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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 struc
by 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 agoThis 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 agoWe had Junior x (Vanilla) x Senior x Principal x We now have added Senior principal x
- BobbyTables2 2y agoKinda like how every reporter/correspondent is “senior”…
- ad_hockey 2y agoIn 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.