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.
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.