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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

#51

Post by scott_w »

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.

Lots of places don’t have the best culture, you work with what you’ve got in life.

You might be applying for a job and, since they have limited other information, your existing job title is used as signal to figure out if what you’re saying has merit. Particularly if what you’re saying doesn’t mesh with their own experience or expectations.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#53

Post by izacus »

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.

> 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.

There isn't a single place where status (and by extension titles showing that status) wouldn't change how people communicate and how open they are to your ideas.

If you think you're in a place that doesn't do that, you're either deliberately closing your eyes to it, are the privileged high status person (and closing your eyes to it) or you don't understand how human relations work.

Even in places where "your own merit" counts, there's a big status gradient between which ideas get listened to. If you don't have titles encoding that status gradient, you just have informal authority structure which does the same.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#54

Post by sverhagen »

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.

I worked at a place with great culture, where everyone on a team would have a say on decisions or could start and drive new initiatives that would get an ear from the team, TO A FAULT, and still people would turn around and ask for the promotion. At times this would be for money, but at times where it wasn't, I guess it was for the status. Maybe, now I think about it, it may not be for the status within the organization in question, but rather for the status with friends or, you know, on LinkedIn!

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#55

Post by Toutouxc »

Everything the article describes just feels so arbitrary, almost cargo cultish. You get a pay raise if you're visible and you make the company money? That does make sense, why the job title dances? Why couldn't the author just write an article about how to be a good, impactful developer? Why did it have to be "how to go from $meaningless_job_title to $meaningless_job_title2"?

> Staff promotions only happen at a company that has staff roles

Does this mean that the companies who don't have staff roles are fundamentally incapable of delivering software of the same quality as the ones who do? Doesn't this actually show how arbitrary job titles are?

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#57

Post by coffeebeqn »

Toutouxc wrote: post #55

Everything the article describes just feels so arbitrary, almost cargo cultish. You get a pay raise if you're visible and you make the company money? That does make sense, why the job title dances? Why couldn't the author just write an article about how to be a good, impactful developer? Why did it have to be "how to go from $meaningless_job_title to $meaningless_job_title2"? > Staff promotions only happen at a compa…

> > Staff promotions only happen at a company that has staff roles

It’s also not true? I was the first “Staff” engineer at my previous company. I think it was just a retention tactic since I was somewhat important to a few major projects at the time. Now I’m a Sr Engineer with less responsibility again and I love it

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#58

Post by coffeebeqn »

wiseowise wrote: post #33
threatofrain wrote: post #16

I don't agree with the mentoring and leading part not being important except as a mediator to shipping. Mentoring and leading increases your soft power by giving people the opportunity to like you. This power can translate even to the next company since tech can be a small world.

Highly situational. Influencing 10 junior-mid engineers is always worse than being in good graces of someone that actually has influence on your career (manager, director, etc.)

Ideally you have both. But yes it’s pretty pointless to try to improve the way engineers work without leaderships buy-in

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#59

Post by torginus »

> When I went up to staff at GitHub, it helped that I had been the kernel of a small APAC-based engineering team

This is giving me major white savior vibes, as in management didn't want to talk to those foreginers who acted and spoke English funny, so he became the Western face of the team, and took all the credit. All of which is sadly a thing.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#60

Post by zerr »

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.

In Germany you get better mortgage deals from banks based on your title seniority.
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