How I Find Problems to Solve as a Staff Engineer
SMRTR summary
Forget the blank-calendar, "think strategically" approach. A seasoned Google engineer who works on the performance tool Perfetto has a different method for finding problems worth solving: act like a sponge.
Rather than scheduling time to brainstorm, he listens to the ambient noise of meetings, chat threads, and hallway conversations, letting problems accumulate in the back of his mind. Over time, patterns emerge that no single request could reveal.
One telling example: teams kept asking for small, unrelated tweaks to Perfetto's interface. Only after letting those requests pile up did he realize none of them actually wanted what they were asking for. They each wanted to personalize the tool without disrupting everyone else. That insight led to "macros" and "extension servers," now used by dozens of teams inside Google and several outside companies too.
His advice to engineers eyeing a staff-level role: the most important problems your leaders haven't noticed yet are already floating around you, hiding in plain sight.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to Lobsters.
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