this is closer to my experiences than the people talking about nonstop meetings. I report directly to the cto and basically do whatever i want(as a staff eng, 100+ engineers) Two main criteria at our company is the breadth of work you do - instead of being the best on one project, its expected that you can hop in wherever needed. I don't get assigned tasks, bounce around between many teams, and am expected to be connected enough to know what needs doing. Also multiply others - identifying and/or solving a problem that makes everyone 10% more efficient, or training/teaching/etc.

The other thing expectation is product and business focus. Understanding how what youre doing affects the business, making changes that solve business problems. It's cool to make something 10% faster, but the expectation is you understand that if spending your time elsewhere will increase revenue, youll do that. Often I've found the product team assumes a thing is impossible, but if you understand the problems the business is facing, you can recommend the solution they thought was too hard to even bring to the eng team.

Yea, there are more meetings than as a regular engineer, and probably do less "work", but i dont find it political and your impact is larger in that you are making every other engineer better, and more control and input on the business.