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I can't recall "staff engineer" being something people even talked about before ~2 years ago. It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously,

I can't recall "staff engineer" being something people even talked about before ~2 years ago. It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere.

chrisseaton 4y ago
> It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere. Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. The name comes from the military, where it's even older.
- cannam 4y ago
  > Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. I was curious about this, because I also think of the staff engineer as a newish thing, and I don't believe I've ever actually met one. I searched my old email for the term and found that the first reference I have was in January 1996, in a HotWired HotFlash newsletter: "Java - so-named because it evokes liveliness and speed - is the brainchild of Arthur van Hoff, a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems. He's the HotJava engineering lead, has designed most of the Java applet API, is the implementor of the current Java compiler, and is the author of the book "Hooked on Java." Get the scoop behind the hype, when Arthur van Hoff joins us in Club Wired on Friday, 12 January, at 12 p.m. PST (20:00 GMT)." After that there's really nothing until the term starts appearing in LinkedIn notifications around 2010. I guess that just means it wasn't used in the circles I moved in, so only became visible to me when I joined LinkedIn.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    What were influential engineers called in the companies you were in before?
    - alex-mohr 4y ago
      Member of Technical Staff, or MTS
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        So that’s exactly the same thing just a slightly different wording?
  - roflulz 4y ago
    AMD and Intel and old semiconductor companies have always had titles like - "Engineer 1" "Engineer 2" "Senior Engineer" and then -> "Member of Technical Staff" above that. (Search MTS, SMTS, PMTS etc. on LinkedIn to see a million of them)
- marssaxman 4y ago
  The term may well be as old as the tech industry, but I have somehow spent all 30-odd years of my career in said industry without hearing it discussed, until somewhat recently. I wonder what has changed. I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all - I trace my computing roots back to the home computer era of the '80s. Perhaps there have been parallel streams which are now mixing. On the other hand I have never cared about titles, so perhaps it's been there all along and I just didn't notice.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > without hearing it discussed, until somewhat recently Maybe you’re now reaching that level yourself so now interacting with those people? Like saying ‘how come nobody’s ever discussed prostrate exams until I got to my 40s’. > I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all Microprocessors come from defence, as does Silicon Valley.
  - 0x445442 4y ago
    Yeah, I've been a software engineer since 1996, the first ten years in the defense industry and I never heard the title before a few years ago.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      The defense industry is a mammoth thing. Not everyone is going to see all of it, but "staff engineers" have been a thing in the military for like 150 years now. The staff descriptor just means they're specialists in some technical field like civil engineering or medicine that provide guidance and solve problems. The modern tech definition hasn't drifted very far. We should rename all the accountants "staff" though.
  - jghn 4y ago
    Yeah. A few years ago the zeitgeist was "principal engineers" and then it turned into "staff engineers" and then "staff+". As the GP said these titles have existed for a long time. But for whatever reason there's also been a progression in terms of them being super common in social media discussions. The cynic in me says that it is driven by a certain subset of Internet Famous Devs progressing through their career.
rusk 4y ago
The term seems to be quite new, but the concept itself is quite well worn
- simonw 4y ago
  Right. The problem this is solving is age-old: how do you maintain a career track for your best performing engineers without forcing them into people management?
ip26 4y ago
The cynical view is that this role used to be called “senior engineer”. However due to title inflation, it needed rebranding, and “staff” is the new name.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Also see “devops engineer”
- icedchai 4y ago
  I'd agree. Also, "architects" have also been rebranded as "staff" or "principal" engineers at some companies. (The cynical view is this because nobody architects a system with "agile", they just do what works for now and fix it in the next sprint.)
  - hobofan 4y ago
    I think that's also because the past divide of "architects" and implementers (often in outsourcing settings where the architecting is done on-shore), is recognized to not work well. From my experience job descriptions/title that lean into "architect" tend to attract people that can theorize about how software ought to be built all day, but haven't written a single line of code in ages.

