Obviously such things do vary across organisations. Usually these job titles reflect levels of trust and impact across the organisation. In my experience, a se

Obviously such things do vary across organisations. Usually these job titles reflect levels of trust and impact across the organisation. In my experience, a senior will be the backbone of a team while a staff engineer will have impact across multiple teams. If you can't identify and communicate to the rest of the organisation about technical people who are providing a higher order of value, then it shouldn't be too much of a surprise if its hard to progress without going into management. I get that programmers tend to be slightly anarchic and distrustful of authority but these titles exist to support a technical career path.