> deal with political crap day long to get promoted to a staff role That's largely what many staff+ engineers have to do, even in otherwise healthy organizatio

> deal with political crap day long to get promoted to a staff role That's largely what many staff+ engineers have to do, even in otherwise healthy organizations. "Staff" isn't a glorified, autonomous, and stress-free version of senior at most companies. There's nothing wrong with staying at the senior level indefinitely provided (1) the pay and other factors are keeping up with your contributions and (2) the staff+ and management folks are being effective umbrellas for the politics and messy uninteresting details behind interesting problems like this.