At one big tech company I worked at, it was never mentioned even once for years and years, and then introduced very suddenly. All existing engineers were grouped into staff versus non-staff based on their existing level, and from then on it was used for recruiting purposes — a superior title to sweeten the offer pot for experienced engineers in a competitive talent market.
I'm personally familiar with some of the people being interviewed on this list and they're fine engineers, but certainly no better than many non-staff engineers at their same companies. And to imply that they're some kind of rare, exotic special species that's totally apart from their non-staff counterparts is in total honesty, just weird.
Nearest I can tell, the term "staff engineer" was an unusual one in use at certain shops, and was popularized big time around 2020. I've kept every recruiter email I've ever gotten since 2018. Prior to 2020, the term "staff" was mentioned in exactly two of them. Starting around Feb 2020, it's now mentioned in 20+ emails a year. Before it, we just used other terms like "principal" instead.
Another related concept is that there really isn’t much written on the subject of “what should I focus on improving” for senior engineers. In a big org you can look to the engineers at the next rung for role models, but at smaller companies there might not be many staff plus, and so the diversity of types of roles may not be clear.
All this is to say that I think this advice is more useful to senior engineers at smaller companies, than it is for those at a similar stage in their career at extremely large companies.
That looks about right. It came along with the increases in hiring and compensation in parts of the industry, the resulting employee's market, the resulting desire to show a long technical career ladder with many more steps than we used to have, and the resulting devaluation of the "senior" title that was once a big deal. For employers to show how much they value the more capable people who used to be "senior" and can take on roles like technical leadership or cross-team architecture, the employers have now adopted titles like staff, senior staff, principal, fellow, etc.
Naturally those positions attract interest for the same reason that "senior" used to. It's the level where a person typically becomes self-sufficient and able to work on more demanding initiatives under only broad direction. It's also the level where those with an interest in technical leadership become capable enough to run larger teams or groups effectively and probably limit their personal technical contributions to more strategic activities or surgical interventions.
I'm not sure how much has really changed apart from the titles, though. There has always been a qualitative shift in emphasis around that level of experience and ability for developers, whatever we choose to call it. And the responsibility and authority you have in your role, often reflected in compensation and how colleagues relate to you, has always said more about your real seniority than any formal job title.
I've never been promoted, nor have I ever promoted anyone to "staff plus" because of warrior-monk like engineering skills. Most often it is a combination of good soft skills and proven decision making around people and organization objectives. Usually it is because the person being promoted had the ability to make the business unit better in some way that is needed. And yes, that does mean that every promotion is really done to make the person a step above the newly promoted person even more effective.
> It’s just another regular step on the ladder you make by doing a reasonably good job
This is the secret. A reasonably good job means you are learning not just how to make software, but also how to lead others that are making software. There's nothing mythic about it. But for many it requires going outside of the comfort of the purely technical.