Walked into year-end review and manager said "we're promoting you to Staff." No plan, no path, that was it. In retrospect maybe it was because I was always helping people out when they got stuck or just taking new tasks from the queue when I was done with my assignments, or any of a hundred other things. I never asked why. He may have told me why, but I probably wasn't listening.

As a "regular" engineer, every time someone showed me a way to do things that I didn't know, or didn't think of myself, I dug deep to learn it, and to figure out how I could have come to that myself. I also relentlessly made sure I always took responsibility for things I involved myself in, from both business and technology side. I became a bit of a product owner in addition to an engineer.

And then I took a leap and asked my manager for a path there, and we worked together to make the title stuff happen.

In title alone? Worked at a company too small to afford me and they gave me a title that was completely misaligned with industry.

If you mean aligned with the rest of industry? Even after having the title for > 8 years (~15 yrs total experience) I'd say I still do not consistently do "Staff" level work*, or at least I am currently unable to convince an interviewer that my work is "at that level" .

* I do not work at that level because there's no need at the employer, they really just need an army of low seniors.

A note that Staff Engineer means different things at different companies.

I was just promoted to Staff Engineer at a mid-cap household name company. I had joined as a contractor in 2020, came on full time as a senior engineer in 2021. Simply stated, it comes down to consistently and reliably delivering high quality work and maintaining good relationships with your coworkers.

A combination of merit-based promotions and title inflation within the company I was working in.

cloak and dagger my friend.. cloak..and..dagger