Thiago Ghisi @thiagoghisi Twitter profile

Pinned Tweet

Thiago Ghisi

4 months

Alright, here it is! The recording of my talk "Breaking the Ceiling: Scaling Your Impact at the Staff-Plus Level" at #InfoQDevSummit Boston 2 weeks ago is now available at the @InfoQ portal. Would love to hear your feedback! 👇

2

12

49

Last Seen Profiles

@chamomiilemiile

@NoLoveTransFem

@kami_yann52

@Waynez38

@JonwalChirag

@ayana8230538021

@UpoUFh6YRleYtxM

$¯\_(ツ)_/¯$

@50BGM

@VioletGogles

@jandakembangstw

@keesey_r

@khalijkoob

@taggs30

@jandakembangstw

@ChimwekaMANIC

@kyotosuitesmty

@Hairology30

@HSchroters

@ilikelogic

@Angelatrinidad5

@tfwrail

@sekai_card

@AlHSJCKtEfpFXtm

@HuskersTurf

@LDuckyyt

@yogisixbread

@DOEFilm

@aventikun

@LauraVance91151

@om_gelap

@notgadun

@HBukou49069

@BlackieBooks

@PerihanSenk

@mr_Somalia_

@tingting20023

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Senior Engineers understand that the highest value of code reviews isn't about ensuring high-quality code. They know that code review is about teaching & learning how to do better engineering.

32

410

3K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

“That’s not my job” The more senior you become, the more your job will involve filling gaps and stepping up to handle situations that aren’t anyone’s job. Your job is to make your organization successful. (whatever that means) There is no “that’s not my job” anymore.

91

485

3K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I've watched 1000+ Conferences Talks over the last 20 years in Tech. I used to watch one every night after dinner for years. Below are The 22 Talks that Impacted my Career the most ➕ my main highlights from each one. 🧵🧵🧵

61

408

2K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

In my opinion, this is really what differentiate a Principal from a Staff and a Staff from a Senior Engineer. Softskill-wise, there’s no better predictable of someone’s maturity level and capacity to influence an organization at scale & to grow than those 3 macro-skills: 1.

22

290

2K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I've read thousands of articles over the last 20 years in Tech. Agile, Career, Distributed Systems, Engineering Management, Metrics, Programming, Testing, Types... Below are The 22 Articles that Impacted my Career the most ➕ my main highlights from each one. 🧵🧵🧵

55

323

2K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I've read 500+ books and accumulated 55.000+ notes & highlights over the last ten years. 99% of those books were non-fiction & mostly around Software Engineering. Below are The 22 Technical Books that Impacted my Career the most ➕ their highest-density chapters & pages. 🧵

56

278

2K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

11 months

Ten Principles for Growth as an Engineer by Dan Heller: “These are the most important lessons that I wish I had learned ears earlier than I did; I sure wish someone had sent it to me when I was 22.” 1. Reason about business value: Reason like a CEO. Understand the value of your

14

282

2K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I have interviewed 300+ Senior Engineers, Tech Leads & Engineering Managers over the last 10 years of my career. Here are the most actionable tips I learned on how you can do better on Behavioral Interviews as EMs/Staff+ and also some common pitfalls: 🧵🧵🧵

35

234

1K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

This interview with former Google's Sr. Eng. Director (ex-Amazon) on How Google Hires Engineering Managers is a goldmine! Many insights in so many areas: 1:1s, Delegation, Growing People, Questions he asks & how he assesses EM candidates… Here are my 7️⃣ favorite learnings: 🧵

25

230

1K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

After my article about Behavioral Interviews last week, many folks asked me for examples. Today, have left that world, I'll be vulnerable and share the essay that landed me three $650k+ job offers at BigTechs last year. Question: What is the most innovative thing you have done?

