I think it was Sun who pioneered fellowships as a way of defusing the tension between the desire for higher remuneration in talented engineers + the fact that they are often best suited to staying in an individual contributor role which doesn't enable them to receive it. Many engineers get promoted out of their zone of genius and have to spend time managing others and doing all sorts of other things unrelated to the talent which made them famous.

If Sun did it they copied it from Bell Labs, who had a technical staff ladder and "Fellows" before Silicon Valley even existed.

IBM Fellow program is probably the oldest, initiated in 1962 and with first appointments in 1963. Reading the list of IBM Fellows one quickly notices some well known names that some people might not even recognize as IBMers :)

> notices some well known names that some people might not even recognize as IBMers

Looking through the list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Fellow), some random names I recognize: Frances E. Allen, Gene Amdahl, John Backus, Kenneth E. Iverson, and Benoît Mandelbrot (!).

Pretty neat to see how one company was the hub for so many skilled people in the past (similar to Bell Labs and Xerox PARC). I wonder what that hub is today. Google or MSR?

Interesting! Thank you for correcting me.

You are describing Principal Engineers.

Fellows are retired people who don't have to leave.

> Fellows are retired people who don't have to leave.

This is false. Retired people can be fellows but you do not have to be retired. Some Fellows at tech companies are quite young because they were lucky to invent or spearhead famous technology that changed the fortune of the company.