[piva00]

Which doesn't really make sense. Not necessarily every senior engineer wants or even should become Staff. It's a completely different role, it also has much less vacancies than for seniors.

Forcing seniors to go up or out is an illogical way to shoot yourself on the foot... They are the experienced engineers who can train the next batch of junior/mid-level that might want to become Staff later. Seniors are usually the engine of onboarding.

Some people like to be good at what they do without having to chase higher positions to perform a different job, I really don't understand why a company would force seniors to go up or out.