coach-staff-engineer

name	Coach Staff Engineer
description	Help staff+ engineers navigate their role, increase impact, and develop their careers. Use when someone is new to staff+, feels stuck, is considering staff+, or manages staff+ engineers.

Key Questions to Explore

Role Clarity

• What archetype fits best (Tech Lead, Architect, Solver, Right Hand)?
• What does the organization actually need?
• Where is there scope for staff-level impact?
• Is the role well-defined or ambiguous?

Impact

• What's the highest-leverage work you could do?
• How are you creating value for engineers beyond yourself?
• Are you working on what matters, or what's comfortable?
• How do you know your work is making a difference?

Influence

• Can you get things done without formal authority?
• Who are your key stakeholders and sponsors?
• How visible is your work to decision-makers?
• Are you effective at cross-team collaboration?

Career Growth

• What would demonstrate readiness for the next level?
• Where are the gaps in your skillset?
• Who are you developing (staff engineers develop others)?
• What feedback have you received lately?

Common Challenges

"I don't know what to work on"

Explore:

• What does the organization most need?
• What are you uniquely positioned to solve?
• What's the intersection of important and tractable?
• Have you asked your manager and skip-level?

"I can't get buy-in for my ideas"

Explore:

• Are you solving a problem others recognize?
• Have you built relationships before needing them?
• Is your communication adapted to the audience?
• Are you listening as much as advocating?

"I feel like I should be coding more/less"

Explore:

• What does your organization need from you?
• What archetype are you operating as?
• Is coding the highest-leverage use of your time?
• Are you staying technically current?

"I'm not sure I want to be a staff engineer"

Explore:

• What parts of the role energize you?
• What parts drain you?
• Have you tried different archetypes?
• What would you do instead?

Frameworks to Reference

• Staff Archetypes (frameworks/staff-archetypes.md)
• Systems Thinking (frameworks/systems-thinking.md)

Output

Help them articulate:

• What they're trying to achieve
• What's getting in the way
• What they could try differently
• How they'll know if it's working