026 | Staff Engineer, Now What?

Senior Engineer vs Staff Engineer

For a long time, I have been chasing after the prestigious title of senior engineer. I was mentally exhausted when I achieved it a few years back. Leading up to this latest title update, my anxieties piled up— what’s next? (vol.15 小宇宙FM)

Senior Engineer, 2022

In 2020, I flopped my interview for the senior engineer role at my dream company. Through a series of debates, I also gave up on the senior engineer role at Uber for which I aced the interview. I proved that I was worthy of a senior title, even just for a few hours at San Francisco Uber HQ. But on the flip side, I picked the lower rank in favor of my dream company.

Since then, it has been a long process of proving self-worth in the new company while balancing insecurity and impatience. I was not comfortable with a junior title so I accelerated where possible. It still took 1.5 years to change. Imagine many moments during COVID, I would question myself a bit — what if I went with Uber? The process of proving myself would be the same but I don’t have to spend extra energy justifying that I am so different from the rest of the junior cohort. It was no one to blame but that was a tedious process.

When I eventually achieved the senior engineer title in 2022, unexpectedly, a great sense of defeat and disappointment bubbled up my chest.

I should have been happy. Why did I feel such a great deal of disappointment?

Immediately I started judging: have I become the stereotyped personality that only knows about grinding but lost the sense of gratitude? Have I lost my way of chasing this prestigious senior title while not recognizing that these titles were just meaningless?

A few things have contributed to that moment of disappointment.

1. It was nothing to be proud of. My peers have achieved that title maybe 2–3 years ahead of me. I spent all this extra time to hit the senior title. Me getting this title 2–3 years late was nothing to brag about.

2. When would this chase ever end? After this small hill, all of a sudden my goal switched to the next mountain, a staff engineer title. I have exhausted so much for these past few halves. I had to start grinding right away again.

3. I was tired. Is the senior title the end of my marathon? The next title seemed so far from reach. Should I take this terminal level and chill?

I did not solve this mental burden for another year or so. But I also kept hitting the ‘next big project’ within my reach — work has been busy so I was soon distracted from my existential crisis.

Staff Engineer, 2024

Same chase but a different mental model. I no longer worry about proving myself but focus on landing the next big project; I no longer worry about not hitting the next level because I knew it was often opportunistic.

It’s still very exhausting after 2+ years of chase, but this time around, I felt pretty good about the Staff engineer title. Of course, I have nothing to complain about. I thanked my manager for the guidance, and my peers for the support, and shared to my family the good news.

Early in 2023, I established my position as a TL on this team. Even though I have been operating like that for a while, this official TL role solidified my mentality and made me realize that I had lined up with the best shot at my next goal. Nothing was disadvantaging for me. I just needed to jump over the hurdles to get the prize, which I had done consistently for 3 years.

This was a great career setup for me.

The largest mental shift was that the engineering ladder was not the only goal (Oh it was too devastating). Rather, I found an actual sense of achievement in bringing my group of people new opportunities. Of course, then they do have to deliver these identified opportunities. These were moments ‘Aha, my vision was right and you did a great job succeeding in that!’ I loved it.

With this mentality shift, strangely, odd-sized opportunities did show up one after another! I also had a strong team to chase these goals together. We delivered multiple long shots and even grew the engineering team further.

I became even more focused on impact rather than on the hard title goals. I was deep chasing after these big bets. I would be lying if I didn’t feel slightly defeated when my Jan 2024 rating didn’t push me over the Staff engineer bar. But the feeling was in and out of my mind because I had many more meaty projects to plan. I simply don’t have extra time to worry about when I will get my title.

The staff title came after 2+ years. It felt great this time.

What’s Next

The imposter syndrome kicked in a bit. Of course, I quickly acknowledged that even though my responsibility may have changed, I was no different than myself a month ago.

I have the same self-esteem and the same mix of introverted personalities. I don’t have any elevated ego and I’m not suddenly 20% more experienced. None of my co-workers will respect me more than what I deserve (from past collaborations). My company hides internal ranking information anyway. Unless my peers know my anonymous blog, nothing changes in my dynamics.

Naturally, I’ll go after the next title. If my senior experience is a trembling phase, then my staff experience should be a path aiming at a long-term trajectory.

No matter what type of dumpster fire stress comes up, hope that I can keep my cool and don’t have to take myself too seriously. If I can bring along a few folks to get what they want, that would be a dream.