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How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

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Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#41

Post by hshshshshsh »

davesmylie wrote: post #4

What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?

Nothing. The manager reads the Phsycology of the engineer and gives them whatever title which makes them happy. Since vast majority of humans find meaning and purposes in random words this works.(Starts with identification with their own randomly assigned name when they were born). A better measurement of significance would be the amount of money one get paid. That has more correlation with reality than random titles.

For example a mid experienced engineer at Nvidia is doing better than a staff engineer at a random tech company because of their millions of dollars gains in Nvidia stocks.

Now you can write all day about being a "staff engineer" in LinkedIn or blog posts and how that is such a big deal blah blah blah. But all that is spam when we measure it with reality (your bank account).

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#44

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

silisili wrote: post #2

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.

exactly this. i’m senior staff at my current company and I could very much envision if i moved to california i would on average be considered a senior at most conpanies.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#45

Post by torginus »

davesmylie wrote: post #4

What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?

In my experience, staff engineer is an an alternate role to software architect - some companies have the former, others the latter. When doing something that requires serious design work, an architect typically does it by drawing diagrams, sitting in meetings, writing docs, but not doing coding that much. Staff engineers tend to be more coding and technically focused, they bootstrap features by designing and coding the skeleton and coordinate the work of oter engineers in building out the feature.

It's a much more natural career path for people with a coding background but some companies, particularly enterprisey ones with lots of bureaucracy, prefer architects.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#46

Post by i_am_a_peasant »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #32
pockmarked19 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The staff title unlocks a new level of self-aggrandizement which is on display here and in certain published books. As for professional qualities, I don’t think there is one. It takes a staff engineer at FAANG to do what a senior can do at a smaller company, because of all the other self—important people not listening to you. (Dealing with that is a skill though, so having that skill might be it.)

> It takes a staff engineer at FAANG to do what a senior can do at a smaller company This is beyond laughable. FAANGs are pretty much the only place where staff is actually hard to make. I see countless "senior" engineers with 3 years of experience in smaller companies. The truth is it would take a good entry-level FAANG engineer to match a senior engineer in a smaller company.

i don’t see why the size of the company one works for has to be correlated with an engineer’s skill level. i’ve seen some of the best programmers i ever met cone out of 10 years working at a small company because it happened to be closer to his kid’s school route.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#48

Post by stavros »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #32
pockmarked19 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The staff title unlocks a new level of self-aggrandizement which is on display here and in certain published books. As for professional qualities, I don’t think there is one. It takes a staff engineer at FAANG to do what a senior can do at a smaller company, because of all the other self—important people not listening to you. (Dealing with that is a skill though, so having that skill might be it.)

> It takes a staff engineer at FAANG to do what a senior can do at a smaller company This is beyond laughable. FAANGs are pretty much the only place where staff is actually hard to make. I see countless "senior" engineers with 3 years of experience in smaller companies. The truth is it would take a good entry-level FAANG engineer to match a senior engineer in a smaller company.

The GP is saying that FAANG companies need staff engineers to navigate the politics enough to achieve the same level of productivity as a senior engineer in a small company.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#49

Post by oblio »

hypfer wrote: post #29
scott_w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One could argue that if you work in a place where people only start listening to you if you have the right title, that place might not have the best culture to begin with. 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.

Those places are rare and far between and generally have cutthroat competition for getting in.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#50

Post by mattlondon »

hshshshshsh wrote: post #41
davesmylie wrote: post #4

What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?

Nothing. The manager reads the Phsycology of the engineer and gives them whatever title which makes them happy. Since vast majority of humans find meaning and purposes in random words this works.(Starts with identification with their own randomly assigned name when they were born). A better measurement of significance would be the amount of money one get paid. That has more correlation with reality than random titles…

+1

They can call me "junior" or whatever they like, just give me more comp please.

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