What Senior Engineers do Differently (Vercel VP)

**Patrick Akil** (0:00)
So good, so good, so good.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60 percent off brands like Rag & Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free.
Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.

**Patrick Akil** (0:27)
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen, and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

**Lindsey Simon** (0:56)
It doesn't actually matter what your level is. You could impact the business if you figure out the thing, if you spend the time.

**Patrick Akil** (1:03)
This is Lindsey Simon, VP of engineering at Roussel and he shares what great software engineering looks like today. Have you felt FOMO the last few years?

**Lindsey Simon** (1:12)
Yeah, I felt FOMO my whole life. The people who will lead and come up with the innovation, tend to be the people building. They're really good at unblocking themselves, and they're really good at unblocking other people proactively.
We're all junior engineers again.

**Patrick Akil** (1:28)
Have you felt FOMO in the last few months, in the last few years?

**Lindsey Simon** (1:31)
Yeah, I felt FOMO my whole life.

**Patrick Akil** (1:32)
Okay.

**Lindsey Simon** (1:33)
I think that part of that is the drive to prove yourself wrong.
You know, I have worked in a variety of different environments, you know, tech and not tech, where I felt like the challenge was proving to myself by proving to the people around me that I could do something useful. Productive, valuable, you know, because in my head, I'm thinking, I probably can't do that, or I can't hang in that environment. And, you know, the only way to find out is to try to do so. And, you know, if you get a hook in for trying, then all of a sudden, now you've, you know, yeah, you got in, but now it's even worse. Like, shit, I got lucky. You know, in 2006, I interviewed at Google, and I had no expectations. No reason to believe I belonged or could get a job there. But I did. For whatever reason, that day I got lucky. But that wasn't the end of it, right? Then I had, now I'm among this group where, you know, I feel very, you know, incompetent. I'm like, what do you do? You know, you can freeze in that moment.
You can struggle, but you got to fight. Yeah, you know, and so that's how I've been my whole life. That's really cool.

**Patrick Akil** (2:46)
Looking at our industry, I think agents are shaking up a lot of roles and responsibilities. Do you foresee any roles just disappearing in the next few years?

**Lindsey Simon** (2:56)
I mean, I think I see them consolidating.
You know, there are roles that were created as independent roles. I mean, they weren't like ordained from on high. There is the engineering manager, and these are its jobs, and there is the product manager, and these are what they do. You know, I think that there are companies in times when we tried to optimize by building lanes, and the idea of you could do two things at once meant, well, you had one person doing this job, one person doing this job, and now you're going further together. I think agents definitely change that, because now you can say, especially finding out where you are less well-trained, it's a great place to engage with agents, because they have access to the world of information that you probably haven't read or spent as much time learning about. And that's a great way to build in that area. So I think engineers, the trend in the valley right now is that everyone is becoming a member of the technical staff.

**Patrick Akil** (3:56)
Yeah, I was thinking the same.

**Lindsey Simon** (3:57)
I mean, which tells you that, I think there's two reasons for that. One is kind of an anti-poaching vibe, like you don't know what this person does. We're not going to tell you publicly.

**Patrick Akil** (4:06)
I never thought about that.

**Lindsey Simon** (4:07)
But internally, they might be a TPM, they might be an EM, but externally, they're just member of the technical staff. And I think it's twofold. I think it's the anti-poaching piece, but also there is a flattening of and a subsummation of responsibilities and ideas. You might not be a designer by trade or training. That doesn't mean you cannot do design. The act of design is multiple things.