From the manager’s side, when one of the engineers on my team was senior and looking towards staff, the way I would explain it was “staff engineers are leaders

From the manager’s side, when one of the engineers on my team was senior and looking towards staff, the way I would explain it was “staff engineers are leaders of their teams, in practice whether or not in title. So you have to understand what the company is trying to do, what the team is trying to do within the company, and how to help when the team isn’t succeeding or the company isn’t succeeding because of the team. The more team- and company-wide problems you’re able to effectively fix, the higher you’ll go.” I liked the OP’s description of glue work because it matched my understanding of fixing problems. And I liked their discussion that glue work can’t be the only thing you do (I would argue that if it is, you haven’t actually fixed whatever problem created the glue work)