I have always found this to be a useful distinction, but software is blurring the lines in many cases For example, when I worked in Wall Street as a dev/SW arc

I have always found this to be a useful distinction, but software is blurring the lines in many cases For example, when I worked in Wall Street as a dev/SW architect, you could call that staff. But in fact software was so vital to how Wall Street operates that we were treated as effectively line resources. We were a core to the business. Where as, writing internal billing software as in the example clearly comes in as a staff position. Working IT in industries where IT is not highly valued was…not fun in my experience.