Managing Staff-Plus Engineers (2020)

They probably don't mean "incremental progress towards a better job elsewhere", and yet that's the real fast track (though somewhat less so at the >=Staff level).

Sorry, but what is a senior principle engineer? My understanding is that as far as engineers go principle is the top level - a true technical authority for an organization.

Well we all learn faster with effective feedback loops. Improve depends on what the end goals are defined as and by whom.

That verbiage means that principle engineer is staff engineer by another name.

It's above senior but before principal. It's not rocket science!

(Maybe if you work for SpaceX ....)

It's different depending on the company.

https://www.levels.fyi/ has a breakdown for some of the largest companies but I typically think of it as:

Eng -> Senior -> Staff -> Principal -> Distinguished

with my simple explanation being:

Eng - Able to contribute to the team

Senior - Expert on the team

Staff - Expert in your organization

Principal - Expert in your domain

Distinguished - ?? - Seems to be that you damn near created your domain. I only see these at the largest companies and a lot of times it's folks that have created popular programming languages or frameworks that the company themselves use.

Staff engineer means “you are now or have at some point in the past been an indispensable senior engineer at a fashionable tech company (this company inclusive)”.

Principal engineer means “you’ve made a lot of money, so you don't need to work for money any more, but we’d like to have you around so that our staff engineers have someone to look up to”.

This is obviously an incomplete/slightly tongue in cheek definition. The people playing these roles, of course, have a lot of “real” work to do. But there are a lot of senior people who are highly productive without these titles (like yourself, it seems).

Therefore, there’s a bit of an insecurity people carrying these titles are prone to, since it distinguishes them (and usually their salaries, to a highly significant degree) from their colleagues with equivalent years of experience and technical talent. Hence the websites you describe, where people try to make sense of the divergent path they find themselves in.

The titles themselves have been copied from Google, I believe. You can view them at https://levels.fyi

Staff Engineer is the level above Senior Engineer - a pretty common title at FAANG-like companies.

Here is a good chart: https://staffeng.com/levels.png

Usually there's a pecking order loosely based on the historical Bell Labs hierarchy.

"Staff" is usually a notch below a principal. Usually a principal is expected to demonstrate technical leadership and comp. In some companies I've observed there may be a narrower funnel to principal and another notch where you get more stock or compensation.

It depends who you ask.

The commonly held belief is that it is the advancement of the tech track ladder. So that you can have more responsibility but without becoming a [people] manager. So in this pretend world, staff plus engineers can dictate technical and architectural direction, and perhaps corral resources, of the company without being a manager. You are expected to make decisions that can affect everyone "under" you. For example, you might dictate (either by coercion or persuasion, depends on the company as much as your own style) migration to React or some other crap, from whatever current crap you are using. Or decide code style, and write or cause to be written, enforcement tools for such.

But more cynically, and as I believe, it's a way to pay long time employees, that hold critical tribal knowledge, more money. The title has become pretty disconnected from authority/responsibility, even at Google.

If you search for [principal engineer], you'll find some different thoughts on staff plus leveling.

It's quite common terminology, so I'm pretty surprised after 20 years you'd have no idea. You must be in a pretty insulated bubble.

When I started at Google I asked what Staff Engineer means in an orientation meeting and people just laughed at me for not knowing. It's weird how people just assume you know some things that are specific to a few Silicon Valley companies.

Realistically, Staff Engineer is a higher level engineering title given out to Individual Contributors (non-managers) to give them career paths outside of management. This is designed to solve the issue where very senior engineers run out of growth room and are effectively forced into management against their will and with occasional disastrous results. There are often a few titles around “Staff” too, such as principal or architect.

Think of them like an architect who codes a bit more.

The exact job title sequence varies a bit, but a useful division I have seen is: first you're told what to do. Then, as a senior engineer, you're told what problem to solve and what you do is up to you. Then, as a principal/staff/etc. you're expected to decide which problems to solve.

Sure, there are different calibers of senior engineers, some are better than others. Some are better leaders, some are better writers, some are better instructors, etc.

But, principal, staff, lead, and senior are all pretty much the same tech skill level. Promotions to higher levels are mostly based on subjective attributes, like leadership qualities, personable qualities, innovation qualities, etc.

It’s mostly HR process to keep more rungs in individual contributor career track. Way to retain high performance engineers in the career ladder, and show that there are more opportunities for advancement.