26

122

1K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I have managed nearly 100 Senior Engineers at this point in my career as an Engineering Leader. Check out my latest article, On Being a Senior Engineer:

On Being a Senior Engineer

I have managed nearly 100 Senior Engineers at this point in my career as an Engineering Leader. A mix of direct reports and skip-level reports.

www.linkedin.com

16

174

1K

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I read a lot about Engineering Management. Of all writers I found this year, @scarletinked has been by far the most consistently insightful with 100% down-to-earth & actionable tips. This piece on How to Onboard Yourself in 3 Weeks at a New Job is a clear example of that! 🧵

13

125

970

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

The 6 Staff+ Engineers Archetypes at Facebook: 1) Generalist 2) Specialist 3) Coding Machine 4) Tech Lead 5) Fixer 6) Product Hybrid Found them catching up on my Pragmatic Engineer newsletter by @GergelyOrosz They are similar to @Lethain ’s yet closer to my day-to-day reality.

11

106

956

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I have interviewed 300+ Senior Engineers, Tech Leads & Engineering Managers over the last 10 years of my career. Here are the most actionable tips I learned on how you can do better on Behavioral Interviews as EMs/Staff+ and also some common pitfalls: 🧵🧵🧵

18

129

906

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Why do we need Technical Engineering Managers? Below is a list of Lesser-Known Reasons why we need More Technical Engineering Managers: 1- Prevent team members from underperforming due to a lack of opportunities! How? 👇 🧵

19

131

900

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Introducing "The 4 Ps of Engineering Leadership" A Framework to understand & assess the scope of Impact & Influence of Engineering Leaders in Big Techs: 1. Platform 2. Product 3. Process 4. People 🧵 🧵🧵

20

117

822

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Want to have a super strong Career in Tech? Build enough career capital to become over the years this rare kind of Software Engineer @GergelyOrosz described perfectly on his newsletter this week. Not a Jack of All Trades Master of None. A Jack of Many Trades, Master of Some.🧵

16

114

773

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

You can call yourself a Senior when: - You can handle the entire software development life cycle end-to-end, and navigate across the entire stack, end-to-end. - You lead others, or others look to you for guidance. - You can self manage your projects. What else??

74

94

764

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I’ve interviewed hundreds of Senior Engineers & EMs over the last 10+ years. This diagram represents how I think Junior Engineers, Senior Engineers, Staff+ Engineers & Engineering Managers are actually evaluated based on my experience. Critical feedback is much appreciated.

25

123

659

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

“The more senior you are, the more you'll be expected to organize and publish at the next level.” Absolutely loved the Produce/Organize/Publish framework by @shreyas that @GergelyOrosz mentions on his recently launched book. Produce -> Organize -> Publish (or Self-Promote)

Shreyas Doshi

@shreyas

4 years

People do 3 types of work within companies. Produce: Creating artifacts to serve the company’s external stakeholders. Organize: Creating the necessary structures & processes for Produce work. Self-promote: Creating a proxy for their own competence & impact. A short tutorial👇🏾

34

131

1K

6

81

668

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Mind-blowing talk by Google SRE Engineers on how a new and much simpler approach for Distributed Systems Observability can massively reduce the number of false negative alerts and help to debug issues that are almost undetectable using traditional p90s-based alerts.

7

77

641

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

"So I decided that going forward, I would always act as if I was one level higher than my current level." i.e: As a L6 Manager, I would mentally tell myself I was a L7 Senior Manager. Repeatedly. Incredibly insightful subscribers-only post from @scarletinked . Worth every penny!

14

62

563

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

20 Talks that Heavily Impacted my Career Trajectory in Tech: Sharing here a selection of conference talks that have influenced my career, how I think about things, and my leadership approach. 🧵🧵🧵

21

77

522

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Probably the most misunderstood concept in business and the main reason I was held back for many promotion cycles early in my career. What does commit in “Disagree and commit” actually mean?

