These articles always miss the core deliverable of a staff engineer.
Impact
The engineer who wrote the MVP of the product and grew it's customer base to hundreds of MM ARR -> staff.
The engineer who steers the ship for a 50 person org -> staff
The engineer working in a corner on a novel solution to the companies perf/accuracy/security challenges -> staff.
Everything that you do is in service of creating impact, but having a bunch of useless meetings or providing useless mentorship is exactly that - useless.
Leveling up other engineers through mentorship IS impactful. But I think you should have a roughly 1 level distance limit. Staff shouldn’t be mentoring junior engineers, they should be mentoring senior engineers.
An engineer who has been working some number of years, regardless of level of responsibility or skill, is a senior. If you've been working in the industry for 5 years and you're applying for junior positions then people are going to be really confused.
I expect seniors to deliver on smaller to medium projects without external help. If someone can’t do that they’re not senior and i don’t care if they have 2 or 20 yoe
Impact
The engineer who wrote the MVP of the product and grew it's customer base to hundreds of MM ARR -> staff.
The engineer who steers the ship for a 50 person org -> staff
The engineer working in a corner on a novel solution to the companies perf/accuracy/security challenges -> staff.
Everything that you do is in service of creating impact, but having a bunch of useless meetings or providing useless mentorship is exactly that - useless.