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Is there anything resembling consistency on level titles across the industry? That certainly hasn't been my experience; in my bit of AWS "staff" refers to L5 em

Is there anything resembling consistency on level titles across the industry? That certainly hasn't been my experience; in my bit of AWS "staff" refers to L5 employees, ie good graduate level or lightly experienced. Below that is associate (L4), and above is senior (L6) and then principal (L7). I gather Google (and possibly others) insert a staff level between senior and principal - but for the life of me I don't understand why they would choose that label.

mdm12 5y ago
The short answer, in my experience, is 'no'. For a company-to-company level comparison, levels.fyi is usually what I use to try to infer title usage. But, even within a company, responsibilities for high-tier IC levels can vary dramatically between teams.
lhorie 5y ago
From what I've seen, there's indeed very little consistency in titles, if any. As you mentioned, a few places consider senior to be higher than staff, some have a distinction between senior (SWE), staff and senior staff, and some don't have staff level at all. Even among those companies that do have staff level following Google's hierarchy model (this seems the closest to a norm if there's even such a thing), the actual cross-company "value" of that title might only equate a L5. Then you get random weird outliers like Uber's L5B level, which, for all intents and purposes is a "staff" level (in terms of responsibilities and comp) except the title itself.
Insanity 5y ago
in my bit of Non-AWS Amazon, L5 is definitely a career position so “lightly experienced” is not necessarily the case. I worked with L5s with 10+ YOE who actually were a critical to the success of a project. It depends how you want to grow, and where you want to spend most of your time. (Scope of influence).
- ford 5y ago
  IMO years of experience is not the right way to determine who belongs at a level. I've seen an effective L5 with 2 "years of experience" (AKA 2 years out of school) and with 10 years of experience. People develop at different paces and focus on their career to varying degrees. This discrepancy can be possible for a variety of reasons: - Different amounts of focus on career development - More success/effectiveness in focusing on career development - Luck of being in the right or wrong place at the right time - Development of other skills that are unrelated to what makes someone a successful L5 I realize after I type this that this does not really address what you said - I don't mean to nitpick your use of the word "experience", and as you can tell I do agree with what you're saying that L5 can be career/terminal position.
sporkland 5y ago
levels.fyi has pretty accurate mappings between them.
- toephu2 5y ago
  Who determines those mappings though? The guy who created levels.fyi? and based on what? (P.S. I know the creator of levels.fyi is here on HN, thanks for creating levels.fyi and for everything you do!)
  - 72f988bf 5y ago
    It's pretty straightforward, especially for the first 4 major levels: - salary bands (+ stock awards & bonus. i.e "TC" bands) - average seniority - title change ( I (entry level) -> II -> Senior -> Principal -> ...) - internal ladder descriptions (someone who worked at at least 2 FAANG companies can trivially figure out what maps to what, the titles & on-paper responsibilities are pretty standardized across most FAANG)
  - zuhayeer 5y ago
    Hi, one of the founders of Levels.fyi here (appreciate the kind words)! The question we try to answer with our leveling comparisons is “What level would I transfer into if I were to switch companies?". To answer this, we collect company leveling rubrics from employees and crowdsourced transfer mappings, and use it to match levels based on similar scope and responsibility. There are also a lot of factors on an individual case by case basis that go into leveling including: interview performance, tenure in level, and scope of work, which is why it won't always perfectly map 1:1 for all cases and hence why some levels are wider and overlap into more levels at another company. And beyond that, leveling is a living and breathing thing within any organization and may be in flux at any given point in time. At the end of the day, the site is meant to serve as a rough guide for where you may be placed. Also note that the leveling boxes actually have no bearing on compensation. Hope this helps!
codemac 5y ago
levels.fyi tries to quantify it.
fishtoaster 5y ago
I suspect we're in the midst of a standardization around higher levels. I, too, had seen "staff" as being both above and below the more-common "senior", depending on the company. In the last couple years, though, I've been hearing it more and more exclusively as being between senior and principle (and being the first step that is unambiguously on the path towards principle instead of management). The term "staff+" is one I've heard from a few sources over the last year to refer to the purely-IC roles above senior/lead. I didn't know what to attribute this standardization to, aside from the industry as a whole evolving. The original post points to some possible causes: a book named "Staff Engineer," several conferences, and a few communities based around it.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  The "Staff Engineer" book (and there's a website too) was where I first saw / heard "Staff+". I think a big part of that project is an attempt to define and disseminate well understood terminology for this. Which I think is a good goal.
ragona 5y ago
AWS has very wide bands in L5 and L6. L5 is not Staff level, but L6 starts moving into it near the top of the band.
novok 5y ago
When people say staff, they typically mean google / FB staff. Or apple's ICT5. Levels.fyi is a good translator of what the equivalent term is at a company.
splonk 5y ago
At my last job Staff was higher on the ladder than Principal. That's not super common, especially among startups that model after FAANG ladders, but it seems like it's somewhat more common among older companies (that is, I've seen it enough that I don't think it's a wild outlier when it happens).
zuhayeer 5y ago
We've actually worked on some standard definitions for software engineering job levels based off of leveling rubrics we've collected from across the industry. We wrote a little bit about the scope / responsibility designations at each level here: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html
sanderjd 5y ago
I have essentially zilch preconceptions of what "staff" should mean in this context. Why would it make any more sense between "associate" and "senior" than between "senior" and "principal". What does the word even imply? I never saw it before google so I think of it as a very senior role, but the word itself remains an empty vessel for me.
- acoard 5y ago
  Staff means you work for the company. If you go to a movie theatre and want to find the bathroom, you'd ask the staff (i.e. employees). There's no particular context to staff that doesn't also come with "employees." It's neutral, unexceptional, and it's agnostic to one's place in the hierarchy (the theatre owner and the ticket attendant are both staff). So to me, it makes sense to place it below senior. Staff is a neutral modifier which does not imply a set level of experience (both trainee and veteran are staff). Senior is a modifier which does imply experience. Junior implies a lack of experience. So, staff would logically fit between junior and senior.
  - sanderjd 5y ago
    I don't see how your second paragraph follows from the first. Everyone works for the company, from the most entry level all the way up to the CEO and is thus "staff", and there is thus no indication in that sense of the word as to what its level is. So in a title it must mean something different than just "works for the company".
    - acoard 5y ago
      > Everyone works for the company, from the most entry level all the way up to the CEO and is thus "staff", and there is thus no indication in that sense of the word as to what its level is. Absolutely. It has no bearing on seniority, and because of that I'd assume a neutral level of seniority. >So in a title it must mean something different than just "works for the company". I mean, that's what this whole discussion is about. In the context of the English language, this is a rather new usage of the word, and I'm trying to illuminate how its use is changing. I totally accept and appreciate that language is constantly evolving — I'm not sticking up a fuss and calling this wrong — but I'm trying to answer the question of what the word implies. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this largely seems to be initiated by the "Staff Engineer" book[0], and I take at least part of his marketing is creatively "misusing" a word, or redefining a word, in order to distinguish his brand. [0] https://staffeng.com/book https://staffeng.com/book

