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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that a culture is being described here where Senior Engineers are considered lower level, with multiple higher levels above that. It just goes to show that titles mean different things at different companies, and you cannot generalize across this industry. I've had the "Staff Software Engineer" title once in my career. It was at IBM, in the 90s, where it was a was a title given to anyone who was not junior. I had it in my first ever coding role, while I was still learning to code. How the title changed from meaning "Generic Staff Member" in the 90s to "Above Senior" today, I have no idea.

In any case, the job described does mesh well with what I see most "Senior Engineers" doing. So the article in general is a good idea of where long-term growth as an engineer will take you.

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I always thought it was intended to differentiate “line” engineers (charged with the core work product) from “staff” engineers (focused on advising and supporting the org more broadly): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_and_line

I think we should have Line Engineers and Guards Engineers.

I think it became widespread because Google named their levels that way. Not sure of the origin of the title at Google though.

My feeling is that it traces from the institution of staff officers in the military:

> General staff: in the military, a group of officers that assists the commander of a division or larger unit by formulating and disseminating his policies, transmitting his orders, and overseeing their execution. Normally a general staff is organized along functional lines, with separate sections for administration, intelligence, operations, training, logistics, and other categories.[1]

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/general-staff

Google probably got the terminology from Bell Labs. A "Member of Technical Staff" was for PHDs or very accomplished engineers. See https://www.quora.com/When-did-Bell-Labs-add-the-Distinguish...

There’s a lot of asymmetry in leveling titles / nomenclature. A friend and I ended up building http://levels.fyi to help map these titles across different companies, they certainly don’t mean the same thing everywhere

"Staff" is one of several military terms that have made its way into business job titles.

When used properly, it should refer to someone who supports front line roles.

The ratio of Staff to Line in IT is generally 7:1.

The OP cites spending ~50% of her time on creating scrum tasks; very much a staff function.

> I only spend around half my time on tasks directly for my scrum team

That does not mean half her time is spent making tickets. This could be code writing, code reviews, testing, meetings, agendas, designing or ideating new systems or improvements, and, also, making tickets.

At my last company entry level was 'Senior'. Only interns were in a level below.

> How the title changed from meaning "Generic Staff Member" in the 90s to "Above Senior" today, I have no idea.

Indeed. I'm also curious about the change in identification over time.

I haven't been able to track down an original source for this, but while at Google in mid 2000s I was told it was a joke/hat-tip to Bell labs.

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