I am not criticizing the author or his opinion in any way. But what he didn’t emphasize enough that yes he might ignore the spotlight as a staff engineer. But he can only do so because he is a staff software engineer.

When I was working at a startup from 2018-2020, I was hired as the second technical hire by then new CTO who was tasked to bring tech leadership into the company from an outside consulting agency where all of the long term developers were in India.

They were constantly seeking the spotlight to insure they kept their jobs. I could afford to not seek the spotlight. I already had the trust of the owners, CTO etc. I had no fear of being made redundant because the right people didn’t know what I contributed.

I wasn’t trying to get a promotion, I was already leading all of the big technical cross functional initiatives as the company grew.

On the other hand, when I got into BigTech in 2020 as an L5 (Professional Services consulting not SDE), I saw for the first time how much politics played in getting ahead. I personally didn’t care. My goal from day 1 was to make money and leave after 4 years. I was already 46 and knew I didn’t want to stay long term.

But I did see how hard it was for a damn good intern I mentored their senior year and when they came back to get noticed. I had to create opportunities for them to get noticed because they were ignored by their manager [1]. They still had to change departments to just get a chance to get on a promotion track.

I see it again on the other side. I would hate to have to play the games and go through the gauntlet to get promoted at the company I work at now and where I was brought in at the staff level.

But I would be chasing after the spotlight with the best of them to get ahead.

I do have the luxury to not chase recognition - everyone who is important already knows me and what I do. My projects automatically give me visibility without my chasing them.

[1] all of the early career people reported to a separate manager and were loaned out to teams.