mdm12 5y ago

The short answer, in my experience, is 'no'. For a company-to-company level comparison, levels.fyi is usually what I use to try to infer title usage. But, even within a company, responsibilities for high-tier IC levels can vary dramatically between teams.

lhorie 5y ago

From what I've seen, there's indeed very little consistency in titles, if any. As you mentioned, a few places consider senior to be higher than staff, some have a distinction between senior (SWE), staff and senior staff, and some don't have staff level at all. Even among those companies that do have staff level following Google's hierarchy model (this seems the closest to a norm if there's even such a thing), the actual cross-company "value" of that title might only equate a L5. Then you get random weird outliers like Uber's L5B level, which, for all intents and purposes is a "staff" level (in terms of responsibilities and comp) except the title itself.

Insanity 5y ago

in my bit of Non-AWS Amazon, L5 is definitely a career position so “lightly experienced” is not necessarily the case. I worked with L5s with 10+ YOE who actually were a critical to the success of a project. It depends how you want to grow, and where you want to spend most of your time. (Scope of influence).

ford 5y ago
IMO years of experience is not the right way to determine who belongs at a level. I've seen an effective L5 with 2 "years of experience" (AKA 2 years out of school) and with 10 years of experience. People develop at different paces and focus on their career to varying degrees. This discrepancy can be possible for a variety of reasons: - Different amounts of focus on career development - More success/effectiveness in focusing on career development - Luck of being in the right or wrong place at the right time - Development of other skills that are unrelated to what makes someone a successful L5 I realize after I type this that this does not really address what you said - I don't mean to nitpick your use of the word "experience", and as you can tell I do agree with what you're saying that L5 can be career/terminal position.

sporkland 5y ago

levels.fyi has pretty accurate mappings between them.