18

64

513

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

How Technical should Engineering Managers be? Technical enough to understand and be able to contribute with relevant ideas to: Costs, Performance, Reliability, Operations and Productivity. If we use @simonbrown ’s C4 model as a guideline: EMs should not necessarilly be or have a

9

96

479

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

🇧🇷 🇵🇹 Os 4 Ps da Engenharia de Software: Um Framework para crescer na Carreira em TI Demorou 1 ano e meio, mas estou muito feliz de disponibilizar hoje a tradução em Português do meu artigo com os meus maiores aprendizados dos últimos 15 anos trabalhando no Brasil e EUA. 🧵🧵🧵

6

92

476

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Remote Pair Programming Good Practices: A Thread. Found the slides of a presentation that @qcoding and I gave to the entire CTO Org at Amex two years ago when we were both there. Thought it had a lot of great stuff that could still be useful to others. Why not share? 🧵

13

156

462

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

How to Build a Strong Career in Tech: A Thread. 2019, I gave a talk. 2020, I wrote an extensive article expanding the talk. 2021, I recorded a podcast distilling the article. 2022, I'm sharing below my favorite ideas researching this topic for past 3 years. 🧵🧵🧵

8

75

439

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

10 months

In case you really want to Advance in Your Career in 2024, check out this masterpiece article & framework by @EthanEvansVP called "The Magic Loop" (via @lennysan ). Ethan's 'Magic Loop' is The Career Catalyst I Wish I Had at 29 – A Must-Read for Ambitious People in Tech, from

7

67

427

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I’ve delivered 100+ features over last 10+ yrs as an Engineer/Manager/Director. Here is a lesson I learned 3yrs ago that changed the game: A bad & unclear decision (yet intentional) is better than no decision in 99% of cases. This might seem extreme/unproductive, but isn’t 🧵

18

67

409

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

How to Build a Strong Career in Tech. 2019, I gave a talk. 2020, I wrote an article expanding the talk. 2021, I recorded a podcast distilling the article. 2022, I gave an interview talking about growth as an EM. 2023, I'm sharing my favorite ideas about career 👇 🧵🧵🧵

9

55

388

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Amazing piece by @rhein_wein on Expectation Setting for Engineers and what kind of metrics to use instead of the bad ones (lines of code, n# of PRs…) Especially loved the idea of using system-level metrics to measure performance of Eng. Managers+ & Staff+ Engineers.

4

40

355

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I've read 500+ books and accumulated 55.000+ notes & highlights over the last ten years. 99% of those books were non-fiction & mostly around Software Engineering. Below are The 22 Technical Books that Impacted my Career the most ➕ their highest-density chapters & pages. 🧵

16

37

343

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

11 months

Just watched the incredible AWS re:Invent Keynote from @Werner on "The Lost Art of Being a Frugal Architect" (that BTW had an awesome talk by @CatSwetel showing our case at Nubank) and I can't stop thinking about the HN post on the "PMPP - Poor Man’s Parallel Processing " from

2

48

325

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

How do you Lead by Example on Design Docs, Pull Requests or on Big Engineering Discussions? My Maturity Model: The 5 Levels of Ownership in Code Review/Pull Request Comments & Engineering Discussions for Software Engineers & Engineering Leaders (EMs & Staff+):

12

68

322

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

The curse of leadership. Being the most senior person around means that you should take on the crappiest work. If there’s an important project that will involve horrible levels of politicking, cruft, tedium, or drama, you might take one for the team and do it yourself.

12

59

310

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

The Big Tech's (FAANGs) On-Site Interviews: How Individual Contributors & Managers Think They Are Evaluated VS. How They Are Evaluated In Reality: 1. Junior Engineers 2. Senior Engineers 3. Staff+ Engineers 4. Engineering Managers Critical feedback is much appreciated.

3

41

293

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

10 months

Coming up tomorrow… “I have read over 350 articles in 2023, mostly (300+) technichal articles about Engineering & Engineering Management and some about Career, Leadership, Financial Freedom, Pyschology & Writing. Here are my 23 favorites based on the number of insights I got

8

27

279

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

When I started my career in Tech in 2007, there was a massive focus in the industry on Team & Company Capability Models, Maturity Levels, or "Career Ladders" for Teams, such as TSP (Team Software Process), PSP (Personal Software Process) and mainly CMMI (Capability Maturity Model

4

27

271

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

As a manager, it isn't your job to train people. You’re not a trainer! This isn't lack of empathy. We all love to help people. Yet our time is limited. Improving your top performer by 10% is worth 10x more than improving your bottom performer by 10%. It's leverage!

