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Staff Engineer vs. Engineering Manager

22 points by kiyanwang 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Staff Engineer is a bullshit title created because engineers do not want to be managers and there is no other way to promote them. If companies had a flat structure like Valve, such BS would not be around.
- nine_zeros 2y ago
  This is right. Staff is also another title where EMs abscond from any engineering duty. They offload all engineering to staff engineer while themselves playing empire-building and performance review games. As a result, the management ladder in tech companies become completely detached from what the company is producing and how to bring benefit to customers.
- chgs 2y ago
  We had Junior x (Vanilla) x Senior x Principal x We now have added Senior principal x
  - BobbyTables2 2y ago
    Kinda like how every reporter/correspondent is “senior”…
- ad_hockey 2y ago
  In my experience the distinction between Senior Engineer and Staff Engineer is meaningful, because they do very different jobs. A Senior's work is scoped to one team, reporting to an EM, and they do the usual stuff - work on tickets, run stand-ups, deliver features. The Staff engineers have no home team (they are expected to work across multiple teams), they report to the CTO, and they have a lot more freedom in what they spend time on. In fact the dynamic is reversed; rather than being given work, they're accountable for identifying the most important work and doing it. It also comes with a whole lot of new meetings. I'd argue that Senior Engineer is more of a bullshit title, if titles are supposed to be an indicator of what your job involves. At Senior my job didn't change at all. It's just a title to recognise people who have been around for a while.
greatgib 2y ago
In my experience, when there is a position of Engineering Manager, this person is almost never directly involved with the tech. Usually companies wants them to be pure manager and have dedicated staff/principal/architect for the tech decisions, reviews, growing the team. The EM is supposed to do the administrative part: yearly evals, hiring, firing, reporting, planning, and organize the development (like forcing scrum; having good practices for PR; using issue tracker in a specific way,...)
- tech_tuna 2y ago
  LOL - "forcing scrum"
tatako 2y ago
My main question after reading some books on Staff Engineering, and Tech Lead roles is about how to be a Staff Engineering when you don´t work with an internal Engineering team in your company. This situation can be really common in non-tech companies that alwayes worked with partnership and hire development agencies for each specific tech project. How can someone seen as a the customer by the agency´s development team can have a chance to impact in their work. How can the Staff Engineer-Tech Lead be valuable for the agencies and influence them in how to proceed with the technical decisions? From my experience, I think the Staff Engineer will not shine, as he/she will struggle in being the technical lead of a Engineer team that are working in a different company.

22 points by kiyanwang 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Staff Engineer is a bullshit title created because engineers do not want to be managers and there is no other way to promote them. If companies had a flat structure like Valve, such BS would not be around.

nine_zeros 2y ago
This is right. Staff is also another title where EMs abscond from any engineering duty. They offload all engineering to staff engineer while themselves playing empire-building and performance review games. As a result, the management ladder in tech companies become completely detached from what the company is producing and how to bring benefit to customers.
chgs 2y ago
We had Junior x (Vanilla) x Senior x Principal x We now have added Senior principal x
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  Kinda like how every reporter/correspondent is “senior”…
ad_hockey 2y ago
In my experience the distinction between Senior Engineer and Staff Engineer is meaningful, because they do very different jobs. A Senior's work is scoped to one team, reporting to an EM, and they do the usual stuff - work on tickets, run stand-ups, deliver features. The Staff engineers have no home team (they are expected to work across multiple teams), they report to the CTO, and they have a lot more freedom in what they spend time on. In fact the dynamic is reversed; rather than being given work, they're accountable for identifying the most important work and doing it. It also comes with a whole lot of new meetings. I'd argue that Senior Engineer is more of a bullshit title, if titles are supposed to be an indicator of what your job involves. At Senior my job didn't change at all. It's just a title to recognise people who have been around for a while.

greatgib 2y ago

In my experience, when there is a position of Engineering Manager, this person is almost never directly involved with the tech. Usually companies wants them to be pure manager and have dedicated staff/principal/architect for the tech decisions, reviews, growing the team. The EM is supposed to do the administrative part: yearly evals, hiring, firing, reporting, planning, and organize the development (like forcing scrum; having good practices for PR; using issue tracker in a specific way,...)

tech_tuna 2y ago
LOL - "forcing scrum"

tatako 2y ago

My main question after reading some books on Staff Engineering, and Tech Lead roles is about how to be a Staff Engineering when you don´t work with an internal Engineering team in your company. This situation can be really common in non-tech companies that alwayes worked with partnership and hire development agencies for each specific tech project. How can someone seen as a the customer by the agency´s development team can have a chance to impact in their work. How can the Staff Engineer-Tech Lead be valuable for the agencies and influence them in how to proceed with the technical decisions? From my experience, I think the Staff Engineer will not shine, as he/she will struggle in being the technical lead of a Engineer team that are working in a different company.