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Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

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Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#31

Post by marcinzm »

alberth wrote: post #21
angarg12 wrote: post #18

Yes, but the market is particularly bad now. I have 15+ YoE, and currently working at FAANG. I've spent the last few years leading a team of engineers to deliver one of the top priority projects of my org with estimated impact of +$100M ARR, and I have been consistently rated high performer. I also have some niches skills that are particularly on demand these days. I am not actively looking, but I am open to hear fro…

> estimated impact of +$100M ARR Revenue impact can be tricky, because more times than not - it’s a function of the size of the company you work for more than anything else. Relative impact (%), along with absolutely impact ($) - is the more meaningful way to quantify impact. Eg Increase revenue by 0.1% (revenue went from $100.0B to $100.1) Increase revenue by 100% (revenue went from $0.1B to $0.2)

Size of company also correlates to less low hanging fruit which in my experience mostly balances things out.

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#32

Post by marcinzm »

nsagent wrote: post #28
toast0 wrote: post #22

IMHO, the very specific requirements with no wiggle room, especially if they have very specific requests for how to apply are likely in support of immigration requirements. For some immigration processes, the hiring company needs to show that there were no qualified domestic candidates despite doing a search. If it's a lot of things with this or that, and the submission isn't send postal mail to this address with thi…

I wonder if this is what happened to me. I'm finishing up my PhD and despite being pretty set on going into academia, I applied to some industry jobs back in July that I was pretty uniquely qualified for based on my background and research topic (which is pretty niche). Never heard back. I have a nice postdoc lined up, so it's fine that I never heard back, but I was pretty surprised. I recently checked and one of tho…

Did the job specify that they were fine with 0 years of full time industry experience in that area?

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#33

Post by ptero »

Just a single data point and a personal opinion, take with a grain of salt.

The companies do hire principal and staff levels from such postings (as well as from other channels). But even more important, many companies are open to hire at a different level. They create a single posting (e.g., to avoid HR hassles) and if the person they like is at a different level they will adjust it in parallel with sending an offer. So unless it is clear that the company only needs principal level hires I would send a resume there as well.

For example, HR might give the hiring manager a single slot and insists on having a specific level in the posting. What this often leads to is the hiring manager aims as high as HR lets him (usually easier to hire at a lower level than approved than at the higher level). Those 2-3 levels might end up as a union of all requirements and skill lists can get ridiculous. Bottom line -- if the company is interesting and your skills are relevant I would apply.

The market today is not great. Many companies overhired during zero interest and covid stimulus times and are now reverting to the mean. IMO it will get worse before it gets better as unprofitable companies run out of money. So I would focus on areas where there should be less competition: secondary metros (not bay area); larger, profitable companies (expand beyond software-specific companies); hybrid or on-site jobs (fully remote are especially competitive now); etc.

If you apply, apply well: have a few polished resumes and, if needed a good cover letter (no need to be super company-specific; put company name, copy-paste 2-3 main relevant points from your database of snippets and let ChatGPT fix the style). Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#34

Post by sroussey »

More years of experience do not equal staff engineer. The terminal position for most is some sort of senior engineer level.

It might be helpful to consider the manager equivalent which is like a high level director or low level vp.

In part it is helpful as the role has some similarities in that it involves influence. It’s a more difficult position perhaps, since the influence required comes without the same power. The highest level roles can include influence outside the organization as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#36

Post by theonething »

refulgentis wrote: post #19
alexawarrior23 wrote: post #16

I was never a "Principal Software Engineer" until two years ago. Both hires were from an online job posting, one on the company site itself. Both jobs were government contract companies but salaried roles. And salary is it, no stock or end of year bonus. Both paid about half of what a MAANGA job would pay for the same role, but still far more than other similar remote roles, and a bit better than the senior software…

Bless, we have ~same story except I dropped out of the state school with a 2.8, and got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck, I didn't even have other offers for the W2 McDonald's jobs. Life is a crapshoot and there wasn't a significant difference between my coworkers there and coworkers I've had everywhere else.

