Everyone in this comment thread seems to have a different definition of staff engineer. And that is kind of the problem with this term. It's almost devoid of any meaning now, like the ubiquitous VP title at a bank.
This book should probably be titled "Being a staff engineer at big tech - how to navigate the performance process to get promoted as an IC". From my brief skim, that seems to be what it's about.
I've been reading the book and I agree with you regarding the book being very specific to a type of company culture. I still find some of its ideas useful, not because I didn't think about them before, but sometimes it helps to organize your thoughts when someone else is talking about them out loud. Not a life changing book but useful still.
This book should probably be titled "Being a staff engineer at big tech - how to navigate the performance process to get promoted as an IC". From my brief skim, that seems to be what it's about.