I can't recall "staff engineer" being something people even talked about before ~2 years ago. It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere.

chrisseaton 4y ago

> It's strange to see this idea come up and become taken seriously, seemingly out of nowhere. Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. The name comes from the military, where it's even older.

cannam 4y ago
> Nonsense it's as old as the tech industry, and the defence industry it grew out of. I was curious about this, because I also think of the staff engineer as a newish thing, and I don't believe I've ever actually met one. I searched my old email for the term and found that the first reference I have was in January 1996, in a HotWired HotFlash newsletter: "Java - so-named because it evokes liveliness and speed - is the brainchild of Arthur van Hoff, a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems. He's the HotJava engineering lead, has designed most of the Java applet API, is the implementor of the current Java compiler, and is the author of the book "Hooked on Java." Get the scoop behind the hype, when Arthur van Hoff joins us in Club Wired on Friday, 12 January, at 12 p.m. PST (20:00 GMT)." After that there's really nothing until the term starts appearing in LinkedIn notifications around 2010. I guess that just means it wasn't used in the circles I moved in, so only became visible to me when I joined LinkedIn.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  What were influential engineers called in the companies you were in before?
  - alex-mohr 4y ago
    Member of Technical Staff, or MTS
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      So that’s exactly the same thing just a slightly different wording?
- roflulz 4y ago
  AMD and Intel and old semiconductor companies have always had titles like - "Engineer 1" "Engineer 2" "Senior Engineer" and then -> "Member of Technical Staff" above that. (Search MTS, SMTS, PMTS etc. on LinkedIn to see a million of them)
marssaxman 4y ago
The term may well be as old as the tech industry, but I have somehow spent all 30-odd years of my career in said industry without hearing it discussed, until somewhat recently. I wonder what has changed. I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all - I trace my computing roots back to the home computer era of the '80s. Perhaps there have been parallel streams which are now mixing. On the other hand I have never cared about titles, so perhaps it's been there all along and I just didn't notice.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > without hearing it discussed, until somewhat recently Maybe you’re now reaching that level yourself so now interacting with those people? Like saying ‘how come nobody’s ever discussed prostrate exams until I got to my 40s’. > I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all Microprocessors come from defence, as does Silicon Valley.
- 0x445442 4y ago
  Yeah, I've been a software engineer since 1996, the first ten years in the defense industry and I never heard the title before a few years ago.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    The defense industry is a mammoth thing. Not everyone is going to see all of it, but "staff engineers" have been a thing in the military for like 150 years now. The staff descriptor just means they're specialists in some technical field like civil engineering or medicine that provide guidance and solve problems. The modern tech definition hasn't drifted very far. We should rename all the accountants "staff" though.
- jghn 4y ago
  Yeah. A few years ago the zeitgeist was "principal engineers" and then it turned into "staff engineers" and then "staff+". As the GP said these titles have existed for a long time. But for whatever reason there's also been a progression in terms of them being super common in social media discussions. The cynic in me says that it is driven by a certain subset of Internet Famous Devs progressing through their career.

rusk 4y ago

The term seems to be quite new, but the concept itself is quite well worn

simonw 4y ago
Right. The problem this is solving is age-old: how do you maintain a career track for your best performing engineers without forcing them into people management?

ip26 4y ago

The cynical view is that this role used to be called “senior engineer”. However due to title inflation, it needed rebranding, and “staff” is the new name.

scarface74 4y ago
Also see “devops engineer”
icedchai 4y ago
I'd agree. Also, "architects" have also been rebranded as "staff" or "principal" engineers at some companies. (The cynical view is this because nobody architects a system with "agile", they just do what works for now and fix it in the next sprint.)
- hobofan 4y ago
  I think that's also because the past divide of "architects" and implementers (often in outsourcing settings where the architecting is done on-shore), is recognized to not work well. From my experience job descriptions/title that lean into "architect" tend to attract people that can theorize about how software ought to be built all day, but haven't written a single line of code in ages.