Bio
Principal Engineer with two decades at Google and Squarespace, author of The Staff Engineer's Path (O'Reilly 2022) — one of the canonical career-frame texts for staff+ engineers. Her 2019 SREcon talk "Being Glue" named the unrecognised work that holds teams together and warned about its disproportionate fall on women. Reilly's frame reset how many engineering ladders define the staff role.
Operating themes
- Glue work is technical leadership, not a tax.
- Career ladders need explicit recognition for cross-team work.
- The staff IC's primary output is written artifacts that shift other people's decisions.
Cards
- ins_glue-work-is-staff-leadership — Glue work is technical leadership, not a tax on the IC [Tier A]
Sources
- The Staff Engineer's Path, O'Reilly 2022 — referenced via
raw/essays/multi-operator--marketer-rotation-pmm-builder-takes--2026-05.md - "Being Glue", SREcon 2019 — https://noidea.dog/glue
External
- https://noidea.dog/
- https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-staff-engineers/9781098118723/