> companies paying 80th to 90th percentile or higher. The attitude is that they’re paying employees enough that they need to shut up and put up with anything that comes their way. If you don’t like it, we have a list of qualified applicants who will gladly take your place in a heartbeat and won’t complain as much because those paychecks are larger than what they made at their last company

Well, yes in a way.

Criticism is expected and encouraged, but if it is done so while ignoring the 3 primary goals of a business:

1. Drive revenue growth

2. Expand TAM

3. Land strategic deals (not all customers are equal)

and is provided without a solution, you will be replaced. I don't care about prioritizing a bug fix or codebase refactor if the alternative means not being able to release feature X to help land Acme's mid 7 figure TCV deal.

The best Engineers I've worked with learnt how to merge valid engineering concerns with the top-line concerns mentioned above as well as being able to provide solutions. It's also how I was able to go from an IC to management.

If an employee thinks they know better, they can try to become a PM or start a competitor.

The bad experiences mentioned above really took off shortly before and during COVID, and this is why we are seeing the pendulum swing the opposite direction.

> I think the trend where companies made Staff Eng into a pseudo-management role without reports was a mistake. It gets defended heavily by people who hold that role, but in the real world the Staff Eng people I’ve worked with who don’t really write code but float around and tell people what to do and how to do it become bad for an organization over time.

I partially agree.

I think a Staff Eng role where it is someone who is deeply technical but helps align their team's delivery with other teams is extremely valuable (basically Staff+ as an architect role).

What I feel is the severe title inflation that arose during COVID turned "staff" into the new "senior", with too many people who floated into the role without aptitude.