Will and this article use "staff" in a completely different sense. The author of the post even acknowledges this difference in his HN comment at the top of this

Will and this article use "staff" in a completely different sense. The author of the post even acknowledges this difference in his HN comment at the top of this post. Will uses "Staff Software Engineer" as the rank of Staff (I.e. one above Senior). This article uses "staff engineer" not as the rank, but as the type of engineer (Line vs staff).