Try reading: https://staffeng.com/about/ https://staffeng.com/about/ tldr; it varies from company to company. In my experience the more senior you get the mor

Try reading: https://staffeng.com/about/ https://staffeng.com/about/ tldr; it varies from company to company. In my experience the more senior you get the more like an organizational therapist you are expected to become. Instead of writing code you're helping engineering teams and executives communicate, fixing communication silos, writing specifications and requirements, reviewing progress on large multi-team features, and generally trying to move the ball on big-picture projects that span multiple feature teams/code-bases/etc. This kind of work needs high-functioning social skills, excellent written communication skills, an ability to understand a large problem domain and all of the organizational levers you need to move to get it done. You'll also need to be able to tolerate long feedback cycles as the projects you take on will probably take months to see the light of day and you won't be writing the software yourself most of the time. At most I've seen engineers at this level write prototypes or reference implementations. Some enjoy it while others quickly learn that staying at a senior level was probably better for them.