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Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

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Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#101

Post by roflulz »

cannam wrote: post #48
chrisseaton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere. Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. The name comes from the military, where it's even older.

> Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. I was curious about this, because I also think of the staff engineer as a newish thing, and I don't believe I've ever actually met one. I searched my old email for the term and found that the first reference I have was in January 1996, in a HotWired HotFlash newsletter: "Java - so-named because it evokes liveliness and speed - is th…

AMD and Intel and old semiconductor companies have always had titles like - "Engineer 1" "Engineer 2" "Senior Engineer" and then -> "Member of Technical Staff" above that. (Search MTS, SMTS, PMTS etc. on LinkedIn to see a million of them)

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#104

Post by icedchai »

notacoward wrote: post #78
voz_ wrote: post #10

Avoid all these other types except Solver (we call it Fixer at FB). Anyone who calls themselves these things is weird, and will be hard to rely on. Disregard levels. Disregard titles. Fix what needs to be fixed. Unit tests, CI, docs, there's no such thing as grunt work. Real leadership happens in the IDE and only code matters - everything else is overhead.

Tell me you've never functioned as a Staff Engineer without telling me... More seriously, please listen to what every other prominent staff+ engineer here, in blogs, on Twitter, even within FB, etc. has to say about the job. There are a great many takes, but by far the most common thread is that the most important part of the role is almost never about code. Many complain about not having time/energy to code any more…

In my last staff engineer role I spent more time writing "design specs" (which were rarely looked at) and doing code reviews than I did doing actual coding. Also way too many meetings. I found it pretty draining mentally.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#105

Post by pedrosorio »

denton-scratch wrote: post #84
opportune wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Staff” has been a regular title for SV software companies for quite a while now. It is basically the next level past “senior”. Whereas a senior will normally report to a line manager, staff engineers will often report to a middle manager and have managers as their peers. A normal range for a senior is 5-10 years of experience (but still many people will have more experience than that but not be “senior” depending on…

Thanks for explaining! The last time I was involved with job-title hierarchies (a long time ago), nobody was a programmer, everyone was an analyst. The people who did telephone support were called support analysts. I graduated to senior sales support analyst (roughly, doing random free work for the prospect, to close a sale). We assumed we were superior to "engineers": they were the guys that swapped-out hard disks a…

> I guess maybe the difference might have been that we (analysts) had degrees, and they didn't

Interesting nomenclature given that in many countries you can't even call yourself an engineer without an accredited degree and being licensed by the proper regulator.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#106

Post by YorkianTones »

Are staff engineers needed? The role seems like a relatively new invention. Senior and midlevel IC engineers do the heavy lifting, principals set strategy and define architecture, EMs manage engineers, PMs manage product. I'm not clear on what the role of the staff engineer is and why it's needed.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#107

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

ble wrote: post #65
hayst4ck wrote: post #40

This is jaded and angry, but I think there is another archetype called "the politician." They play the game extremely well, providing poorly thought out solutions quickly to problems they haven't dug into the complexity of. They lay operational traps everywhere in their quest to get things done fast (like directly embedding config data in code to avoid fixing the config format). Once they've picked the low hanging fr…

I usually think of an at-work "politician" as somehow taking advantage of relationships or social forces. What you describe sounds more to me like the ""10X engineer"" (with extra scare quotes for good measure). Many people have been skeptical of the idea of the 10X engineer. One take is that if your normal engineers are less than 1/10th as productive as another engineer and all of them are merely human beings, there…

> What you describe sounds more to me like the ""10X engineer""

I think 10X engineer is supposed to imply the average engineer - maybe at the person's level?

We all know there are plenty of engineers who do negative work, and plenty who do almost nothing.

So depending on how you think of it - it might not be that impressive.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#108

Post by jacobr1 »

hayst4ck wrote: post #40

This is jaded and angry, but I think there is another archetype called "the politician." They play the game extremely well, providing poorly thought out solutions quickly to problems they haven't dug into the complexity of. They lay operational traps everywhere in their quest to get things done fast (like directly embedding config data in code to avoid fixing the config format). Once they've picked the low hanging fr…

There is also the "positive" version of the politician. They have enough technical credibility, social skills, relationships with senior management, to remove organizational log-jams. Other companies might hire a consultant to come and tell them what they already know they need to do (but can't organizationally agree to do) - but with this archetype, you can call them in and they will cut out the bullshit, somehow without upsetting everyone.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#109

Post by CobrastanJorji »

bioemerl wrote: post #68
ble wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually think of an at-work "politician" as somehow taking advantage of relationships or social forces. What you describe sounds more to me like the ""10X engineer"" (with extra scare quotes for good measure). Many people have been skeptical of the idea of the 10X engineer. One take is that if your normal engineers are less than 1/10th as productive as another engineer and all of them are merely human beings, there…

In the workforce - the real answer is that the 1x engineers really really aren't operating at full capacity. You assume all parties give it their all. They rarely do. Get through college Do what you have to in other to get the job. Do what you have to in order to keep the job. 10x people do some very basic things. They care. They read about code. They have side projects. They improve their skills because doing so is…

"Hiring well" or hiring "the best" isn't a panacea. People change. Before I had kids, I was working hard, working late nights, and some of my work was all-consuming. After, I've definitely had periods where my main focus was on showing up to meetings and making sure I got at least pretty okay on my performance reviews, while actually focusing on, y'know, not work. If the company doesn't punish people for becoming half as productive, a lot of the folks are going to become half as productive, even if they were "the best" at some point. Especially true when morale at a company drops. Canceling projects, being assigned to boring projects (the next year will focus on Sarbanes Oxley compliance, guys!), having your company or work dragged through the news, it adds up, and people get detached.

Re: Staff Engineer Archetypes (2020)

#110

Post by marssaxman »

chrisseaton wrote: post #31
marssaxman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recall "staff engineer" being something people even talked about before ~2 years ago. It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere.

> It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere. Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. The name comes from the military, where it's even older.

The term may well be as old as the tech industry, but I have somehow spent all 30-odd years of my career in said industry without hearing it discussed, until somewhat recently. I wonder what has changed.

I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all - I trace my computing roots back to the home computer era of the '80s. Perhaps there have been parallel streams which are now mixing.

On the other hand I have never cared about titles, so perhaps it's been there all along and I just didn't notice.

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