[CharlieDigital]

I fundamentally disagree with the author's perspective on a "Staff+ Engineer". This is why organizations have management tracks like "Director of Engineering", "Engineering Manager", "VP of Engineering", "Head of Engineering", "System Architect".

For a Staff+ Engineer, aside from being an excellent IC, I'd make the case that there's only one primary skill (from which several others follow) at which they must excel: they must be able to write, write well, and write prodigiously because this is the most important form of communication within an engineering team.