[mleonhard]

Your comment expresses what I've been thinking. Doing the Staff Engineer role requires close alignment with one's management chain. Working at level 2 (working for the success of the company) is only possible with a manager who also works at level 2. How to find such people and get hired by them?

[Buttons840]

At some point I'm going to write my comment into a blog. I'd love for there to be some widely recognized labels for the types of jobs, just as a means of shaming how sad the situation is. "Is this a level 2 job, or just a level 1 job?" Maybe it can help us be honest that most of our intellectual capacity as a nation is just wasted because people never have an opportunity to do more than exactly what their boss asks for the day.

Did you know they cut up Einstein's brain to try and learn what made him special? Turns out, one of the things that made Einstein special was that he had an opportunity to do things.

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould

[card_zero]

I don't think there can be a formula for creating opportunities. I suppose banning sweatshops leads to people living and dying in ethical shoe factories.