> Staff Eng .... has much more job mobility

Not really.

Above Staff and Staff+ companies are usually looking for expertise in domain, in addition to cross org leadership. Unless you want to get hired with Sr title.

Management is different though, you have highly transferrable skillset, managing people, up and down.

> you have highly transferrable skillset

Of course this also means the pool of people who can do your job or quickly learn it includes essentially every other EM.

And many of those people are looking for jobs now.

For an IC, no one can become an expert in Rust overnight.

> Management is different though, you have highly transferrable skillset, managing people, up and down

Most tech companies are not hiring an EM without relevant domain experience. "People Management" is a table stakes skill in 2026 and Staff/Principal Engineers and Product Managers largely offer that as well as technical or product insight.

Additionally, it's something that can be cultivated in-house and is why internal promotions to EM tend to be preferred unless a director, principal engineer, or PM is getting their friend a job (which happens fairly often).