26

32

263

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

The 5 Engineering Leadership Levels of Ownership in Code Review/PR Comments (How do you lead by example on PR reviews?) 🚼 Level 1 - Complain Generally. “This is a piece of s***" continue...🧵🧵🧵

11

61

268

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

What is the different between a Senior and a Staff Engineer in terms of scope of impact/influence? I couldn't find anyone that has a better take on this than @whereistanya . (from her upcoming book The Staff Engineer's Path) A picture is worth a thousand words so is a table. 🧵

5

44

261

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

If you've recently been laid off, you’re preparing for interviews, trying to get promoted or just setting career goals for 2023, check this out: I went from 3k to 16k followers on LinkedIn in 2022 and here are My Top 10 Posts that had 3M+ views & I’m sure will help you👇 🧵

6

28

247

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Will Larson ( @Lethain ) has written two books (An Elegant Puzzle & Staff Engineer) & many articles about Career Growth for Engineering Leaders. I have read all of them! Below are his Best Pieces of Advice for a Remarkable Forty-Year Career in Tech. ↓↓↓

8

41

250

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

If I could combine Three Articles that I re-read recently (along with a few visuals) into One Thing that could make your head explode and your self-reflections & career conversations to grow exponentially in effectiveness, I would pick the following three: 🧵🧵🧵

6

42

247

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Great piece of career advice by @shreyas : Stay longer on a places where people get it. Make it about yourself. Move quicker out of places where people don’t get you and where you are wasting a lot of your energy & influence accumulating frustrations.

3

29

241

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

11 months

Quick Retro! Books I read/re-read in 2023: 70. My Favorites & The Highest-Density Ones: -> Engineering/Management: 1- Observability Engineering by @mipsytipsy 2- Scaling People by @chughesjohnson 3- The Leader You Want to Be by @AmyJenSu 4- Confident Career Conversations by

3

47

241

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

How do you it’s time to leave your current job? Absolutely genius analogy by @molly_g ! I felt exactly this way at Apple last year, mostly valleys, not enough hills. Glad I’m on a much better position this year.

4

45

234

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

10 months

I've read 350+ articles in 2023, mostly (300+) technical articles about Engineering & Engineering Management and some about Career, Leadership, Financial Freedom, Psychology & Writing. Here are My 23 Favorites based on the number of insights I gained from them. They are ranked

9

40

234

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

4 years

11 Articles that Heavily Impacted my Career Trajectory in Tech Sharing here a selection of articles that have influenced my career, how I think about things, and my leadership approach. #CareerDev Thread 🧵🧵🧵

10

39

225

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

🌟 Google Exec's Ultimate 1:1 Meetings Guide 🚀 Leaders across the board hold 1:1 meetings with team members to ensure alignment on multiple levels and tackle issues head-on. Let's dive into how Bill Campbell guides executives to ace these meetings! 1- Both leader and team

5

24

228

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Instead of Seniority/Titles, why don’t we talk about what the job will actually entail? The degrees of autonomy one will have are a much better proxy than titles. - Solution Implementer = Junior? - Problem Solver = Senior? - Problem Finder = Staff+? Loved this @rkoutnik .

6

40

211

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

On Self-Assessments & Performance Review season, just found this transformational leadership survey questions from Accelerate that will help me a lot to assess myself as a leader. Such a great way to break down the impact of leadership.

5

23

210

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

10 months

A lot of people starting in new positions at this time of the year, so here it goes one of the best pieces of advice I shared last year: "How to Onboard/Ramp Up Yourself as an Eng. Manager at a New Job in 3 Weeks?" I read a lot about Engineering Management. Of all writers I

2

24

207

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Suspecting someone on your team is about to have a burnout, ask them to take this online test: Thanks @catehstn for sharing! My result:

10

43

201

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Someone shared this on LinkedIn. Haha, this is so good. Sadly, but I have to agree with it, in most places (Big Tech or not), there is a huge gap between what is asked on interviews and what is actually faced on the day to day.

