LeadTime#21 - Managing an Overqualified Staff Engineer

How to engage a new team member who just lost her colleagues and is probably already job hunting? How to turn this around and build a long-term partnership - while keeping the team's interest in mind?

Hi, this newsletter is a weekly challenge for engineers thinking about management. I'm Péter Szász, writing about Engineering Leadership and training aspiring and first-time managers on this path.

In this newsletter, I pose a weekly EM challenge and leave it as a puzzle for you to think about before the next issue, where I share my thoughts on it.

Last Week’s Challenge

Last week, we looked at a situation where Sarah, a Staff Engineer with 12 years of experience, joined our team after her previous one was disbanded. She's technically brilliant but seemingly bored after three weeks, finishing tasks in half the expected time and showing visible frustration during standups. Read the details here if you missed it.

This challenge was inspired by a recent discussion, but the names and the situation were significantly changed. Thanks, Kata!

I'll approach this situation with my usual Goals - Risks - Questions structure:

Goals to Achieve

Immediate engagement with long-term partnership: Sarah needs something challenging to spark her interest quickly. Show excitement about her joining, not fear or avoidance. We should paint this as an opportunity for a partnership where we collaborate on her career development, even if that eventually leads outside our team or company. She's not stupid - she knows what's happening. The question is whether we have the opportunity to influence this transition or if it occurs without our input. We should build trust with her quickly so she can see us as her ally.

Maintain team credibility: The other 7 developers on the team are watching how you handle talent. If you can't engage a Staff Engineer effectively, what does that say about your management capability? What career path lies ahead for the Senior Engineers? This is as much about your leadership as her retention.

Leverage this as an opportunity for higher ambition: Maybe our roadmap lacks technical challenges because we've been unambitious. Sarah's arrival could be the push to tackle problems we've been avoiding or innovations we haven't considered.

Knowledge sharing both ways: Utilize her expertise through pairing, mentorship, and technical leadership while introducing her to our domain. When she eventually moves on, the team should be better for having worked with her.

Risks to Avoid

Timeline miscalculation: She's probably answering LinkedIn messages now. You have maybe 2-4 more weeks before she's gone, not months to slowly build trust.

Team morale damage: If team members see you make exceptions just to keep her pleased (skipping on-call, avoiding bug fixes, working only on "interesting" problems), it'll backfire fast. Losing her is bad, but destroying team cohesion is worse.

Over-accommodation leading to chaos: Letting her drive technical decisions without proper context could mess up your stack or derail your roadmap. Pragmatism beats pure technical excellence, especially if you take into account the time factor: today’s smart solutions can quickly turn into tomorrow’s tech debt, when she’s already gone to another team or company.

Spreading organizational negativity: She's coming from a disbanded team where colleagues got laid off. That frustration and disappointment can be contagious if not addressed directly. You need to provide an area for her to vent privately, while eventually turning discussions future-focused.

(Note: I wrote about this aspect specifically in an earlier article titled How to Deal with Negative Behavior.)

5 Questions

1. What’s one challenging problem that she can start solving immediately? A long-standing bug that's been frustrating everyone, a technical debt assessment of your stack, or a gap analysis of your future strategy. She needs to understand she's needed here, not just accommodated.

2. What are her short, mid, and long-term career goals? You need this information to immediately jump on opportunities that match her aspirations. If she wants to move toward architecture, platform engineering, or technical leadership, what part of your team’s work can contribute to that path?

3. What's the real story behind her reassignment? The official version might be sanitized. Talk to her previous manager, other leads, or former teammates. Understanding the full context helps you better position this opportunity and address any lingering concerns transparently.

4. How can we be more ambitious with our current scope? If your roadmap truly has "no major technical challenges" and "business is happy," maybe you're thinking too small. What innovations, optimizations, or technical investments could Sarah help you pursue that you wouldn't get into with your current team?

5. Should we involve our manager in expanding her scope? Connect with your manager about this situation. Maybe there's an adjacent team where she could contribute to, or there’s an opportunity for cross-team technical guild participation that's relevant for a Staff Engineer's career development. Your manager might even have the authority to elevate her role across multiple teams. Their visibility might hint at future positions to open for Sarah that should keep her motivated.

The fundamental challenge isn't keeping her busy, but showing her that this reassignment can actually advance her career in ways her previous role couldn't.

Did you have to handle similar transitions in the past? Do you find something missing or misleading in my assessment? Let me know in the comments!

This Week’s Challenge

You're an Engineering Manager leading a team of 8 developers. Your company has been struggling financially, with three consecutive quarters of missing targets and cost-cutting across all departments. Your director has informed you that your team needs to be reduced by one person. This isn't about performance - it's purely about company survival.

Looking at your team, you have two junior developers. Mara has been there slightly longer and handles complex tasks independently. John, while enthusiastic and learning quickly, is still the least experienced and requires more handholding. Given the reduced workload ahead, keeping both junior positions doesn't make financial sense. It’s clear that you need to let John go.

John recently moved to the city for this job and has been genuinely excited about their growth. They're well-liked and progressing exactly as expected for their experience level. Your director agrees with your choice, and wants the termination completed by month-end.

Think about what your goals would be and what risks you'd like to avoid in this difficult situation. I'll share my thoughts next week. If you don't want to miss it, sign up here to receive those and similar weekly managerial challenges as soon as they are published:

Until then, here's a small piece of inspiration about career development:

See you next week,

Péter