9 ms·
How I got promoted to staff engineer twice
- silisili 2y agoMy own experience has taught me that titles are kinda dumb, and at times very very insular, which seems to be the case here. I went from eng, to sr eng, to principal eng, back to eng, making more money each time along the way across different orgs. Our industry has little to no real standards. Congrats on your promotion, but your title ultimately means little across companies.
- scott_w 2y agoMy experience of speaking to people who make the decisions is that titles are absolutely a social signal that gets people to listen. Now, if what you say is too whacky, or you demonstrate a total lack of ability once given a chance, then you’ll lose that listening privilege. However, a more senior title can get people’s ears opened in the first place.
- likeabatterycar 2y agoTitles are a great initial assessment as to how much of a politician or charlatan someone may be in the org.
- wakeupcall 2y agoIn one of my work experiences, "titles" were used as opposed to (or with a meager) paycheck raises. The most ridiculous aspect was that we had a fair number of group leaders, each with a team of 1 (just themselves). For some it was effective. This isn't reflecting the OP case though.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hypfer 2y agoOne could argue that if you work in a place where people only start listening to you if you have the right title, that place might not have the best culture to begin with. Instead of trying to climb those ranks, it might perhaps make more sense to look for a place where your input is valued based on its own merit and not based on what label is attached to your active directory entry.
- oblio 2y agoThose places are rare and far between and generally have cutthroat competition for getting in.
- scott_w 2y agoLots of places don’t have the best culture, you work with what you’ve got in life. You might be applying for a job and, since they have limited other information, your existing job title is used as signal to figure out if what you’re saying has merit. Particularly if what you’re saying doesn’t mesh with their own experience or expectations.
- izacus 2y ago> One could argue that if you work in a place where people only start listening to you if you have the right title, that place might not have the best culture to begin with. There isn't a single place where status (and by extension titles showing that status) wouldn't change how people communicate and how open they are to your ideas. If you think you're in a place that doesn't do that, you're either deliberately closing your eyes to it, are the privileged high status person (and closing your eyes to it) or you don't understand how human relations work. Even in places where "your own merit" counts, there's a big status gradient between which ideas get listened to. If you don't have titles encoding that status gradient, you just have informal authority structure which does the same.
- aguaviva 2y agoIt's a question of balance and proportionality. Of course it's unrealistic to expect that the status gradient simply shouldn't matter. It's perfectly natural (and useful, healthy) to weigh what people say according to their status, to some degree. It's just human relations, as you say. Where things become problematic is when their putative status becomes the primary or overriding factor. That is, "X is true (simply) because Y said so" environments. Or "You're just an L{N}, but I'm a L{N+k} so even though I don't actually know what I'm talking about, I don't have to listen to you" environments. Those are the ones you want to avoid.
- rootsudo 2y agoSadly very accurate. That’s how you can find inflated titles but people with no ability to do work.
- nitwit005 2y agoI'd agree, but only if the title puts you at the top of a ladder, or just below it. But in that case, the title is typically paired with authority. The authority is probably what people care about.
- epolanski 2y agoIt doesn't seem like the blog post reflects your experience. Nor mine to be honest. Staff engineers are mostly concerned with teams and projects moving forward, not writing code much. On the other hand it's company specific. The same way armies differ in their pyramid and roles and responsibilities so do engineering teams.
- i_am_a_peasant 2y agoexactly this. i’m senior staff at my current company and I could very much envision if i moved to california i would on average be considered a senior at most conpanies.
- zerr 2y agoIn Germany you get better mortgage deals from banks based on your title seniority.
- relaxing 2y agoThis. I’m tired of the articles that act like every company has the same titles and structure. As if the absence of the word “staff” in the org chart means there’s no one doing staff-level work.
- wiseowise 2y agoTl;dr you have to be grifter-grinder and disregard all the “important” bullshit of mentoring, interviewing, training as only shipping will give you a slight chance of promotion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42319997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42319997
- saagarjha 2y agoThat’s definitely not true, you can do both.
- wiseowise 2y agoOnly one of them will lead you to promo. If you want to do double amount of work for nothing - that’s your right.
- saagarjha 2y agoIf you want to self-identify as a grifter-grinder that’s also your right…?
- wiseowise 2y agoNot how I identify myself, but sure. What’s your point?
- saagarjha 2y agoMy point is that if you want every single thing you do at work to be the bare minimum to get promoted then you are welcome to do that. Others don't necessarily feel that way.
- SR2Z 2y agoAnd those people get promoted entirely of the luck of having a decent manager. Everyone else who has a mediocre manager will end up spinning their wheels and wondering why they're not getting promoted.