toephu2 5y ago
Who determines those mappings though? The guy who created levels.fyi? and based on what? (P.S. I know the creator of levels.fyi is here on HN, thanks for creating levels.fyi and for everything you do!)
- 72f988bf 5y ago
  It's pretty straightforward, especially for the first 4 major levels: - salary bands (+ stock awards & bonus. i.e "TC" bands) - average seniority - title change ( I (entry level) -> II -> Senior -> Principal -> ...) - internal ladder descriptions (someone who worked at at least 2 FAANG companies can trivially figure out what maps to what, the titles & on-paper responsibilities are pretty standardized across most FAANG)
- zuhayeer 5y ago
  Hi, one of the founders of Levels.fyi here (appreciate the kind words)! The question we try to answer with our leveling comparisons is “What level would I transfer into if I were to switch companies?". To answer this, we collect company leveling rubrics from employees and crowdsourced transfer mappings, and use it to match levels based on similar scope and responsibility. There are also a lot of factors on an individual case by case basis that go into leveling including: interview performance, tenure in level, and scope of work, which is why it won't always perfectly map 1:1 for all cases and hence why some levels are wider and overlap into more levels at another company. And beyond that, leveling is a living and breathing thing within any organization and may be in flux at any given point in time. At the end of the day, the site is meant to serve as a rough guide for where you may be placed. Also note that the leveling boxes actually have no bearing on compensation. Hope this helps!

codemac 5y ago

levels.fyi tries to quantify it.

fishtoaster 5y ago

I suspect we're in the midst of a standardization around higher levels. I, too, had seen "staff" as being both above and below the more-common "senior", depending on the company. In the last couple years, though, I've been hearing it more and more exclusively as being between senior and principle (and being the first step that is unambiguously on the path towards principle instead of management). The term "staff+" is one I've heard from a few sources over the last year to refer to the purely-IC roles above senior/lead. I didn't know what to attribute this standardization to, aside from the industry as a whole evolving. The original post points to some possible causes: a book named "Staff Engineer," several conferences, and a few communities based around it.

sanderjd 5y ago
The "Staff Engineer" book (and there's a website too) was where I first saw / heard "Staff+". I think a big part of that project is an attempt to define and disseminate well understood terminology for this. Which I think is a good goal.

ragona 5y ago

AWS has very wide bands in L5 and L6. L5 is not Staff level, but L6 starts moving into it near the top of the band.

novok 5y ago

When people say staff, they typically mean google / FB staff. Or apple's ICT5. Levels.fyi is a good translator of what the equivalent term is at a company.

splonk 5y ago

At my last job Staff was higher on the ladder than Principal. That's not super common, especially among startups that model after FAANG ladders, but it seems like it's somewhat more common among older companies (that is, I've seen it enough that I don't think it's a wild outlier when it happens).

zuhayeer 5y ago

We've actually worked on some standard definitions for software engineering job levels based off of leveling rubrics we've collected from across the industry. We wrote a little bit about the scope / responsibility designations at each level here: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html

sanderjd 5y ago

I have essentially zilch preconceptions of what "staff" should mean in this context. Why would it make any more sense between "associate" and "senior" than between "senior" and "principal". What does the word even imply? I never saw it before google so I think of it as a very senior role, but the word itself remains an empty vessel for me.

acoard 5y ago
Staff means you work for the company. If you go to a movie theatre and want to find the bathroom, you'd ask the staff (i.e. employees). There's no particular context to staff that doesn't also come with "employees." It's neutral, unexceptional, and it's agnostic to one's place in the hierarchy (the theatre owner and the ticket attendant are both staff). So to me, it makes sense to place it below senior. Staff is a neutral modifier which does not imply a set level of experience (both trainee and veteran are staff). Senior is a modifier which does imply experience. Junior implies a lack of experience. So, staff would logically fit between junior and senior.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  I don't see how your second paragraph follows from the first. Everyone works for the company, from the most entry level all the way up to the CEO and is thus "staff", and there is thus no indication in that sense of the word as to what its level is. So in a title it must mean something different than just "works for the company".
  - acoard 5y ago
    > Everyone works for the company, from the most entry level all the way up to the CEO and is thus "staff", and there is thus no indication in that sense of the word as to what its level is. Absolutely. It has no bearing on seniority, and because of that I'd assume a neutral level of seniority. >So in a title it must mean something different than just "works for the company". I mean, that's what this whole discussion is about. In the context of the English language, this is a rather new usage of the word, and I'm trying to illuminate how its use is changing. I totally accept and appreciate that language is constantly evolving — I'm not sticking up a fuss and calling this wrong — but I'm trying to answer the question of what the word implies. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this largely seems to be initiated by the "Staff Engineer" book[0], and I take at least part of his marketing is creatively "misusing" a word, or redefining a word, in order to distinguish his brand. [0] https://staffeng.com/book https://staffeng.com/book