6

37

201

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

A former colleague & good friend of mine that is also a Director of Engineering used to say a lot: I don't assign tasks or projects to Staff Engineers, I assign them missions. As a Staff+ Engineer, you don't need anyone telling you how to execute the mission. You know best.

5

21

198

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

The Seven False Hopes of Software Management (1987). Each one reaches out with an attractive fallacy that leads nowhere. As long as you believe them, you’re going to be reluctant to do the hard work necessary to build a healthy & productive culture. 🧵

6

37

195

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

What kind of engineer are you? Are you a bottom-up engineer or a top-down engineer? A bottom-up engineer is content to dive into the muck and dig their way out by trying a lot of things quickly and skimming over the details. A top-down engineer wants to get the full lay of the

16

14

193

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Senior Engineers understand that a design review (the same applies to RFCs) isn't only about making the best design. It's about walking through the tradeoffs in the design, asking the right questions, and ensuring that all tech folks involved understand why choices were made.

1

7

187

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Remote Pair Programming Good Practices: A Thread. Found the slides of a presentation that @qcoding and I gave to the entire CTO Org at Amex two years ago when we were both there. Thought it had a lot of great stuff that could still be useful to others. Why not share? 🧵

9

41

186

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Senior people do a lot of things that are not in their core job description. They can end up doing things that make no sense in anyone’s job description! But if that’s what the project needs to be successful, consider picking it up.

2

6

186

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Mind-blowing how the different garbage collection strategies have such a big impact on energy consumption.

12

46

184

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

8 months

This article, "Seven Transformations of Leadership by David Rooke and William Torbert," from HBR in 2005, is such an old gem. It explains not only why high-performing ICs struggle to become effective Managers but also why Staff Engineers, Directors, VPs, and sometimes entire

2

28

186

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

11 months

Loved this framing of really taking Full Ownership of Your Career vs. Expecting to find “magic pills” with Mentors: > “I see countless young people lament that their careers can’t move forward because they can’t find a mentor; I think their careers aren’t moving forward because

3

22

179

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

@hussien_coding Exactly. A image is worth a thousand words on this: ‘What are we optimizing for with our interview process?’ It is such a powerful question that almost none of the FAANGs is really asking, especially for Software Engineer positions up till Senior level.

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Someone shared this on LinkedIn. Haha, this is so good. Sadly, but I have to agree with it, in most places (Big Tech or not), there is a huge gap between what is asked on interviews and what is actually faced on the day to day.

6

37

201

3

9

177

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Seven Controversial Pieces of Advice for a Remarkable Forty-Year Career in Tech. 🧵 🧵 🧵 🧵 🧵 🧵 🧵 ↓

8

36

172

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

11 months

Just saying ‘No’ is not your job & I would argue that is probably damaging for your career growth long-term I know this is controversial, but I absolutely loved this framing that Dan Heller called as “The Platform Engineer’s Folly” from his time working at Apple in 2007. > “The

1

24

180

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

ICs need to “know their shape”. Eng. Managers need to know their shape & all their ICs shapes. Directors need to know their shape, their Managers shapes & their most impactful ICs shapes. So they can fit their teams together like puzzle pieces. Otherwise… 🧵

2

15

173

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

The Twelve Factors that are the simplest and most accurate way to measure the strength of a workplace:

6

30

175

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Motivated Juniors experimenting, shipping code & iterating beat Over-analytical Senior Engineers debating architecture & strategy, Every single day!

10

18

167

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

@hugaomarques Great great point Hugo! It's all about investing on the fundamentals. I love this answer @kelseyhightower gave on an internal QA when he was asked how he keeps himself up to date with so many new techs and frameworks coming up..