> got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck

Would love to hear more details on how this happened if you don't mind sharing.

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#37

Post by refulgentis »

theonething wrote: post #36
refulgentis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bless, we have ~same story except I dropped out of the state school with a 2.8, and got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck, I didn't even have other offers for the W2 McDonald's jobs. Life is a crapshoot and there wasn't a significant difference between my coworkers there and coworkers I've had everywhere else.

> got into Google in 2016 due to what amounted to luck Would love to hear more details on how this happened if you don't mind sharing.

I'll take any excuse to talk about myself ;) Thank you for being curious -

I just absolutely do not buy that I took ~5 CS classes and did a great job on the interview questions.

I don't think I did a great job -- but, I was a deeply specialized self-taught iOS engineer who had built a point of sale.

When you're at Google, work is more episodic and less in-depth, so I had a seemingly unusually wide and in-depth knowledge base.

And iOS devs were considered hard to get. And Google had a special focus internally on getting iOS-specific interviewers who, at least in 2016, usually did a lot of work with non-iOS specialists.

So you have these sort of inherent biases towards me seeming relatively impressive to their day-to-day experience with other Googlers. Then, I'm fairly convinced the leetcode problems we do add a significant "luck" portion.

I spent about 6 hours a day, 6 weeks before interviews, in Cracking the Coding Interview and was still missing problems in the 1st chapter towards the end.

I'm selling myself short, probably. But looking back, I see it as luck, structural factors, and what pushed it over the top was focusing on communication / thinking out loud in the interviews. As long as you're intelligent, familiar with the material, and your interlocutor is having an okay day, you'll come off well.

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#38

Post by Paul-Craft »

ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #5
Aurornis wrote: post #3

> only advertise positions for people who are comically well-decorated; Principal engineers with 10 years of experience, plus the masters degree, plus a bunch of specific cloud orchestration, scalable systems, or other devops experience that just seems entirely impractical to accumulate without simply advancing at the same company or FAANG for 15 years, which seems itself to be an unachievable tenure in this millenni…

"One issue that a lot of people face is that their career has been less about accumulating 10-15 years of progressively more complex experience and more about accumulating 1-2 years of experience 7-10 different times." This could also be worded as: "One issue that a lot of people face is that they did not work at prestigious technical companies. Having a long tenure at such companies gives hiring managers confidence…

I think it's closer to "companies won't hire people to do $THING unless they've done $THING before." That, combined with overinflating requirements, interviews that don't bear a lot of resemblance to the actual job, and interviews that are far more difficult than the actual job, plus perhaps a dose of what you said, seems to explain it. The first of these things is probably related to having people with HR or sales backgrounds (recruiters) reading resumes without understanding what they're reading. The latter two seems mostly like cargo culting FAANG interviews (and, from what I hear, even FAANG interviews are the same in the sense of not being all that related to the actual job yet also being more difficult).

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#39

Post by esafak »

marcinzm wrote: post #31
alberth wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> estimated impact of +$100M ARR Revenue impact can be tricky, because more times than not - it’s a function of the size of the company you work for more than anything else. Relative impact (%), along with absolutely impact ($) - is the more meaningful way to quantify impact. Eg Increase revenue by 0.1% (revenue went from $100.0B to $100.1) Increase revenue by 100% (revenue went from $0.1B to $0.2)

Size of company also correlates to less low hanging fruit which in my experience mostly balances things out.

It doesn't balance things out; it just makes them incomparable. It also depends on how mature the product is.

Re: Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

#40

Post by vladf »

angarg12 wrote: post #18

Yes, but the market is particularly bad now. I have 15+ YoE, and currently working at FAANG. I've spent the last few years leading a team of engineers to deliver one of the top priority projects of my org with estimated impact of +$100M ARR, and I have been consistently rated high performer. I also have some niches skills that are particularly on demand these days. I am not actively looking, but I am open to hear fro…

What is your current level? Is it shown on your LinkedIn?
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