Hi there, last month I spoke with my friend Júlio Falbo, who is a Staff Engineer at Neo Financial. He shared very interesting things about the Staff role, Ai strategy and career. Let's start with that...
The real difference between Senior and Staff isn't about writing more complex code—it's about ego.
Here's a provocative question: Why are some brilliant Senior Developers continuously passed over for Staff positions?
The answer isn't that they don't know enough about distributed systems. It's usually because they still believe they are the smartest person in the room.
In my recent conversation with Julio Falbo, an experienced Staff Engineer who transitioned from Brazil to Canada and navigated big moves in his career at places like Neo Financial, he dropped a massive piece of truth we often ignore.
The moment you step into a Staff role, "the language you use is just a tool". You're no longer the "Java person." You're the person who is held accountable for the architectural decisions and the business value delivered.
Julio argued heavily that the best solution you can deploy isn't always your solution. If a Junior Dev proposes a better way, your job is to check your ego at the door, run a brainstorm with the squad, and adopt it. The final goal is value, not proving how clever your own diagrams are.
Even more importantly, a true Staff Engineer operates as a shield. When production is burning down, you should be the entry point for stakeholders. You handle the external noise so your developers can actually focus on fixing the bug. As Julio said, "If you build a trustful relationship between your squad and the C-level, you help the company scale without burning out yourself".
Key Takeaways:
Check Your Ego: The best architecture combines team ideas. Your initial plan is rarely the absolute best route. Be comfortable letting others dictate elements of the design.
Languages are Just Tools: Tie yourself to business outcomes, not to an arbitrary tech stack. You'll quickly pivot from Java to Node, Ruby, or whatever drives the highest return on investment.
Shield Your Squad: Great technical leadership means shielding your team during an incident. Stakeholders should tag you, not distract the engineers actively writing the fix.
Listen to the full deep dive here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReP23HQwe3A
How are you handling this in your architecture? Hit reply.
Cheers,
Silas Candiolli
P.S. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we dissect why simply giving your team Copilot is an incredibly dangerous AI strategy.
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