Work profile for Staff Software Eng in Google and Twitter
Hi Guys, I wonder what is the work profile for Staff Software engineer in both companies. What does it take to be it. TC: 140k
If people looks out for you when they have a problem because you can solve it, you are on a good track
I'm not Staff at those companies so I clearly not sure about what I'm about to say. But IMO after a certain level the "you are the guy who solves the problems" tend to be a little bit over estimated. In my perspective past the Senior level you have to start thinking a little bit abroad/wider and collaborate with multiple teams in maybe multiple orgs in order to delivery things that usually will have high impact 🤔 You are usually not more concerned about local problems and more focus on macro problems, if everyone comes to you as people mentioned, you are gonna be busy solving low impact problems and that's not the goal IMO. Basically you need to have a high technical level and be a little bit generalist to be able to navigate through different waters (conversations) and collaborate and make people collaborate for a bigger goal. That's IMO is more what the traditional staff would do, sure we might have that super genius who everyone goes in order to solve their "local" problem, but most likely it's the one which has been in the company for years and eventually was promoted to this positions without the required skills, which "un"fortunately is lot of coordination/communication skills.
Depends a lot on the team and project. If you're working on something overly technical (think server or database infra), you will be expected to make and lead deep technical improvements. If it's more product oriented, expect to be involved in many strategic alignment meetings, working with stakeholders, and be working on process and glue work.
What is the level after Staff software engineer?
Depending on the company either Senior Staff or Principal typically.
Be an influencer within your org and capable of communicating and convincing your team members and other orgs about your strategic vision. It’s just not about your depth of knowledge at that point (you still need the depth though to lead seniors and other swe). It becomes more about your breath.
Also what SalesForce said.
What are staff interviews like?
Fucking good at problem solving and designing proper systems.
Not really. You have to be hard working and should be able to deliver results.
Doing mostly good shit, sometimes bad shit if it seemed to make sense at the time