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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

#81

Post by icedchai »

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.

So true. During the dot-com boom, I was a "senior" engineer 2 years out of school.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#82

Post by akoncius »

applesauce004 wrote: post #64

All the comments here so far ( 4 hours since this post went up) are very disappointing. They have so far: 1. Insulted the company the person has worked for (Irrelevant to the post) 2. Insulted the titles as meaningless (Irrelevant to the post) 3. Talked about Job scope (Irrelevant to the post) 4. Demeaned the promotion (Sour grapes and just nasty) Now, i get that promotions in corporate environments are always a nast…

I agree.

So much bitterness and toxicity here, it is even surprising to me.

Sure, in current climate people are upset about economics and whole situation in general, but still it was unpleasant to read comment section here...

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#83

Post by jokethrowaway »

almostgotcaught wrote: post #66
i_am_a_peasant wrote: post #46

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. 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.

I'm sure there are exceptions (and it's way more likely that the very top are in FANGs, maybe the distinguished engineers making millions per year?) but I was never particularly impressed with the level of skills of average FANGs people.

The difference in compensation between NBA and local games is millions to nothing - between FANGs and other company there is a much smaller factor and there are way more perks in some small companies than in FANGs: less politics, no PIPs, remote, low tax / low cost of living locations, no 6m to prepare for an interview, riskier equities (if that's your thing), CTO path, etc.

All my FANGs friends ended up in smaller companies after having marked their CV as ex-Apple or ex-Google.

If I were younger and I was earning less and happy to sacrifice quality of life to live in some big city, I would spend the 6m prep-time and leetcode, just to have the FANG name on my CV and charge more to other businesses later on.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#84

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#85

Post by almostgotcaught »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #83
almostgotcaught wrote: post #66

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.

I'm sure there are exceptions (and it's way more likely that the very top are in FANGs, maybe the distinguished engineers making millions per year?) but I was never particularly impressed with the level of skills of average FANGs people. The difference in compensation between NBA and local games is millions to nothing - between FANGs and other company there is a much smaller factor and there are way more perks in som…

> but I was never particularly impressed with the level of skills of average FANGs people.

People always say this and yet somehow the markets never align

The rest is a strange digression.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#87

Post by [deleted] »

soulofmischief wrote: post #40
iLoveOncall wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#88

Post by wakawaka28 »

oblio wrote: post #65
torginus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but: - That still doesn't address the core issue which isn't inherently racial. It's that if you come from a certain part of the world, there's an effective glass ceiling for you and all of your achievements and hard work has to go through a Western person, whose only attribute is being more palatable to Western tastes. Not hard work, not technical expertise, not spending sleepless nights getting the blocker bug…

It's fine, India and China are rising and soon we'll start seeing the opposite. It's already happening.

If you go to China or India and work there you can see it now. I doubt the whole phenomenon in question is real in the US, but I do believe that you would see this kind of crap in Asia.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#89

Post by wakawaka28 »

torginus wrote: post #59

> 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.

>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.

Heaven forbid that a good communicator get promoted to deal with people, or that people be proficient in the language of the land. The promotion couldn't have been because of seniority, clear communication, or high competence. No, there's no possible explanation besides racism and xenophobia.

>All of which is sadly a thing.

There are at least as many places that refuse to promote white people because of the possibility that it might be seen this way. There's nothing inherently wrong with having a white manager. Managers often appear to get more credit than their subordinates, for better or worse. The combination of a US native worker (who can stay here forever by the way) plus management does not add up to racism.

Re: How I got promoted to staff engineer twice

#90

Post by threatofrain »

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.

What is the value of credibility under this way of thinking? If someone has a history of delivering but you think their idea is bad, do you give them a chance? Or vice versa, if someone has great vision and a history of failing, do you give them a chance?

Is there no weight to credibility? Similarly, if Terry Tao refuses to even read your ideas unless you have the right professional look, is that cruelly dismissive and arrogant?

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