> they spend most of their time in meetings not doing much of anything at all This is largely dependent on the company in my experience. I've been a Staff at

> they spend most of their time in meetings not doing much of anything at all This is largely dependent on the company in my experience. I've been a Staff at one company where I had to actively protest meetings. I would get in trouble for not showing up. I had to point out several times that 1-2 hours a day of non-meetings was not enough to be effective no matter what level a person is at. At other (typically smaller) companies, I do feel like Staff engineers can really have a multiplying effect. Based on the OP, I personally fell into "The Solver" category and would bounce around helping out teams who were stuck on something particularly troublesome. > are they really essential to the success of large engineering orgs I don't about know this one. In a large org, I was at my most ineffective. I do think they are essential to small-to-mid sized engineering orgs though, even if it only means they help out by knowing all the ways *NOT* to do something.