Staff vs Senior SWE - am I missing something?

[u/drulers_007]

~11 YOE, prior FAANG + Team Lead experience, have I misunderstood when I should be targeting Staff?

I’m trying to recalibrate my career trajectory and would value perspectives from people who’ve gone through the Senior → Staff transition.

I have ~11 YOE, including ~2 years at Amazon, followed by ~7 years at a smaller FinTech in NYC where I progressed to Team Lead level. I led engineers, owned system/design decisions and delivery, and did significant cross-team work.

For the past ~2 years, I focused heavily on Staff SWE interviews. My thinking was:

Senior SWE at FAANG ≈ Staff SWE at a lower-tier company

Given my Amazon experience, YOE, leadership, and architecture background, I felt Staff was a reasonable target. Truthfully, Compensation was also a major motivation.

I eventually got comfortable with technical/system design interviews, but Staff behavioral rounds exposed a gap: I had plenty of architecture, leadership, delivery, and cross-functional experience, but less experience with truly organization-level, multi-year impact.

I eventually landed a Staff role, but was laid off after ~8 months during a significant company wide reduction. 5 of 9 members including me and manager were let go. As the newest engineer and only Staff on a relatively new team (~1 year old), I also don’t feel I had enough time to establish myself at that level. After ~2 years of interviewing, I’m also pretty burned out.

Now I’m questioning my original premise.

Maybe I should have targeted Senior at stronger companies, built more Staff-level scope, and then made the jump. But with ~11 YOE, prior FAANG experience, and my background, would targeting Senior now mean unnecessarily selling myself short?

Was targeting Staff reasonable given my background, or have I overestimated how close I am to being Staff-ready?

Help me understand:

• How much does company tier change the Staff bar?
• Senior at a stronger company vs. Staff at a FAANG adjacent?
• At ~11 YOE, how do I view title vs. actual scope/trajectory?
• If compensation is a major motivation, is continuing to target Staff rational?
• In my position, would you keep pushing Staff or reset to Senior?

My recent company does stack ranking, which I know for sure but I also was only Staff in my team. Am I taking this too personally, given that 5 out of 9 members of my team were let go? Note: This wasn’t the same layoff ratio across the company.

I’m also trying to separate career calibration from FOMO. I don’t want to chase a title because I feel I “should” have reached it, but I also don’t want to unnecessarily step backward.

Would especially appreciate candid perspectives from Staff+ engineers and hiring managers.

[u/OGMagicConch]

2 years at Amazon at the beginning of your career isn't really going to contribute at all to making you staff now.

[u/Lost_Extrovert → u/OGMagicConch]

This, I have had this conversation with many candidates before, I know big tech looks good on your resume but after 5 years it doesn't really matter, we really only count the last 5 years of experience.

For OP it doesn't help him at all, he shouldn't even bring it up lol but given his background I think staff at another smaller company is not a bad choice. He didn't include how long he was a TL but if he got the position once he can get it again.

For big tech its a bit more complicated, unfortunately for some, titles from smaller companies especially senior titles are not taken as seriously as titles from big tech. Seems unfair but anyone in big tech have interviewed candidates who clearly wasn't on the level they were interviewing for even though they had many years of experience from a smaller company. This is why they are usually down leveled.

[u/wokaflame]

Titles can change from company to company. But in most “big enough” to the big tech, Staff Levels are the lowest level for “engineers in business”.

Seniors get stuff done. Cross team, cross discipline, multi year projects even.

Overly simplified of course but If a Director comes to you and says I want the bugs gone, what do you say?

Or they say that I can see this (extremely ridiculously large scope) prototype live next quarter.

Staff people don’t just manage “multi year scopes”. Staff people figure out what needs to be done given a vague problem.

The smaller the company, the more pressure there is tbh. The larger the company, you can have a ton of principals or whatever is higher than staff for things to filter through and become directives.

Senior is a terminal career in most places. The jump between senior and staff is big and the skillset is a lot different than just “more senior”.

[u/PreparationThis7040]

Ex-FAANG, been a staff eng twice and got to principal at another company. 

Contrarian opinion - the gap between senior and staff is not as big as you think. Most of the time it’s just a combination of being at the right place at the right time and being better than your average engineer at politics. That’s it. There’s not really some mysterious secret sauce. 

[u/Ettun]

You are putting WAY too much emphasis on titles and YOE. There's no single rubric for what senior vs. staff work even is between companies, you need to take it role by role and focus on what your professional goals are - not "I want to be a staff engineer" but "I want to have this kind of impact across these kinds of teams doing this kind of work for this kind of company." Everything else is subordinate to that.

