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The other kind of staff software engineer

earthly.dev

11–20 of 201 posts

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#11

Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…

Really nice article. Well done.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#12
While I kinda get that you can advance within a company as "staff", in practice it can take a long time, a long time working on the same software, the same technology stack, and a long time before there is room for advancement - if it even is a company where that kind of thing is possible. And even then there will be competition to advance on the ladder.

And of course, it has to depend on whether you aspire to climb the ladder and effectively change your job and responsibilities, or if you prefer to stick with (in the case of software development) the technology and advance in that direction.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#14

I guarantee you at Duke Energy the contractors are second-class citizens, are laid off first and each and every one of them will take FTE at Duke the first chance they get.

I think it depends. I suspect working at ThoughtWorks is hard, going from client to client, and losing contracts when the market doesn't look good, but also there is no Martin Fowler of Duke Energy.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#15

Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…

Reminds me of C Sharp developers until I joined a purely MS stack using company. Also a silent majority in my opinion.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#16
post #4

Jokingly you could probably split this into engineers that use xml vs those that use json. I've worked in both types of companies.

The examples given in the article assume for the sake of argument that the only software is enterprise software. So xml all around.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#17

Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…

I had not heard the "Staff" designation before Google popularized it. I believe in early 2000s, the popular job prefixes were "Senior" and "Principal". The "Staff" prefix always confused me and gave me a feeling that if layoff ever came "Staff" will be protected while everyone else was expendable. I don't think Google adopted this prefix in the sense it was popular in militery.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#18
post #9

At one place I worked full-time, the time-tracking software explicitly had a checkbox, "billable", which meant this time can be directly billed to clients , and you were expected to be able to check that for some specific percentage of your working day. A marketing company. It was annoying and onerous, quite like the company itself, come to think about it. These days, as a freelancer, everything I do is "line", in th…

At one place I worked full-time, the time-tracking software explicitly had a checkbox, "billable", which meant this time can be directly billed to clients, and you were expected to be able to check that for some specific percentage of your working day.

The percentage I'm expected to bill to clients is 100%, 8hrs a day. We are even expected to make up time spent on non-billable things like company or department meetings. Definitely wears on you for sure.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#19

I guarantee you at Duke Energy the contractors are second-class citizens, are laid off first and each and every one of them will take FTE at Duke the first chance they get.

That happens sometimes. But other times, HR has a lot of control over FTE salaries, and little over contractors, and they compare their salary structure to other energy companies, and therefore every FTE is drastically underpaid, and gets little to no stock compensation. So in practice, a senior contractor will earn far more. This means they have a lot of trouble converting FTEs.

I've worked in places where the contractors make about double, and those where it's the FTEs that make double. You really want to get a good idea of how the organization looks before you join there, because really, both kinds exist, and you don't want to be in the wrong group.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#20
post #17

Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…

I had not heard the "Staff" designation before Google popularized it. I believe in early 2000s, the popular job prefixes were "Senior" and "Principal". The "Staff" prefix always confused me and gave me a feeling that if layoff ever came "Staff" will be protected while everyone else was expendable. I don't think Google adopted this prefix in the sense it was popular in militery.

Google got it from industry research labs, the industry research labs got it from the national labs, who got it from the military.
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