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I had a similar reaction but there are a few archetypes that are very similar to the duties of an IC. She mentions “Deep Diver” and that’s similar to my current

I had a similar reaction but there are a few archetypes that are very similar to the duties of an IC. She mentions “Deep Diver” and that’s similar to my current role. I enjoy having systems thrown onto my lap and becoming an expert in them as quickly as possible. Then the organization uses my analysis to decide what to do next: keep it or pivot to a different strategic solution in the long-term. Ideally my deep dives result in useful documentation, code improvements, or process automation to allow the future deep diver to come up to speed quicker than I did.

spdionis 6y ago
As a staff engineer, you have multiple responsibilities you need to cover, and you can delegate some of them. The reality is that in most teams you can delegate the "Deep Diver" responsibility most of the time. "Context sharing" and "Coaching" not so much. So yes, as some comments in other threads mention, your coding/hard tech contributions diminish with time.