-plus engineer, let alone being effective. How do you achieve that within your organisational context? I personally heard a lot the phrase “becoming more strategic”, but what does that really mean?

You can try to be everything that people ask you, but that is not sustainable over time and it creates the expectation that in the role you work non stop and you have to please everyone. This is not what I advocate for in this talk and you have to learn to be comfortable with this.

One of the key most important things is your ability to get things done goes beyond your individual capacity to grow and mentor others. Is the name “individual contributor” apt for this role?

The tech industry has moved away from thinking that engineers work individually and collaboration is one of the most important behaviours you would have mastered by this point in your career.

In this talk we are going to take a step back and go through a handful of skills that applied strategically will help you amplify your impact.

In this panel we will bring experienced Staff-Plus Engineers to discuss key topics to help you in your career path:

• What skills you need to develop if you want to be a successful Staff-Plus Engineer
• What can you expect when you reach Staff-Plus status 
• How companies can support and incentivise professionals that want to stay in the technical career
• How the future of the industry can be shaped by providing a clear technical career path