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What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?
I guess a senior engineer might be "linked" to a single kind of tasks (backend, frontend etc) while a staff engineer has knowledge in a lot of domains and can be the "bridge" for projects that need people from many different teams
My own experience has taught me that titles are kinda dumb, and at times very very insular, which seems to be the case here. I went from eng, to sr eng, to principal eng, back to eng, making more money each time along the way across different orgs. Our industry has little to no real standards. Congrats on your promotion, but your title ultimately means little across companies.
What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?
My own experience has taught me that titles are kinda dumb, and at times very very insular, which seems to be the case here. I went from eng, to sr eng, to principal eng, back to eng, making more money each time along the way across different orgs. Our industry has little to no real standards. Congrats on your promotion, but your title ultimately means little across companies.
Staff engineers are mostly concerned with teams and projects moving forward, not writing code much.
On the other hand it's company specific. The same way armies differ in their pyramid and roles and responsibilities so do engineering teams.
My own experience has taught me that titles are kinda dumb, and at times very very insular, which seems to be the case here. I went from eng, to sr eng, to principal eng, back to eng, making more money each time along the way across different orgs. Our industry has little to no real standards. Congrats on your promotion, but your title ultimately means little across companies.
My experience of speaking to people who make the decisions is that titles are absolutely a social signal that gets people to listen. Now, if what you say is too whacky, or you demonstrate a total lack of ability once given a chance, then you’ll lose that listening privilege. However, a more senior title can get people’s ears opened in the first place.
What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?
A senior in one org may have the responsibilities of the staff in another one, it depends.
My own experience has taught me that titles are kinda dumb, and at times very very insular, which seems to be the case here. I went from eng, to sr eng, to principal eng, back to eng, making more money each time along the way across different orgs. Our industry has little to no real standards. Congrats on your promotion, but your title ultimately means little across companies.
My experience of speaking to people who make the decisions is that titles are absolutely a social signal that gets people to listen. Now, if what you say is too whacky, or you demonstrate a total lack of ability once given a chance, then you’ll lose that listening privilege. However, a more senior title can get people’s ears opened in the first place.
Instead of trying to climb those ranks, it might perhaps make more sense to look for a place where your input is valued based on its own merit and not based on what label is attached to your active directory entry.