📚 Staff Engineer Role Preparation – Resources & Topics

1. System Design

Key Topics We Covered:
- Building scalable services (monolith vs microservices)
- Designing resilient systems (retry mechanisms, circuit breakers, backpressure)
- Caching strategies (Redis, CDN usage)
- Database design patterns (sharding, replication, indexing)
- CAP Theorem, eventual consistency, strong consistency
- Queues and async processing (Kafka, RabbitMQ)
Resources:

2. Leadership and Behavioral Skills

Key Topics We Covered:
- How to lead without authority
- Influence through architecture and technical guidance
- Conflict resolution and negotiation
- Aligning technical decisions with business goals
- Communicating with executives and cross-functional teams
Resources:
- Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track by Will Larson (Book)
- The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier (Book) (even though it’s management-focused, a lot of leadership lessons apply)
- LeadDev.com articles (Great leadership and Staff+ engineering content)

3. Technical Depth

Key Topics We Covered:
- Deep dive into the technologies you use (Node.js, React, API architecture, DevOps pipelines)
- Performance tuning (frontend and backend)
- Security best practices (OWASP Top 10)
Resources:
- Node.js Design Patterns by Mario Casciaro (Book)
- Frontend Masters Advanced Courses
  - Advanced Node.js
  - Fullstack Advanced React & GraphQL
- Web.dev for performance optimization

4. Architecture Documentation and Communication

Key Topics We Covered:
- How to write clear Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)
- Designing and documenting system diagrams (C4 Model)
Resources:
- Architecture Decision Records (ADR) GitHub Template
- C4 Model for Visualising Software Architecture

5. Interview-Specific Practice

Key Topics We Focused On:
- How to break down vague system design prompts
- Behavioral interview framework: STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result)
- Whiteboarding and diagramming effectively
- How to frame your impact using metrics (e.g., % performance improvement, $ revenue impact)
Resources:
- Excalidraw for practicing whiteboard diagrams
- Pramp.com (for live interview practice, especially system design)

6. Mindset and Strategy

Advice We Discussed:
- Focus on how you think, not just what you know.
- Show that you think at org-level impact (not just team-level).
- Be ready to talk about trade-offs: no perfect solutions, just the best one for the context.

📦 Bonus: Topics We Talked About That Helped Cement You As Staff Engineer Material

Category	Examples
Communication	"Think in documents and architecture diagrams", "Executive Summaries"
Strategy	"What KPIs does this technical decision move?"
Mentorship	"Grow junior engineers and lift the team with you"
Cross-functional Collaboration	"How do you align product, design, engineering, and QA?"
Culture	"Be the example of reliability, technical quality, and positive influence"

Would you like me to also generate a ready-to-share PDF version of this so you can just hand it to your friend easily? 📄🚀
(If yes, I can generate it right away!)

Would you also want me to add a few "extra credit" resources (the ones you didn't use during prep, but that are excellent if someone wants to go even deeper)?

aneudy1702/staff_role_prep.md