What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
1–10 of 69 posts
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#2I find it interesting that a culture is being described here where Senior Engineers are considered lower level, with multiple higher levels above that. It just goes to show that titles mean different things at different companies, and you cannot generalize across this industry. I've had the "Staff Software Engineer" title once in my career. It was at IBM, in the 90s, where it was a was a title given to anyone who was not junior. I had it in my first ever coding role, while I was still learning to code. How the title changed from meaning "Generic Staff Member" in the 90s to "Above Senior" today, I have no idea.
In any case, the job described does mesh well with what I see most "Senior Engineers" doing. So the article in general is a good idea of where long-term growth as an engineer will take you.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#3I find it interesting that a culture is being described here where Senior Engineers are considered lower level, with multiple higher levels above that. It just goes to show that titles mean different things at different companies, and you cannot generalize across this industry. I've had the "Staff Software Engineer" title once in my career. It was at IBM, in the 90s, where it was a was a title given to anyone who was…
> How the title changed from meaning "Generic Staff Member" in the 90s to "Above Senior" today, I have no idea.
Indeed. I'm also curious about the change in identification over time.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#4Call me unambitious but I think I’d rather just write some code every day.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#5I'm sure this just suits some people's fancy but the idea of being in a "track" is so off putting and mind numbing to me. Ooh here is where I'll be exactly in 5, 10, 15 years. So exciting /s. So glad I went self employed almost a decade ago.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#6I find it interesting that a culture is being described here where Senior Engineers are considered lower level, with multiple higher levels above that. It just goes to show that titles mean different things at different companies, and you cannot generalize across this industry. I've had the "Staff Software Engineer" title once in my career. It was at IBM, in the 90s, where it was a was a title given to anyone who was…
I think it became widespread because Google named their levels that way. Not sure of the origin of the title at Google though.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#7I read the article once and thought, "So at Box a senior staff SWE is differentiated from a senior SWE by mentoring others, and in so doing, has a greater impact. And senior staff is still in the technical track, not the management track. What does the author (or, What do HN commentators) think are the differences between mentoring and managing? Other than the obvious of course."
I read it again--I liked the article--and saw that the article talks about too many kinds of staff-level contributions, including kinds of mentorship, for my question to be relevant.
I'm still interested enough to pose: I had thought elevation of the technical track to "equal" the management track was a response to technical employees "needing" to go-into-management-and-deal-with-people in order to advance their careers. So now it would seem to me that the technical track is absorbing some of the functions of the management track. That's assuming that mentoring is related to managing.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#8I find it interesting that a culture is being described here where Senior Engineers are considered lower level, with multiple higher levels above that. It just goes to show that titles mean different things at different companies, and you cannot generalize across this industry. I've had the "Staff Software Engineer" title once in my career. It was at IBM, in the 90s, where it was a was a title given to anyone who was…
> How the title changed from meaning "Generic Staff Member" in the 90s to "Above Senior" today, I have no idea. Indeed. I'm also curious about the change in identification over time.
I haven't been able to track down an original source for this, but while at Google in mid 2000s I was told it was a joke/hat-tip to Bell labs.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#9I read the article once and thought, "So at Box a senior staff SWE is differentiated from a senior SWE by mentoring others, and in so doing, has a greater impact. And senior staff is still in the technical track, not the management track. What does the author (or, What do HN commentators) think are the differences between mentoring and managing? Other than the obvious of course." I read it again--I liked the article-…
“We expect each person promoted to Senior SWE to have largely demonstrated competence in all areas (in our case, Technical Skills, Leadership, and Culture and Values) and to have met the bar in all areas, making the required skill set of all Senior SWEs fairly similar.”
The leadership and culture markers are _wildly_ subjective. I’m willing to bet managers are still paid more and still carry more favoritism and power and climbing the tech track ranks is very difficult.
Re: What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does
#10I read the article once and thought, "So at Box a senior staff SWE is differentiated from a senior SWE by mentoring others, and in so doing, has a greater impact. And senior staff is still in the technical track, not the management track. What does the author (or, What do HN commentators) think are the differences between mentoring and managing? Other than the obvious of course." I read it again--I liked the article-…
Mentoring is providing technical guidance, the same as writing code and design documents. It's just a little more personal than other kinds of guidance. Managing includes things like:
* Interminable day-long budget meetings.
* Fighting with the recruiting department and other teams to get new hires.
* Mediating personnel issues, such as "I'm not considered senior and I think I should be" or "We're at loggerheads and can't reach consensus on this decision".
There's of course some wiggle room here, and a lot of people at the first leadership rung do end up with a kind of hybrid role. But by the next level up, management track people are generally spending 100% of their time on these kinds of things.