Perhaps I should qualify that statement a bit, because despite my arguable attempt at humor, I believe there is some truth to it.
"For the motivated professional, work expands to fill all available time"
I suppose that is better. It's good enough for now, anyway.
The point is that staff engineers are generally given a great deal of responsibility. Along with that responsibility comes an obligation to fulfill numerous expectations, well beyond what is expected of more junior engineers.
I try to keep up with my manager's blog entries largely because I feel that he and I have very similar ideas about what it means to work at or above the staff level. His perspective tends to bend toward the management side as mine will toward the technical side, but as our thoughts are well aligned, our perspectives tend to align in multiplicative ways.
My biggest complaint of late is the fact that I tend to spend as much time dealing with technical issues as I do with non-technical ones. I won't qualify that any further for various reasons, but it's the root of my expanding universe concept. One of a staff engineer's responsibilities is to guide and aid junior engineers. I don't take that lightly, even if it does consume a fair amount of time. In fact, I enjoy it. It's hard to qualify how something can simultaneously be the cause of a complaint and yet be something I enjoy doing. That qualification is the expanding universe.
Given enough responsibility and being of the mindset that generally guides engineers to a staff level or higher, the universe can quickly and regularly expand beyond your comfort level. The case in point is the fact that I have my laptop on today, Saturday, as I monitor email and compose this blog entry. There is a soccer game to go to later and I'm playing the lone parent today while my wife is out. On that note, it's time to turn off the tap on that universe.
Enjoy your weekend,
David
