its been about six years since i stepped onto the staff+ treadmill.

in the beginning, the title feels like a linear progression. you assume it’s simply about more leverage - as in, to be solving harder distributed systems problems, or optimizing deeper into the kernel, or architecting for the next order of magnitude yada yada… and sure, that’s the table stakes. but over time, the shine wears off. you realize that while technical depth bought you the ticket, it doesn’t play the game. the pivot is realizing that ‘indispensability’ - that wartime hero facade forged by burning yourself on the problem space repeatedly is actually an anti-pattern imho. at this level, if you are the critical path, you are the bottleneck. the job isn’t to be the hero; it’s to engineer a reality where heroes aren’t needed. so you become dispensable by design.

the whole “i’m indispensable because x or y” narrative? i find it cute these days. if someone has convinced themselves of that alternate reality, good for them. but in my eyes, it’s just cute.

imho, the reality of the role isn’t just about technical supremacy. rather, it’s about the radius of impact, and more importantly, the radius of friction. when you operate at this level, your job stops being about closing jira tickets (or linear or whatever else is your poison these days) and starts being about managing entropy.

but entropy is relentless. as in, the system will try to consume you with what Will Larson calls ‘snacking’.. as in, low-leverage work that feels like progress but is just heat. to survive, imho, you need a mechanism to distinguish signal from noise.

and then there is the friction. despite the “individual contributor” label, the hardest problems you face, imho aren’t in the codebase; they are in the conference rooms. you are an IC in name, but a politician by necessity. for an introvert operating with this kind of blast radius, this dissonance is expensive. imo, the people-layer entropy doesn’t just distract; it drains. and, without a shield, this friction bankrupts your energy before you even open your IDE (it does to me). and, afaict your defense stack here has two layers: the radar (to sense) and the psychological intelligence (to maneuver). you are dealing with humans who can be unreasonable, often incoherent, and frequently out of their depth, yet remain critical cogs in the machine (somehow 🤷‍♂️). afaict, navigating this minefield without detonating requires more than soft skills; imo, it requires a survival instinct.

this is where the BS radar kicks in. not because i’m trying to be efficient, but because i’m just tired of pretending. at this point in the career, time is the only currency that actually deprecates, and i refuse to spend it on things that don’t matter.

so you stop nodding along. it’s not just the meetings that feel like a ritual sacrifice of productivity. it’s the fifth jira workflow tweak this quarter. it’s the “alignment” sessions that are really just therapy for anxious managers. it’s the promotion-driven development disguised as innovation. you don’t just zone out. you interrupt. you call it out. you can’t help it. the tolerance buffer is empty.

and that’s where it gets messy.

imo, the industry runs on people-pleasing. but imho - it’s mostly just people protecting their turf. it’s a mix of “i’m smarter than you so shut up” and “we’ve always done it this way so don’t make me think.”

most folks nod along because it’s safer. it’s muscle memory. a survival reflex.

so when you disable that reflex - when you point out that a decision is “bloody bananas” or ask why we are defending a legacy process that serves no one - you aren’t viewed as a “change agent.” you’re viewed as a glitch. you are disrupting the peace. you make fewer friends. you become the friction.

but there’s a hidden upside to this isolation: it filters the noise. the genuine folks - the ones who know their craft, who shoot straight, who have their act together - they survive the filter. imo, they become the only connections that matter.

and, afaict - this is where the real work happens. it’s not in the agile rituals. it’s in the art of the challenge.

there is an art to saying no. an art to saying “f*** no.” an art to engaging diplomatically (and, diplomacy is not being a d***) and an art to staying silent when words won’t land. doing this in high-stakes scenarios, without flipping, without yielding, and without explaining your “why” to those committed to misunderstanding you… that is the penthouse skill.

learning the hardest tech is easy. never been easier! but, no amount of gpus can teach you the personality required to navigate the good, the bad, and the rock bottom of the BS radar without getting cut by paper cuts.

if you look at the literature - the “staff engineer” archetypes, the conferences - they talk about “glue work” and “technical strategy.” etc., valid stuff. sure.. but they rarely capture the specific nausea of being the one who sees the cliff when everyone else is enjoying the view.

the challenge with this skill is that there is no upper cap. the integral bounds are negative infinity to positive infinity. you never know if you have mustered “enough.”

one more year around the sun and imo, you just keep calibrating that BS radar. you just keep managing the friction.

in the end, it’s just looking at the mess and refusing to look away. it’s not about being the smartest person in the room; it’s about being the one willing to stand in front of the train and say “no.”

.. and, hey - afaict, there is no ‘definition of done’ here. just a backlog of awkward conversations. 🤷‍♂️