I certainly agree that reading these books won't make you have the skills needed to be a Staff engineer but I think the rest of your point seems highly biased by your individual personal experience.
Btw, Will Larson was at Etsy in a very senior role for a while, so he definitely knows how engineering orgs work.
The reason I see for these books existing is because engineering orgs have evolved and grown to a scale where a new role came up: of an individual contributor that exercises cross team influence. This only makes sense in massive (1k+ engineers), highly organisationally flexible companies. It doesn't make sense in small ones and it doesn't make sense in inflexible ones. Those sorts of companies have not existed for too long.
BTW Will Larson's book is a synthesis based on the collection of anecdotes from people actually employed with such titles across companies, so you can read it and see if those things make sense.
Btw, Will Larson was at Etsy in a very senior role for a while, so he definitely knows how engineering orgs work.
The reason I see for these books existing is because engineering orgs have evolved and grown to a scale where a new role came up: of an individual contributor that exercises cross team influence. This only makes sense in massive (1k+ engineers), highly organisationally flexible companies. It doesn't make sense in small ones and it doesn't make sense in inflexible ones. Those sorts of companies have not existed for too long.
BTW Will Larson's book is a synthesis based on the collection of anecdotes from people actually employed with such titles across companies, so you can read it and see if those things make sense.