
What a Senior Staff Software Engineer Does - vinnyglennon
https://medium.com/box-tech-blog/what-a-senior-staff-software-engineer-actually-does-f3fc140d5f33
======
scarface74
Working for mostly smaller companies, titles haven’t really meant anything. My
influence came mostly from using the other two levers in the organization -
building relationships and building a reputation.

I have a lot more influence over the technical/infrastructure direction of the
company I work for now as “just” a senior developer than I ever had at my last
company where I was officially the Dev lead with dotted line reports.

There to get anything done I had to go through layers of red tape. Where I am
now, I’ll use my own discretion on whether I should let the manager know or do
everything in the Dev AWS Account (or create another account), do a proof of
concept and let them know. Most of the time I either get the okay or a few
tweaks or suggested.

And before I get the replies from the infrastructure gatekeepers. Yes, I’m
qualified to make infrastructure decisions and I’ve been browbeaten enough
across three jobs to know about compliance issues (HIPAA in our case) inside
and out.

~~~
blub
The compliance seems to rely on you not making mistakes or taking malicious
actions, which doesn't really qualify as compliance IMO.

~~~
scarface74
Compliance involves encryption at rest and in transit and with cloud providers
making sure you only use HIPAA compliant services, getting BSA’s with external
contractors, minimizing who is allowed access to data, etc.

It’s more complicated than this but this is a good overview.

[https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-compliance-
checklist/](https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-compliance-checklist/)

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codingdave
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.

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

~~~
mceachen
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...](https://www.quora.com/When-did-Bell-Labs-add-the-
Distinguished-Member-of-Technical-Staff-title)

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nightski
I'm sure this just suits some people's fancy but the idea of being in a
"track" is so off putting and mind numbing to me. Ooh here is where I'll be
exactly in 5, 10, 15 years. So exciting /s. So glad I went self employed
almost a decade ago.

~~~
0xDEFC0DE
It's more exciting if I'm making $300k google salaries at the end of the
track.

A track with 6-7 difficult rungs and +10% pay increase? nah, I'm good.

~~~
pmorais
I mean, once you hit a certain salary more money doesn’t even appreciably
increase your quality of life. And I think most good software engineers are
already close to that asymptote

~~~
kottbullar
In the US maybe, but definitely not in most of Europe. Software engineers are
not as valued here as they are in some parts of the US (SF bay area, Seattle,
etc.). As a result, salaries here are pretty miserable.

I'm a very senior developer in my 30s who lives in Sweden. I have a "good
salary" (make the same or more than every other dev that I know in my age
bracket), which translates to a take-home pay of around 45k USD.

Sure, health care is free, education is free (no college fund for my kids) and
employer-paid-for pension plans are quite decent, but housing is not cheap
(450k USD for a simple 4 bed room family home, luckily I don't live in
Stockholm where that costs an additional 200-300k USD) and we also pay 25% VAT
on almost everything.

30 days paid vacation (not PTO) per year is pretty sweet and so is the lack of
overtime (40 hours is 40 hours) and the parental leave (at home with your kids
for a year as a father? no problem!). But man, these salaries that I see
quoted here on HN regularly (200-300k) do sting a bit...

~~~
streblo
The grass is always greener. Earning those salaries usually means you're in
the bay area, where the median home price is 1.5m USD and you most definitely
won't get that 4th bedroom.

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delish
I read the article once and thought, "So at Box a senior staff SWE is
differentiated from a senior SWE by mentoring others, and in so doing, has a
greater impact. And senior staff is still in the technical track, not the
management track. What does the author (or, What do HN commentators) think are
the differences between mentoring and managing? Other than the obvious of
course."

I read it again--I liked the article--and saw that the article talks about too
many kinds of staff-level contributions, including kinds of mentorship, for my
question to be relevant.

I'm still interested enough to pose: I had thought elevation of the technical
track to "equal" the management track was a response to technical employees
"needing" to go-into-management-and-deal-with-people in order to advance their
careers. So now it would seem to me that the technical track is absorbing some
of the functions of the management track. That's assuming that mentoring is
related to managing.

~~~
itronitron
All of these level requirements are tacked on by the HR department because
they are required for advancement in non-technical roles. Unfortunately they
really foul up personal dynamics as some people believe they need to 'mentor'
their colleagues in order to fulfill the responsibilities of their job
title... how fucking condescending is that?

~~~
mplanchard
This seems like a really uncharitable view of mentorship.

I have never felt condescended to when I was being mentored by someone with
more skills or experience in any of my jobs, and I certainly hope that the
people I help through one on ones, code review, and pairing now don’t feel as
though there’s any condescension in it. I think mostly, we all just want to
become as good as we can be at our jobs.

~~~
itronitron
If everyone wants to become as good as they can at their jobs then why call
out mentoring as a special activity? People should already be helping their
colleagues perform better at their jobs without incentivizing it as a checkbox
for career advancement.

~~~
joshuamorton
This sounds like an argument against rubrics or ladder requirements in
general, not a particular problem with mentorship as a requirement.

If you want employees to mentor others, call it out as a thing to encourage.
If you don't do that, people will be less inclined to do it, instead focusing
on raw technical impact or whatever.

Why call out writing good code as a requirement for advancement if everyone
should do it anyway? Well, not everyone values the same things. Making values
explicit isn't bad.

------
generated
Are the tracks actually parallel?

Had she gone into management after 5 years, how would the compensation,
promotion opportunities, or job opportunities have differed?

I see many people go into management because they think it's the only way to
continue to grow a career.

~~~
SerialOwl
They're parallel in theory and get paid the same, but if you look at the ratio
of high-level managers to high level ICs, climbing the management ladder is
clearly easier.

~~~
mac01021
I'm not sure it would be easier for me.

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cybersol
The follow-up blog she linked at the bottom is even better at describing the
mindset of a technical leader, which will take you far in any organization no
matter what your current title is.

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AdrianB1
The main supplier in the area I am working is a huge US company with many
different divisions, including a software engineering one. I am working with
more a couple of dozens people that have "Senior", "Staff", "Principal" and
"Engineer" words in the title, in combinations of 2 or 3 of these words, but
it totally makes no sense to me if I am looking at the expertise,
effectiveness of their work and the influence/decision power they have: they
are all skilled workers with fancy but meaningless titles.

------
draw_down
Call me unambitious but I think I’d rather just write some code every day.

~~~
dbcurtis
Yes, well, at some point you get tired of seeing people make the same mistakes
over and over. Those people might be senior engineers tasked with
architectural design for the first time. Those people might be management with
their heads up their....um, with misguided ideas.

So the Senior Staff position may involve less day-to-day coding/design, but a
lot more heading off disaster, which I would argue adds huge value to the
company, and personally I find satisfying. In fact, there is nothing _less_
satisfying than failing to head off a disaster that you could see coming from
miles away.

I remember a very senior IC at one company I worked at, named Gary. Gary
basically wandered from meeting-to-meeting, only attending a few minutes
because his calendar was routinely triple-booked. He would listen to a few
minutes of argumentation, ask the one question that would slice the problem
open like a sharp machete to a coconut, and then move on to the next meeting.
Didn't design much any more, but his contributions had huge leverage.

Don't write off that some day you may want to be a Gary. It may come naturally
at some point, when you frequently start thinking: "I've seen this movie
before and it has a baaaad ending."

~~~
novok
The hard part of being gary is being ignored even when you know it's a bad
idea.