[u/outpiay]

New grad at Amazon isn’t impressive and has nothing to do with your leveling as that was the start of your career. Jumping from staff at a smaller company to senior at a FAANG company is normal and expected. If you worked at Robinhood, Coinbase, Block, or Stripe that would be more transferable to FAANG.

[u/drulers_007 → u/outpiay]

Are you saying Staff at Robinhood, Coinbase, Block, or Stripe == Senior at FAANG?

[u/outpiay → u/drulers_007]

I’m saying staff at these big fintech companies would be more transferable to the same title since they pay the same as FAANG and typically have the same scope. They also compete for the same talent.

[u/drulers_007 → u/outpiay]

But what about duties ? Are they same as well?

[u/yitianjian → u/drulers_007]

No, the levels are roughly similar.

[u/drulers_007 → u/yitianjian]

But what about duties ? Are they same as well?

[u/polytique → u/drulers_007]

You could have a bigger scope or impact at some FAANG but it’s extremely team dependent. Generally a staff engineer is expected to lead teams of 5-15 seniors. That means setting some vision for the next 3-6 months, aligning any partner teams and execute. They are held accountable if the team doesn’t show results.

[u/lambdawaves → u/drulers_007]

Btw the companies use different labels for the levels.

LinkedIn and Block “senior” are both L4 at Google. And their “staff” is L5 at Google

[u/Clyde_Frag]

For companies that take the staff calibration seriously (and don’t just hand out the title as a recruiting tool like startups do), outside hires for staff are heavily scrutinized. They will want to see you demonstrate work at this level at a similarly sized company and maybe possess some domain expertise in the role you’re being hired for.

[u/drulers_007 → u/Clyde_Frag]

I am trying to understand if mine was bad luck or performance gap?
50% team members gone, recently re orged, new CEO after I joined.

[u/Clyde_Frag → u/drulers_007]

Nearly impossible for me to say but at the end of the day you weren’t there very long so it’d be difficult to leverage your time there to sell a staff+ story at a big tech firm.

[u/overlook211]

If you can’t write this without AI, not a staff

[u/LogicRaven_]

1. If your goal is money, then getting into a higher tier company is likely better return of time investment.

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/trimodal

1. Staff is a different job compared to senior eng. Your assumption on being able to convert senior to staff by changing company size is incorrect.

About my career: staff at middle sized company, CTO in startup, L6 EM at FAANG, EM at startup. Let me expand the points above a bit more.

Junior eng - eng - senior eng - staff eng is not a linear path, neither in time nor scope or in the volume of roles available.

Junior to senior eng is different levels in the same role. Promotions are often done by skill level. Every engineer is expected to grow into senior level. After senior, skill growth continue without title change.

Staff is a different role. Skill level is mandatory, but not enough. Business need limits the number of roles - the company needs ca 1 staff engineer for each 4-8 teams. Take a look at staffeng.com, if you want, for archetypes and paths.

For money, you could level up your interview skills and try to get into a better paying company.

For increasing your scope to staff, you would need to build up skills and relationships in a company, and either be chosen when an opening appears or convince senior leadership to make a role for you.

[u/Typical_Researcher_8]

Titles are BS tbh when the market is good you could be promoted from senior to staff in less than a year currently major companies are down leveling employees because they can and contributors with 15 years of experience are joining as senior to ride out the poor market

[u/01010101010111000111]

There is definitely something very obvious that you are missing. You have to drop ex-faang mention in every other sentence. Especially if you weren't staff/principal when you left over 5 years ago.

You calling yourself that in any interview will instantly disqualify you from a staff position. (Aka fail behavioral interview)

[u/Itsmedudeman]

If you don't actually have the technical standing at an equivalent company, and you can't sell yourself to the point where the interviewer is convinced then the truth is already there in front of you. You just aren't going to fool an actual competent interviewer with buzzwords and handwavy achievements. Companies are less willing to take risks like that because they aren't desperate to hire.

[u/PirateNixon]

I would aim for Senior. I lead a couple teams in FAANG, and I won't hire external Staff candidates except for in truly exceptional circumstances. I just had my Senior Staff TL leave and take three Staff ICs with him. I am bringing in one Staff from another part of the company that had worked closely with us for years. All other work will shift to the remaining two Staff ICs, one of the EngMgrs or Senior ICs that are pushing for Staff.

Hiring external Staff indicates a lack of confidence in your team to me.

[u/angellus]

Landing a staff role is basically more of a mindset shift. A senior role is more about you being able to take a feature and complete it and you part of the team. A staff role is you are the team. Or you lead the team. 

Staff is a role that is an IC role that masquerades as a manager role.  So instead of focusing on skills and accomplishment as a developer, you need to focus on company impact. You are either suppose to be a one man project machine (get and project and pump out all by yourself) and/or you are force multiplier that makes your whole team more efficient. You take an objective and make it successful.