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[Rayeneth]

I often put stairs in the center of a pinwheel design for my forts, but I recently thought that placing up/down stairs as the corridors of functionally identical connecting layers, would shorten number of steps between jobs.  Will this have negative effects? Other than situations like a goblin rampage inside my fortress or tacky looks.

Thanks in advance.

[MagmaMcFry]

It will have a slightly negative effect on pathing, but yes, your dwarves will get to stuff faster. It's enough if you put one or two staircases every few tiles. If you use a slanted main corridor that goes 1 tile down for 2 tiles forward, you can insert some emergency airlocks.
Generally, pathing efficiency is directly proportional to goblin rampagity.

[rhesusmacabre]

One possible negative effect is that, unlike regular floortiles, stairtiles flash between displaying the tile and the creature/item on the tile. This could make it more difficult to determine what a dwarf is carrying or identifying a legendary dwarf, etc. The incessant blinking would drive me to distraction, but you might disagree.

[Nan]

I believe that it will actually simplify pathing. I don't know exactly how toady has done the pathfinding, but how A* pathfinding usually works is that it starts with trying the most direct paths "as the crow flies" to the destination, once it has found a path which it knows is at least as short as any other possible path, it stops looking (This is a simplification but close enough).
So if your dwarves can take extremely direct routes then you're doing the pathfinder a big favor.