A nice thing about engineering is how much power it gives you even if you don't know where the room is, because you're the one building the thing. Over and over you get to interpret the requirements in consequential ways. Even if you don't get to originate them, the constraints and solutions that you find can often reshape and even overrule the requirements. That feedback is the core of the Agile movement.
I've been in the room, and slowly earned the privilege to stay out of it. With only people like me in it any company would fail. To build my own company I'd have to go back to the room and stay there. But it's a nice niche for a certain kind of nerd. And you can drive the direction of the business from the other side of the door more than you might think.
"In the passage I have just read from Tolstoy, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies. The one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. It also remains constant. A general is always superior to a colonel, and a colonel to a captain. The other is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organised secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it."
As a former Staff Engineer, if you work at a company like this, I would leave.
The language in this article is common to a particular type of staff engineer that graces the halls of growth tech companies. It's the analog of mid-level bureaucrats at government organizations or academia.
What "in the room" signifies is that you're working at a passive aggressive company that either lacks (1) proper direction so it can have relative autonomy between teams, or (2) requires technical babysitting because the average quality of engineer is low. Both are symptoms of growing too fast or not needing technical competence because the business is doing the heavy hitting.
Alternatively, work at a company that doesn't use "the room" as a political tool, but actually values their employees' input and is eager to have them involved in decision making.
It's the emotional intelligence to know when to assert yourself and how to assert yourself. At the start, you have minimal credibility built up. Your power is through your sponsor until you have built that credibility through targeted actions that prove value.
From there, you expand influence and the rules morph.
I think it's more about asserting yourself to the degree that you're able to be persuasive, and no more. For example, it's possible for me to be correct, but not be able to persuade others to my point of view. If I take up a lot of group time ineffectively arguing my point, then that's a waste of everyone's time. If I eventually get my way because I'm persistent and won't drop the argument, then that's a short-term win but it comes at the cost of my social capital.
I've been in the room, and slowly earned the privilege to stay out of it. With only people like me in it any company would fail. To build my own company I'd have to go back to the room and stay there. But it's a nice niche for a certain kind of nerd. And you can drive the direction of the business from the other side of the door more than you might think.