- davesmylie 2y agoWhat is the difference between a senior engineer and a staff engineer?
- petesergeant 2y agoSalary bands
- i_am_a_peasant 2y agothey can overlap a lot across titles
- pockmarked19 2y agoThe staff title unlocks a new level of self-aggrandizement which is on display here and in certain published books. As for professional qualities, I don’t think there is one. It takes a staff engineer at FAANG to do what a senior can do at a smaller company, because of all the other self—important people not listening to you. (Dealing with that is a skill though, so having that skill might be it.)
- iLoveOncall 2y ago> It takes a staff engineer at FAANG to do what a senior can do at a smaller company This is beyond laughable. FAANGs are pretty much the only place where staff is actually hard to make. I see countless "senior" engineers with 3 years of experience in smaller companies. The truth is it would take a good entry-level FAANG engineer to match a senior engineer in a smaller company.
- soulofmischief 2y agoYou've missed the point. OP is discussing affordance, not skill. A senior engineer at a smaller company may have equal or less skill than a staff engineer at a larger company, but they have more affordance if there are less cogs in the bureaucratic machine that need oiling whenever they need to get something done. Experience in a variety of workplaces will give you the same intuition.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoI also was staff and senior staff when I held a salary position. To me these are basically bullshit titles created because companies have to keep on promoting people.
- sys_64738 2y agoIt depends on the company. At Sun there were very few senior staff level seats and staff was very hard to get as they required management to really advocate for you. Other companies have a technical ceiling for senior principal but there are absolute gazillions of them.
- yieldcrv 2y ago> If you’re just looking to get the staff role, it’s almost always easier to get hired into it than promoted to it I think this a big contributor to gendered wage gaps So many people I’ve talked to are worried about how they come across to colleagues in their current organization and are worried about glass ceilings there While the competition is absolutely coming across as too cocky and too abrasive, but continues interviewing at different companies until it hits, not worried about any ceiling or “terminal titles” at the current organization If people are playing completely different games, the outcome cant really be compared
- threatofrain 2y agoI don't agree with the mentoring and leading part not being important except as a mediator to shipping. Mentoring and leading increases your soft power by giving people the opportunity to like you. This power can translate even to the next company since tech can be a small world.
- wiseowise 2y agoHighly situational. Influencing 10 junior-mid engineers is always worse than being in good graces of someone that actually has influence on your career (manager, director, etc.)
- coffeebeqn 2y agoIdeally you have both. But yes it’s pretty pointless to try to improve the way engineers work without leaderships buy-in
- threatofrain 2y agoI still have a hard time saying which way in your scenario since I tend to move companies. The wide network has totally helped my career. Also I feel like at a higher level, having a network is actually part of the job. In the same way that being a CEO means having a broad network of connections even before day 0 of the job.
- thehappyfellow 2y agoWant to second that, not getting people an opportunity to like you can turn you into that person at the top who’s disconnected from line engineers work - and people won’t trust you enough to tell you when you’re making a mistake. Guess how I learnt that :)
- hanifbbz 2y agoThe article describes insight on how to gain leverage. Regardless of promotion plans, it's good to have leverage in the current economy so your career doesn’t end prematurely when the company goes to cost-saving mode.
- bennythomsson 2y agoThis is so full of office politics that I'm glad I'm working at a place without it. One tell-tale sign is that the article talks as much about which important contributions "won't get you there" as about which will. Including acknowledging that it's all important! Let all those dumb folks do all that other important stuff, focus selfishly on the hype-of-the-day topics so you can bag that sweet promotion. Relying on that there are many other folks that do the boring and less sexy stuff that keeps the light on. And which is ultimately necessary to lift you into your sweet promotion. Just that you want the credit, not those other folks. I'd be deeply resentful of somebody doing this ego-trip, and therefore, again, I'm glad my place doesn't have this divisive nonsense.
- globalnode 2y agozendesk -- nothing to be proud of there.
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y agoWhy not? Engineering challenges are in every org. Why is Zendesk worse?
- OhMeadhbh 2y agoWhen I was in the Marines, I was promoted to Lance Corporal twice (and wasn't demoted between the two promotions.) The unit I was in just wasn't that great with Admin.
- eggsome 2y agolol - Sounds like a Terminal Lance comic strip.
- CapeTheory 2y ago> That means your manager has to be switched on and fully on board. Your manager also needs enough political capital to drive the promotion. This is something I have an acute awareness of, having been told for the last 3 years that I was operating at the principal level (no staff title here) but not getting promoted. Eventually my manager was forced out of the company by bullying from my skip-level, so now I'm left to look for a new role elsewhere or spend some unknown amount of time building the relationship with my new manager.
