Staff engineers don't outsource judgement
Staff+ engineers don’t outsource judgement.
It’s easy to think that career progression is linear — tick the boxes, get promoted. But that’s a comforting fallacy.
The fallacy isn’t just theoretical — it actively produces the wrong kind of senior engineers. People optimize for optics instead of outcomes. They manage up instead of deciding. They look for permission instead of taking ownership.
The assumption that there’s always an adult in the room who can make these judgements is broken. It outsources judgement to the idea that there’s another human with consistently impeccable taste, context, and incentives — someone who can reliably evaluate your decisions from the outside.
When you believe this, you’re implicitly outsourcing judgement. Assuming someone else will decide whether your thinking was correct.
Being ‘an adult in the room’ doesn’t mean unilateral decision-making — it means no longer assuming someone else will do the thinking for you.
Across the internet, career-pathing advice often flattens Staff into “Senior, but more.”
This is wrong.
The how and whys
Staff+ engineers are often thinking about the “system of the company” as much as the “system of the codebase”. They make decisions and own the outcomes. They advise management as opposed to deferring to it.
Staff+ work is as much about the how and why of doing work as it is about the work itself.
What processes do we use? Do we need them? Can we cut something?
How can we ensure people are working broadly on the right things?
Is the way we word things on Slack causing people to feel misaligned? Can we fix it?
Ownership and trust
Staff+ engineers can only be effective in environments where trust is high and they can take ownership of solving meaty problems.
Over-managing up is usually a sign that judgement is being outsourced. If you need constant validation, you’re no longer operating as a decision maker — you’re operating as an implementer waiting for approval.
High trust and autonomy lead to the best outcomes. Of course this must resolve back to “how did this serve the company” on a semi-regular cadence. More like months than weeks. Success is expected. Failure is expected. As long as the decision making was sound, it’s a lesson to be learned.
The key thing is that a Staff+ engineer is an adult in the room. Not someone deferring their judgement, but an autonomous decision maker focused on outcomes — not a lone wolf, and not a sheep.
Learning to trust your judgement is key. It can only be learned with space and ownership.
Companies that don’t give their engineers that space and ownership limit their ability to win.
The path
Engineering career paths aren’t something that can be taught. At least not past the first few steps. They’re the crystallization of experience and require deeper thinking than can be shared easily.
At Staff+ level, there is no path to follow, and no checklist to complete. There is only judgement, exercised under uncertainty, and accountability for results over time.
If you’re still looking for someone to tell you whether you’re doing the right thing, you’re not there yet.
Staff+ engineers don’t outsource judgement. That is the job.