4 ms·

I had not heard the "Staff" designation before Google popularized it. I believe in early 2000s, the popular job prefixes were "Senior" and "Principal". The "Sta

I had not heard the "Staff" designation before Google popularized it. I believe in early 2000s, the popular job prefixes were "Senior" and "Principal". The "Staff" prefix always confused me and gave me a feeling that if layoff ever came "Staff" will be protected while everyone else was expendable. I don't think Google adopted this prefix in the sense it was popular in militery.

j7ake 4y ago
The term staff scientist existed before google (eg at National labs) and it probably was derived from that.
chrisseaton 4y ago
Google got it from industry research labs, the industry research labs got it from the national labs, who got it from the military.
photochemsyn 4y ago
It's been common in academics forever. A 'staff researcher' is someone who is typically affiliated with an 'organized research unit' which is basically a facility that a lot of 'principal investigators' utilize, and which are likely funded by overhead on the PIs individual grants, or via bulk grants. Benefits are not having to sit around writing grant proposals all day, but they're basically never first or last authors on papers, so it's not a route to becoming a department chair or famous academic etc. Can be more interesting as you get to work with multiple research projects, although if the PIs in the department are the petty tyrant types with inflated egos (more common than not) it can be ridiculously political (who gets time on the big machine etc.). Typically called 'supertechs' by PIs, i.e. 'not real scientists'. Training grad students in techniques is often part of the job, too.
- nunez 4y ago
  the incentive structure is reversed in academia. staff are closer to adjuncts than full-time faculty positions in compensation and benefits
MikePlacid 4y ago
In our company the prefix Staff was adopted when the CTO team got tired of creating (mostly fake) managerial positions for good software developers who have reached the maximum salary allowed by the CFO team for a “Senior” software engineer.
- sytelus 4y ago
  Most NYC finance firms did this. You will find lot of AVPs (Assistant Vice President) who are mere software developers getting paid more than $125k base (during early 2000s). It was fun to suddenly have “Vice President” in your title.
morelisp 4y ago
More confusingly, at my first (tech industry) jobs the progression was Jr -> no modifier -> Staff -> Senior -> Principal, "Staff" being the first level you could start coasting at, "Senior" being the end for most people who kept developing their skills, and "Principal" for extremely autonomous / R&D roles / "Leads" with no actual teams. In this case, "layoff protection" was exactly what the staff level was for; you were also expected to hit it in 3-5 years. Now it seems to be Jr / n/a / Senior / sort of equal footing for Staff/Principal depending on whether you're a generalist or specialist? And Staff might also be Lead but also not? I've read Larson's stuff and I'm still not sure the moniker is useful in a way "Senior" wasn't, except to the degree other titles have inflated. (I've seen three resumes in the past week for "senior" applicants with 2y experience or less restricted to a single stack.)
- justinhj 4y ago
  In my experience I think of Senior as an autonomous builder of a thing that they are told to build. Staff is the same but may work across multiple teams and help define the thing that needs building. They will usually have considerably broad experience. They get thrown at random problems nobody is sure how to fix. Principals extend that concept but may be industry leaders in a field or at least deeply specialised.

j7ake 4y ago

The term staff scientist existed before google (eg at National labs) and it probably was derived from that.

chrisseaton 4y ago

Google got it from industry research labs, the industry research labs got it from the national labs, who got it from the military.

photochemsyn 4y ago

It's been common in academics forever. A 'staff researcher' is someone who is typically affiliated with an 'organized research unit' which is basically a facility that a lot of 'principal investigators' utilize, and which are likely funded by overhead on the PIs individual grants, or via bulk grants. Benefits are not having to sit around writing grant proposals all day, but they're basically never first or last authors on papers, so it's not a route to becoming a department chair or famous academic etc. Can be more interesting as you get to work with multiple research projects, although if the PIs in the department are the petty tyrant types with inflated egos (more common than not) it can be ridiculously political (who gets time on the big machine etc.). Typically called 'supertechs' by PIs, i.e. 'not real scientists'. Training grad students in techniques is often part of the job, too.

nunez 4y ago
the incentive structure is reversed in academia. staff are closer to adjuncts than full-time faculty positions in compensation and benefits

MikePlacid 4y ago

In our company the prefix Staff was adopted when the CTO team got tired of creating (mostly fake) managerial positions for good software developers who have reached the maximum salary allowed by the CFO team for a “Senior” software engineer.

sytelus 4y ago
Most NYC finance firms did this. You will find lot of AVPs (Assistant Vice President) who are mere software developers getting paid more than $125k base (during early 2000s). It was fun to suddenly have “Vice President” in your title.

morelisp 4y ago

More confusingly, at my first (tech industry) jobs the progression was Jr -> no modifier -> Staff -> Senior -> Principal, "Staff" being the first level you could start coasting at, "Senior" being the end for most people who kept developing their skills, and "Principal" for extremely autonomous / R&D roles / "Leads" with no actual teams. In this case, "layoff protection" was exactly what the staff level was for; you were also expected to hit it in 3-5 years. Now it seems to be Jr / n/a / Senior / sort of equal footing for Staff/Principal depending on whether you're a generalist or specialist? And Staff might also be Lead but also not? I've read Larson's stuff and I'm still not sure the moniker is useful in a way "Senior" wasn't, except to the degree other titles have inflated. (I've seen three resumes in the past week for "senior" applicants with 2y experience or less restricted to a single stack.)

justinhj 4y ago
In my experience I think of Senior as an autonomous builder of a thing that they are told to build. Staff is the same but may work across multiple teams and help define the thing that needs building. They will usually have considerably broad experience. They get thrown at random problems nobody is sure how to fix. Principals extend that concept but may be industry leaders in a field or at least deeply specialised.