Staff engineer, no path forward

The ladder ends and the org is not sure what you are for. We write the role you actually want, then the case for it, then decide who to send it to.

Career moves

Status
Waitlist
Length
6 sessions
Format
Video
Usually
Staff and principal engineers

You reached the level where the ladder stops describing the work. The org chart has a box for you but no sentence, and the next promotion is either management or something nobody has defined. Meanwhile you are quietly doing three jobs.

We write the job. Not the one on the ladder, the one you would do if the company were sensible: what you would own, what you would stop touching, who you would report to, what it would cost them not to have it. It takes about three sessions to get honest. Then we write the case for it in the company's own language and decide whether the person to send it to is your manager, their manager, or a recruiter at another company.

About half the time the company says yes to a version of it. The other half, the document turns out to be a very good job description for somewhere else.

Situation 8 a
Situation 8 b
Desks with names, none of them describing the job you do.