In this article, a new grad who works on basic HR IT tasks for a factory is doing staff work. That’s not staff level scope in the Will Larson sense.

There are plenty of “staff software engineers” in the Will Larson sense who create strategy for new product lines and launch them - “line” level work. Also plenty who work on DevX - “staff” level work.

They direct and advise on technical strategy, but delegate execution to others, because having the 10k foot view is typically more valuable when deployed on strategic opportunities.

Will uses "Staff Software Engineer" as the rank of Staff (I.e. one above Senior).

This article uses "staff engineer" not as the rank, but as the type of engineer (Line vs staff).

Money wasted in a "profit center" has exactly the effect on bottom line as the same waste in a "cost center", and failure of a "cost center" can have just as large an effect on your business as in a "profit center". The only meaningful distinction is that the return on investment in a "cost center" is gated by the success of "profit centers".

But, woe betide if you find yourself in a cost center at a company run by MBAs. Get yourself to a profit center, or to a better-run, less MBA-saddled company.

First time I've ever heard these two things talked about as a matter of "this versus that" and not "combat and logistics".

I'd hate to be a CO or NCO under a General who looked at the two as somehow adversarial or mutually exclusive in terms of planning and resourcing.

Yours is quite an interesting analogy, here.

Look at the Ukraine War… Russia clearly completely ignored logistics and failed in their attempt at a “modern” war and quickly degraded to a WW1 style artillery duel.

And yes, being a NCO or field officer in the Russian army is miserable.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic? Or haven’t read much about the military and are assuming?

Combat vs combat support vs combat service support (logistics) is a very common and very significant distinction to make and usually matters a lot for a great many things.

Has a logistics branch officer ever led a major Army? We had an artillery officer in the UK and even that was a talking point at the time.

My problem is that you seemingly get locked into it. The only people who want to talk to me are staff positions, the “line” roles do not want me at all. Technically my current role is at a tech company, but in a “staff-like” position and happens to be one of the least recognized teams invoice department because the work is among the least visible and a very tiny percentage of the companies income.

I have a similar feeling, I like doing low level work but I also mentoring junior engineers, hopefully that mentoring will multiply my overall output over time!

I also really like the mentorship angle. It's really cool to watch someone grow, and how fast they do when given stuff that's just outside their current capability level.

It’s tricky because I need hands on experience but the desire to switch to a more strategic, executive-style role. Plus folks need to have the core communication and people skills to manage a complex set of stakeholders.

Hard to find good people, but the people I find tend to be very very good.

At a previous company, they moved a lot of their top performer “line” engineers to staff level and they all felt unproductive and eventually quit.

> The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.[