71–80 of 91 posts
What is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?
Within the same company? Money, that's about it. Between companies there is no standardization of levels, titles, and responsibilities. Fun fact: at IBM a "Staff" is actually junior to a "Senior". So it's all over the place anyway. The latest trend in new companies is to not assign named titles at all, just numbered levels.
I also was staff and senior staff when I held a salary position. To me these are basically bullshit titles created because companies have to keep on promoting people.
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.
As if the absence of the word “staff” in the org chart means there’s no one doing staff-level work.
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> 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.
You've missed the point. OP is discussing affordance , not skill . A senior engineer at a smaller company may have equal or less skill than a staff engineer at a larger company, but they have more affordance if there are less cogs in the bureaucratic machine that need oiling whenever they need to get something done. Experience in a variety of workplaces will give you the same intuition.
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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 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.)
In the same way that being a CEO means having a broad network of connections even before day 0 of the job.
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Not how I identify myself, but sure. What’s your point?
My point is that if you want every single thing you do at work to be the bare minimum to get promoted then you are welcome to do that. Others don't necessarily feel that way.
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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.
> i don’t see why the size of the company one works for has to be correlated with an engineer’s skill level People have such weird delusions about this. Imagine saying the same thing about the NBA vs your local pick-up games. Literally untenable.
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.
But in that case, the title is typically paired with authority. The authority is probably what people care about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i don’t see why the size of the company one works for has to be correlated with an engineer’s skill level People have such weird delusions about this. Imagine saying the same thing about the NBA vs your local pick-up games. Literally untenable.
Sports and programming just aren't comparable. Some finnish student wrote the linux kernel my man, while living with his parents.
Also I love how you think the Linux kernel is valuable because Linus started it and not because millions of hours have been invested in it by other engineers (most of whom are employed by big corps).