0

46

158

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

To this day, “Change Your Organization (For Peons)” is one of the papers that has most impacted my career. Below are some of my favorite highlights. (Full list of my all-time favorites in the thread.)

5

12

166

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

This interview with @drensin (Ex-Sr. Eng. Director at Google) on How Google Hires Engineering Managers is an absolute Goldmine. Many insights in so many areas. 1:1s, Delegation, Growing People, Top questions he asks for Engineering Manager candidates..

Engineering Management: Interviews & Hiring ft. Google Engineering...

Don't leave your engineering management career to chance. Sign up for Exponent's engineering manager interview course today: https://bit.ly/3VA4r8nWe sit dow...

www.youtube.com

8

24

160

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

WEEKLY PLANNING CHECKLIST: Made this checklist from one of my favorite episodes of @managertools called "Sunday Evening Planning" (from 2013 and still gold): 1⃣ Put Your Family On Your Calendar First: 1.1. Consult Your Spouse: ✅Have you coordinated with your spouse (or any

4

26

155

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

So this is my trick. Fundamentals are what's important, whatever role you have. Don't worry about all the new frameworks & languages & stuff all the time. For example: If someone told me, you're going to be a Linux administrator, I would ask myself…

2

33

153

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

For the past two decades, I've immersed myself in over 1000 conference talks in the tech industry. Night after night, I devoured these talks, and now I'm sharing the 22 that left an indelible mark on my career. Join me on this thread as I highlight each talk and its impact. 🧵

5

28

150

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

I went from 1.7k to 5k followers in 7 weeks. 🎉 Here are 11 Surprising and Counterintuitive Tips I learned about Twitter Engagement. These are things I learned the hard way and from some of the best ones here. Tips I want to give back to you all now. [🧵🧵🧵]

20

15

146

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

The 🔟 Keystones of Career Growth & Personal Development for Staff+ Engineers & EM+ Managers. Why this matters? Your title is not the only thing holding you back. Your approach and skills are far more impactful than the title. I believe this list will help you to see that 👇

5

24

145

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Great passage by @copyconstruct ! …sole reliance on pre-production testing is largely ineffective in surfacing even the known-unknowns of a system. Testing for failure involves acknowledging that certain types of failures can only be surfaced in the production environment.”

2

27

144

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Your job as a Staff+ Engineer is to Pave Paths and Build Bridges. Your job is not to participate in Internal Technology-Centric Wars or be super picky and tell people all the things they got wrong. 'Being Right' is less than ⅓ of the battle.

2

18

145

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Q: How do I get promoted? First, understand that your company's career ladder is a compass, not a GPS. You are the one responsible for finding your "GPS Route" (the exact steps) to reach the north star the compass is pointing to. ...🧵

4

20

141

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Yet another great interview passage, this time from @Lethain on: The Core Challenge of Engineering Leadership Roles & The Three Most Common Leadership Pitfalls of Staff+ and Director+ People. <Link at the end> 🧵🧵🧵

5

22

131

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

4 years

I published a pretty big article on Sunday on How to Build a Strong Career in Tech Something I worked on for the past 3 months based on my 15 years of experience Sharing my favorite ideas in this thread. 🧵

How to Build a Strong Career in Tech

This is an expanded version of the transcript of the talk I gave at The Conf last year. The original title of my talk was "Career Abroad - How the best Technologists are conquering the World", but...

www.linkedin.com

4

31

128

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

Although I’ve not made the same Career Mistakes that @scarletinked made that could explain why he never made to the SVP (Senior VP of Eng.) level at Amazon, I see engineers & managers making pretty much the exact same mistakes on a daily basis as an Engineering Leader: 1) Not

4

15

133

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

The reason most written Engineering Strategies don’t work is because they’re actually visions of how things could ideally work, rather than accurate descriptions of how things work today. They don’t help you plot a course through today’s challenges to the desired state.

3

11

133

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

1 year

@catalinmpit I have a strong opinion on this. Although you are not required to have side projects all the time throughout your entire career, I'm still to find a successful engineer or eng. manager that never had any side project over the course of the careers.

