[ilidur]

Review: The article tries to define the staff+ role through the lens of 4 skills: technical, people, project, and product. The article then says that a Staff+ does all of them, both at architecture level and helping build up juniors in the team. Finally it describes them as glue between different aspects of the company. The article provides various blogs and a couple of books as reference for statements.

Now onto my opinion. The Staff that I've met in my life are more of the solitary type, the Individual Contributor class of person who have decades of experience in their expertise and supporting skills. Yes they may have the responsibility defining the work for others, but that mostly happens as an architect. They herd seniors not mentor juniors.

The article itself doesn't work hard enough to set the bar and explain to me why I should give the title to someone when in some companies these are just the responsibilities of a senior or at a stretch Principal. With extremely rare exceptions, this has become position inflation for the sake of looking good when going to VCs.