The Google rankings are misleading because many managers stay on the engineering ladder. (For example, Amit Singhal, who runs all of Search, invented the Google ranking algorithm, and is an ACM Fellow, was a "Distinguished Engineer" when I joined.) Staff through Principal are really management ranks - it's very hard to get to Staff without managing people or being a tech lead on a large project. Distinguished/Fellow is weird - it's split between people who have several hundred people reporting up to them, and engineers who have nobody reporting to them but are allowed to do whatever they want.
I heard one of my PMs say that "Senior SWE" at Google is roughly equivalent to "Director" at Oracle (which also suffers from massive title inflation). He was, I think, the youngest Director at Oracle before he came to Google (he got that title when he was 27).
I was under the impression that to be staff+ you had to be a leader (technical direction) but not a manager (performance reviews, people stuff). How accurate is that?
That's true, but usually being a technical leader of a large project implies managing the people on it, if only because it's good for people to have managers that actually know what their day-to-day accomplishments are. I do know of exceptions. There are a few people who get to staff and even beyond without managing people, but I've heard it's very hard and usually involves TLing a project of the scope of Google Instant (and then you frequently get made a manager afterwards, unless you really strenuously object).
TLing is a completely different skillset from engineering anyway - it's much more interrupt-driven, people-focused, and basically involves being a mentor, teacher, and shit umbrella. When I've TLed projects, I usually find myself spending about 30% of my time coding and 70% communicating with other departments, debugging obscure bugs, managing up, and making sure all the critical parts are covered. Coworkers that are staff+ and TL larger projects usually find it's 0% coding and 100% dealing with politics & coordination.
Yeah, I never got the 'VP' title, it seems counter-intuitive.
It looks, as in the government, the VP is merely there if something happens to the President, instead of being an important position with a well defined set of tasks.
In traditional companies, VP is higher than Director.
In banks, it's different. VP is a middling level and not necessarily managerial, while Managing Director is usually the highest.
I think the idea is that VP is equivalent to VP in a regular company, while MD is comparable to a C-level title, but because banks can't have as many C*O's as they have Managing Directors, they use a different title. Whether the rest of the world agrees with the banks on this title-equivalence is open for debate.
Is "partner" an example of title inflation? Law firms do have a lot of "partners" (anywhere from 20% to 50% of lawyers at a large firm), but I think it's more a matter of law firms just having naturally flat structures. Each partner operates pretty autonomously in terms of bringing in business, managing associates, running cases, etc. Levels of organization above "partners" are more facilitative and strategic (where to open new offices, etc) than operational.
Not really but some firms have tried. There are equity and non equity partners at some firms, for example. If you eant more detail than you will ever use use google Adam Smith, Esq.
Eh you don't get made partner after just sticking around for a few years, partners are participants in the firm's capital who usually need to buy themselves in. Partners in law firms can not be compared to roles in other companies where employees are just that, employees.
I always figure that if I found another startup, I'll print up 2 sets of business cards. One will have the title "Founder & CEO" for people who are impressed by that stuff. The other will have the title "Disruptive Influence" for everyone who's cool.
My business cards, even back to my first industry job in Palo Alto, have always had nothing listed for a position. On the "smaller title is import important" measure, I win!