- larusso 2y agoMy title in the company is Principal, but my role encompasses a bit more. I recently helped and advocated for a promotion to Principal for one of my reports. The step from Senior to Principal is a very challenging one in our organization, as it’s not based on skill alone but also on other factors. In our organization, there is a strong focus on leveling and mentoring, and we set clear expectations that reaching the Principal level (which is the highest IC level for us) is a long journey. Just to be clear, I got promoted when the rules and definitions weren’t as clearly defined. That doesn’t mean I’m undeserving of the title, but it does highlight how, even within the same organization, the criteria for who can hold certain titles and receive promotions have evolved over time. Because of this, I feel the experience described here can seem somewhat arbitrary given the way most companies have no shared setup / structure for promotions and skill levels. Congratulations on the promotion non the less.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- VectorLock 2y ago"Staff" is the new "Senior."
- Toutouxc 2y agoEverything the article describes just feels so arbitrary, almost cargo cultish. You get a pay raise if you're visible and you make the company money? That does make sense, why the job title dances? Why couldn't the author just write an article about how to be a good, impactful developer? Why did it have to be "how to go from $meaningless_job_title to $meaningless_job_title2"? > Staff promotions only happen at a company that has staff roles Does this mean that the companies who don't have staff roles are fundamentally incapable of delivering software of the same quality as the ones who do? Doesn't this actually show how arbitrary job titles are?
- coffeebeqn 2y ago> > Staff promotions only happen at a company that has staff roles It’s also not true? I was the first “Staff” engineer at my previous company. I think it was just a retention tactic since I was somewhat important to a few major projects at the time. Now I’m a Sr Engineer with less responsibility again and I love it
- j-rom 2y agoI agree that consistently shipping "impactful" work is vital for getting to staff. And "impactful" changes from company to company.
- torginus 2y ago> When I went up to staff at GitHub, it helped that I had been the kernel of a small APAC-based engineering team This is giving me major white savior vibes, as in management didn't want to talk to those foreginers who acted and spoke English funny, so he became the Western face of the team, and took all the credit. All of which is sadly a thing.
- Mc91 2y agoCorollary: This role can also be filled by someone of Asian heritage who was raised in the US, and who speaks English very well, as well as some Asian language proficiently.
- torginus 2y agoYes, but: - That still doesn't address the core issue which isn't inherently racial. It's that if you come from a certain part of the world, there's an effective glass ceiling for you and all of your achievements and hard work has to go through a Western person, whose only attribute is being more palatable to Western tastes. Not hard work, not technical expertise, not spending sleepless nights getting the blocker bugs fixed so that the product can ship on time. What do you think that does to morale? And is it morally right to run a company this way? - A person named Sean Goedecke probably isn't that person anyways.
- oblio 2y agoIt's fine, India and China are rising and soon we'll start seeing the opposite. It's already happening.
- wakawaka28 2y agoIf you go to China or India and work there you can see it now. I doubt the whole phenomenon in question is real in the US, but I do believe that you would see this kind of crap in Asia.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
- applesauce004 2y agoAll the comments here so far ( 4 hours since this post went up) are very disappointing. They have so far: 1. Insulted the company the person has worked for (Irrelevant to the post) 2. Insulted the titles as meaningless (Irrelevant to the post) 3. Talked about Job scope (Irrelevant to the post) 4. Demeaned the promotion (Sour grapes and just nasty) Now, i get that promotions in corporate environments are always a nasty business - unfair, political, skewed and arbitrary. It doesnt always go to the most deserving. What this post has done (at least in my experience in the corporate world) is shown how the sausage is made. It is not pretty and a lot of the post dwells on "buy-in", "sponsorship", "relationships", etc because this is how the game is played. I have personally seen it played by both technically competent and technically incompetent people for senior technical roles. I wish the comments would focus on the contents of the article rather than sounding like a bunch of people tired of corporate shenanigans. I mean, we all are tired of corporate bullshit when it comes to promotion. At a certain point, i decided to stop playing it and decided i am going to effectively "plateau" at that level. But, that gave me leverage i didnt have before which is that i no longer that to do anything i didnt want to do - skip-level ass-kissing, show-boating, etc, etc. To all aspirants who wish to climb the corporate ladder and reap the benefits (financial, better job prospects, ability to work internationally at higher levels of seniority, better mating chances, better access to higher quality of life services, etc while trading off your time, stress and likely your physical and mental health), this post has solid advice.
- akoncius 2y agoI agree. So much bitterness and toxicity here, it is even surprising to me. Sure, in current climate people are upset about economics and whole situation in general, but still it was unpleasant to read comment section here...
- jebarker 2y agoFiguring out what your company cares about can be surprisingly challenging