10 ms·

"as a staff engineer" Such an unnecessary flex.

simonw 2y ago
It's entirely relevant here. The opinions of a staff engineer on this stuff should be interpreted very differently from the opinions of a developer with much less experience.
- phist_mcgee 2y ago
  Reminds me of TechLead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUU-D2Hil0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUU-D2Hil0
- devmor 2y ago
  It's not relevant here, because this is a post from someone who worked on copilot. It's a shady sales pitch, disguised as an engineer's honest opinion.
- theoryofx 2y ago
  Not really because "Staff software engineer" has become the new "Senior Software Engineer" due to title inflation. It's become an essentially meaningless distinction at many companies. Case in point, this person has around around 7 years of professional experience at just two companies, Zendesk and GitHub. I don't mean this as a personal dig in any way (truly) but this simply isn't what we used to mean by a "Staff" level software engineer. This person is early-mid career, which we used to just call "Software engineer" then "Senior Software Engineer" and now (often enough) "Staff Software Engineer"
  - brianstrimp 2y ago
    They are at a place in their career where it still feels relevant to mention that title.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    Exactly. I've been in the business for 20+ years and I think my title is still "Senior Software Engineer". Not because of lack of skill, but I don't care. I could ask for a fancier one and most likely get it, but why?
- whoknowsidont 2y ago
  Uhhh, I hate to break it to you but titles mean absolutely nothing in this industry.
twalla 2y ago
Not really, once you get past senior the “shape” of staff+ engineers varies greatly. At that level the scope is typically larger which can limit the usefulness of LLMs - I’d agree that the greatest value I’ve gotten is from being able to quickly get up to speed on something I’ve been asked to have an opinion on and sanity checking my work if I’m using an unfamiliar language or framework. It also helps if you realize staff+ is just a way to financially reward people who don’t want to be managers so you end up with these unholy engineer/architect/project manager/product manager hybrids that have to influence without authority.
nmat 2y ago
To be honest I was expecting the article to focus primarily on internal docs, meetings, long Slack posts, etc. Staff engineers spend a relatively small percentage of their time writing code. A lot of what it takes to be successful is knowing how to communicate with different audiences which AI should be really useful for.
mns 2y ago
What is a Staff engineer anyhow? Sometimes I fell like all these titles and roles pop up all of the sudden to replace already existing ones that were already too boring.
- simonw 2y ago
  A lot of companies use it for their IC track (Individual Contributir) track, to solve the problem of engineers being forced to move into management because otherwise their career progression stops. I like this definition (which comes with a whole book): https://staffeng.com/ https://staffeng.com/

It's entirely relevant here. The opinions of a staff engineer on this stuff should be interpreted very differently from the opinions of a developer with much less experience.

phist_mcgee 2y ago
Reminds me of TechLead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUU-D2Hil0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUU-D2Hil0
devmor 2y ago
It's not relevant here, because this is a post from someone who worked on copilot. It's a shady sales pitch, disguised as an engineer's honest opinion.
theoryofx 2y ago
Not really because "Staff software engineer" has become the new "Senior Software Engineer" due to title inflation. It's become an essentially meaningless distinction at many companies. Case in point, this person has around around 7 years of professional experience at just two companies, Zendesk and GitHub. I don't mean this as a personal dig in any way (truly) but this simply isn't what we used to mean by a "Staff" level software engineer. This person is early-mid career, which we used to just call "Software engineer" then "Senior Software Engineer" and now (often enough) "Staff Software Engineer"
- brianstrimp 2y ago
  They are at a place in their career where it still feels relevant to mention that title.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  Exactly. I've been in the business for 20+ years and I think my title is still "Senior Software Engineer". Not because of lack of skill, but I don't care. I could ask for a fancier one and most likely get it, but why?
whoknowsidont 2y ago
Uhhh, I hate to break it to you but titles mean absolutely nothing in this industry.

twalla 2y ago

Not really, once you get past senior the “shape” of staff+ engineers varies greatly. At that level the scope is typically larger which can limit the usefulness of LLMs - I’d agree that the greatest value I’ve gotten is from being able to quickly get up to speed on something I’ve been asked to have an opinion on and sanity checking my work if I’m using an unfamiliar language or framework. It also helps if you realize staff+ is just a way to financially reward people who don’t want to be managers so you end up with these unholy engineer/architect/project manager/product manager hybrids that have to influence without authority.

nmat 2y ago

To be honest I was expecting the article to focus primarily on internal docs, meetings, long Slack posts, etc. Staff engineers spend a relatively small percentage of their time writing code. A lot of what it takes to be successful is knowing how to communicate with different audiences which AI should be really useful for.

mns 2y ago

What is a Staff engineer anyhow? Sometimes I fell like all these titles and roles pop up all of the sudden to replace already existing ones that were already too boring.

simonw 2y ago
A lot of companies use it for their IC track (Individual Contributir) track, to solve the problem of engineers being forced to move into management because otherwise their career progression stops. I like this definition (which comes with a whole book): https://staffeng.com/ https://staffeng.com/