As a developer I feel my career advancement stagnating in its current trajectory.

This feels silly to ask, but is there merit to obtaining a masters degree as a software/design engineer to get to staff level one day?

My gut says experience and street cred matter way more but I'm curious what others think of the ROI.

father, husband, css golfer, ux engineer, silently defining variables as /sdv sdv.wtf

Never seen that as a factor at bay area type companies.

I've seen it as a counter indicator in some hiring loops: "this is probably someone who draws diagrams instead of actually getting shit done...get good signal on that"

The staff engineers I know are either deeply technical in some domain or able to lead large technical efforts across multiple teams. And often both.

They also often have a solid understanding of how the business works (p&l, opex, etc).

Startups / software / traveling / skydiving / running

building /automod, /glass • prev manifold.xyz, twilio.com

I think my weak point is being too generalized, yet specialized in something niche (CSS) and also lacking leadership experience.

I gotta double down on a domain and stick to it.