17

0

128

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

8 months

Fantastic list by @ritendra on “15 Reasons Why People Should Change Jobs (but often don’t)” Resonated a lot with a few of them that especially reminded of reasons I have left jobs in the past. Great read for self-reflection!

1

21

132

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

This is insane. I said exactly the same thing to a friend yesterday. Copying from my messages: "Life is so much easier man. When people understand you and you are 'aligned' culturally and also with the mission, as cheesy as it may seem. I have endless energy."

6

19

127

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

10 months

Updated! 74 total (4 on paper). Just noticed I had missed one more book I read on paper: The Medical Detectives by Berton Roueché. Updated list! 🌟 My Favorites & The Highest-Density Ones: 🔧 Engineering/Management: 1- Observability Engineering by Charity Majors, Liz

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

11 months

Quick Retro! Books I read/re-read in 2023: 70. My Favorites & The Highest-Density Ones: -> Engineering/Management: 1- Observability Engineering by @mipsytipsy 2- Scaling People by @chughesjohnson 3- The Leader You Want to Be by @AmyJenSu 4- Confident Career Conversations by

3

47

241

1

31

122

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Coming up 🔜 soon, my course to help Engineering Managers to break into the Big Techs. Pretty much everything I learned that made a difference to land three $650+k FAANG offers last year.

7

2

126

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Incredibly Inspiring & Actionable Advice by @whereistanya & @SarahM for Staff+ & EM+ People. Conventional wisdom for feedback is to praise in public and criticize in private, but there will times when its vital that you speak up & say something in public. A story on this…

4

21

132

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

Got this question: ‘Could you give me some tips about becoming a Staff+ Engineer?’ (inspired by many ideas from @VicVijayakumar , @whereistanya & @kelseyhightower ) The number one thing is to define what a Staff+ Engineer is:

3

21

121

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I have managed nearly 100 Senior Engineers at this point in my career as an Engineering Leader. Check out my latest article for the full list On Being a Senior Engineer:

On Being a Senior Engineer

I have managed nearly 100 Senior Engineers at this point in my career as an Engineering Leader. A mix of direct reports and skip-level reports.

www.linkedin.com

5

6

120

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

Fellow Brazilian Guilherme Santos posted this on LinkedIn yesterday and I thought it was super thought provoking. Even though not perfect, it pretty much aligns with my own views on the topic of Career Growth vs. Hard & Soft Skills Evolution in the different tracks: Staff+ vs EM+

4

7

121

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I believe the same 4 Leadership Competencies/Roles (Facilitator, Consultant, Negotiator & Leader) also apply and are instrumental to Engineering Managers and Staff Engineers to succeed, not only to Product Managers. Do you folks agree?

6

17

118

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

All the hype & discussions around the potentials of ChatGPT reminded of the excellent last chapter of Programming Beyond Practices by Gregory Brown called “The Future of Software Development”: What programming might be like if we could focus purely on problem solving and

4

21

115

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

3 years

I’m not a fan of giving experienced Staff engineers coding interviews. Why? If you’ve made it to this level, either you can code well, or you’ve learned to solve technical problems using your other muscles. The outcomes are what matters. Loved this passage from @whereistanya

5

9

115

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

2 years

I’m a huge fan of writing ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) or just Decision Records in general at work and outside work. If you don’t write it down, your mind (or even the collective mind of the team) will play tricks on you and on whoever joins after and missed the context.

Vic 🌮

@VicVijayakumar

3 years

If you spend any amount of time thinking about a non trivial problem, write down the pros and cons of the solution you chose and why, because you will come back to this at least once. Probably tomorrow. And you will go through the entire exercise again 🤦🏾‍♂️

7

11

75

6

16

115

Thiago Ghisi

@thiagoghisi

4 years

After nearly 4.5 amazing pivotal years on the incredible Mobile Engineering Team at Amex, this Monday I started a new super challenging new chapter of my career as Eng. Manager at Apple. I couldn't be more excited!

14

0

116