Stakeholders

Most engineers have an uncomfortable relationship with the phrase “managing up.” It sounds like politics, like playing games, like doing something other than the real work. The discomfort is understandable — and it leads to a lot of staff engineers doing excellent technical work that doesn’t get funded, prioritized, or protected. Managing up is not about manipulation or self-promotion. It’s about ensuring that the people responsible for resource allocation, roadmap decisions, and organizational priorities have accurate information about the work you’re doing and why it matters. When you manage up poorly, decisions get made with incomplete information. That’s bad for the organization and bad for the work you care about. ...

The central challenge of the staff engineer role is that the impact you’re expected to have — shaping technical direction, driving alignment across teams, changing how engineering gets done — requires influence, not authority. You can’t direct anyone. You don’t have a reporting line. You get things done by persuading people who don’t report to you, earning trust with stakeholders who already have strong opinions, and navigating organizational dynamics that nobody explicitly documented. ...