[quote=deadzone]By the way, “Staff Engineers” generally manage people, projects, or both.[/quote]
Not true. At least not at Intuit and Qualcomm. At Qualcomm the role is split that’s why you have staff engineer/manager title. At Intuit, staff engineers are not managers, that’s what project managers are for. They might be project lead, but it still requires hands on. I agree that if one only stay at software engineer level, it might limit comps. But then it depends on the company. Some companies dont distinguish between senior and staff and just calls everyone senior. In that case, comps are usually based on historical comp you have. And companies might ask you to take a pay cut, but that depends on how badly one needs the job or how badly wants to work at the employer. There’s really nothing special about being project lead. It just means one knows what he/she is doing, which frankly, one should be able to do it provided one has been working around 10years, earlier if he/she is good. And if one isnt operating in a capacity to lead technical projects at some point in their career, that’s part of the problem of why one’s opportunities might be limited.
The title doesn’t matter, its what you can contribute with minimal instructions. You might lead a project at point X, you might play a supporting role for a project lead at point Y. Your pay does not yoyo up and down whether you are currently leading a project or not. I am not project lead all the time, but it doesn’t mean I don’t take the project in a certain direction. And I am paid the same whether I have the title at an instance of time or not. I might leave if I am not project lead and I don’t get along with the lead or if the project is headed down a direction I don’t agree with and I can’t influence it a certain way. It depends on how bad I think that path is. But rarely do I just sit there as a code monkey and just code in a way people tell me to code. In fact, people dobt tell me how to code, they tell me here’s the problem, go solve it, we’ll review your solution to make sure its not totally fcvked up.
