Ok, person because of whom Sr Staff at Box was created :). There was a need for promo and I did not meet the bar for Principle ( have to be recognized in industry: books, conferences). So Sr Staff was born. I never did what is written in the article, just worked on systems (spending 80% of my time on coding related activities: design, code reviews but mostly emitting code). Pretty the same I did in most companies. Even being manager in one company I spent 50% of time coding (it is complicated as I built team around such principles , so very small “management “ activities were required).
I am really bad on interview so join each company (probably 7 now) with low level. Also, never asked about promo. Also, self taught and not a hardcore developer (it is not like i love and breath in code outside of work, it takes sometimes long hours to make it work). But almost always get to nearly top levels (top is impossible, English is super crappy and as I said, not a coding prodigy).
Being “senior staff” in many companies I found that two traits are important for “senior” developers :
1.sense of problem: where the most important problem is now. There is no real most important problem, all problems are not that important unless you are doctor/military/rescue and save lives. So it is a special skill to find one that will be foundation for changes, spark eyes of people around and will be accepted.
2. “lead by example “ , be hands dirty in all your decisions. A lot of things are good on paper but reality shows that changes are needed. The reality forces to have enough knowledge (chat with experts, books, reading others code) before making decisions and later finding that no two situations are the same. Being inside makes it is easy to fix.
(No longer with Box btw)