The term may well be as old as the tech industry, but I have somehow spent all 30-odd years of my career in said industry without hearing it discussed, until somewhat recently. I wonder what has changed.
I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all - I trace my computing roots back to the home computer era of the '80s. Perhaps there have been parallel streams which are now mixing.
On the other hand I have never cared about titles, so perhaps it's been there all along and I just didn't notice.
Yeah. A few years ago the zeitgeist was "principal engineers" and then it turned into "staff engineers" and then "staff+".
As the GP said these titles have existed for a long time. But for whatever reason there's also been a progression in terms of them being super common in social media discussions.
The cynic in me says that it is driven by a certain subset of Internet Famous Devs progressing through their career.
The defense industry is a mammoth thing. Not everyone is going to see all of it, but "staff engineers" have been a thing in the military for like 150 years now. The staff descriptor just means they're specialists in some technical field like civil engineering or medicine that provide guidance and solve problems. The modern tech definition hasn't drifted very far.
We should rename all the accountants "staff" though.
I don't think of the tech industry I have been working in as being related to defense much at all - I trace my computing roots back to the home computer era of the '80s. Perhaps there have been parallel streams which are now mixing.
On the other hand I have never cared about titles, so perhaps it's been there all along and I just didn't notice.