Ask HN: Should I go for a Staff Engineer promotion or remain a Senior Engineer?

I’m at a bit of a cross-roads in my career - I’m a senior engineer at a decent tech company (not FAANG tier but not too far off), 10 years into my software engineering career. I’ve been at my current company for a couple of years and have built a good reputation for myself within my org area. My manager has been encouraging me to think about going for a Staff Engineer promotion, I’m not ready to apply for it, but ready to start making choices about what I work on and how I work to get me there.

What I’m wondering is - do I really want to go down this route? I’m not interested in the management track, so this is the only career progression (in a promotion sense) available to me. I’ve been reading some of the articles on staffeng.com and listening to the podcast (both excellent resources!), and it’s alluded to that going beyond senior isn’t the right fit for everyone.

My passion has always been about being hands on and learning new tech, and I worry that a Staff+ role would take me further away from that and I’d spend my time in meetings and writing documents, leaving me unmotivated and longing to code.

I have some experience leading architecture, helping other engineers organise around a problem, setting up calls between teams to resolve conflicts and so on, those are some of the things expected of a staff role as I understand it. I know I can do some of that work, there’s lots for me to learn and improve on in those areas too, but I have had a mental block with those tasks where I feel like it’s not really “work” and has felt unsatisfying/tedious to me.

Any stories from people deliberately choosing to stay as a senior engineer long term, or from engineers that have gone Staff+ and can relate to some of this?

FWIW I don’t need a promotion from a financial perspective, it’s more about career progression and fear of stagnating in my current role.