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On Being a Principal Engineer

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Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#81

Post by maxxxxx »

javadocmd wrote: post #60
maxxxxx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But I am also at this weird point where I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred to another company. A lot of the value that I add now is because of the historical knowledge I have. What we have tried as a company, what we haven't, why we built some things the way we did, how things work currently, how the politics works and the trust I have built. " This worries me too. Within my company I…

I would argue that company-specific historical knowledge is not the value you (et al) are bringing. The value is the soft-skills of effective leadership that distinguish Principal from Senior (to use the article's parlance). Successfully transferring this to another company is an exercise in knowing how to demonstrate and sell those skills. And, of course, in finding a company and an interview panel that understands…

“Successfully transferring this to another company is an exercise in knowing how to demonstrate and sell those skills”

Any ideas for doing this other having a lot of public visibility? I may have answered the question already but there may be other ways .

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#82

Post by zuhayeer »

ryanong wrote: post #2

This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…

https://levels.fyi is a good resource to understand where you stand laterally across many companies. Title inflation definitely skews a lot of this. Leveling nomenclature like “principal” and “staff” don’t necessarily correlate across other companies (for example, a senior engineer at Google could come in as a staff engineer or even higher at LinkedIn).

But even outside of titles, it’s difficult to become a new player and start from scratch on learning the inner workings of a company. I think the first step is establishing the confidence to make that move if it is going to be better for your career overall.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#83

Post by 8note »

zuhayeer wrote: post #82
ryanong wrote: post #2

This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…

https://levels.fyi is a good resource to understand where you stand laterally across many companies. Title inflation definitely skews a lot of this. Leveling nomenclature like “principal” and “staff” don’t necessarily correlate across other companies (for example, a senior engineer at Google could come in as a staff engineer or even higher at LinkedIn). But even outside of titles, it’s difficult to become a new playe…

that doesn't answer whether he'd be able to work the same role at a different company, regardless of name.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#84

Post by bradleyjg »

xtreak29 wrote: post #7

Is there a path where one can get to work on code without getting to design and architectural space. Is this thought as career stagnation when someone doesn't wants to work more on higher level design and to remain close to implementation side of things?

There are at least a some people that are so amazingly good at e.g. optimizing assembly routines that they have a very high ceiling on their comp even if all they ever do is that and maybe an occasional talk or blog post. But as you go further and further out on the definition of "very high" it gets rarer and rarer.

The bigger issue, in my opinion, isn't the ceiling on comp. It's the job security as you get older. A lot of the people in their early 30s thinking "the senior engineer role rocks, and $250k total comp is more than enough" aren't thinking through their plans are for their 40s and 50s. Some are, a fair number with that mindset I've meet are into the early retirement / financial independence thing, but many aren't.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#85

Post by hellisothers »

nickm12 wrote: post #47
ryanong wrote: post #2

This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…

An exception to this is the "boomerang" engineer, who leaves the company as a senior software engineer and is hired back as a principal/staff engineer. At my company, there is a belief that it's easier to become a principal by leaving than by going through the rigorous promotion process.

I am also experiencing this and thus am starting to look elsewhere (and others at my co. feel the same), I imagine it’s an industry thing but have been trying to figure out what the root cause is.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#86

Post by gnulinux »

Should principal engineers necessarily be managers? My company has non-manager principals, manager seniors, manager principals etc... Manager is just an extra title added to someone to give them extra responsibilities, regardless of their engineering experience. Is my company different than "usual"?

I don't know how they decide who is senior who is principal, but principal engineers are absolute rock stars. They know anything and everything related to company's engineering from hardware to embedded to massively parallel to machine learning...; and it feels like they memorized every line of code of company's codebase. My manager is a principal engineer, I am very junior junior (not even 1 year into industry yet), and sometimes it really intimates me how competent he is in terms of both breadth and depth.

I sometimes wonder if making such a competent engineer a manager is waste of company resources; not that being an engineer is useless but it seems like you don't need CS geniuses to be managers.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#87

Post by viscanti »

bitL wrote: post #75
fouc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cronyism and networking are quite different things though

I agree that in theory they are different, but in practice they seem to blend quite significantly (viewed with my sample size of 1 of course).

I just think you're over fitting to that sample size of one. It's like saying you're never going to talk to another human because two people once plotted a crime by talking to each other. You're conflating the ends with the means.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#88

Post by inerte »

xtreak29 wrote: post #7

Is there a path where one can get to work on code without getting to design and architectural space. Is this thought as career stagnation when someone doesn't wants to work more on higher level design and to remain close to implementation side of things?

Yes, cranking a lot of quality code still gets rewarded in most companies. Just don't expect to reach the highest levels of seniority with regular promotions, or say, a fat bonus/RSUs, since your impact is smaller than the type of engineers the article mentions.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#89

Post by teekert »

MisterOctober wrote: post #38
maxxxxx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But I am also at this weird point where I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred to another company. A lot of the value that I add now is because of the historical knowledge I have. What we have tried as a company, what we haven't, why we built some things the way we did, how things work currently, how the politics works and the trust I have built. " This worries me too. Within my company I…

I can really relate to this. I 'climbed the ladder' in company X and thereby acquired a lot of company-specific domain knowledge that didn't really have much value outside the company. I realized what kind of a fix I was in years ago and started to lay some groundwork for moving to another firm, but it took until this year to find a company that would place enough value on my [opaque] work at X to hire me at a salary…

Great tip, I feel more and more that my company has ancient tech that they still adhere to (basically as massive VM riddled with third party expensive proprietary software making it impossible to eat our own dog food even) and I now have three choices 1: Learn it and grow in this company but get stuck, 2: Force modern scaleable ways upon them (I've seen people try and fail but I hear more and more employees complain, perhaps I can be the one to lead change) or 3: Leave. I think I'll make this decision within 1 or 2 years (still a lot to learn).

But I feel more and more that growing in this company may be a trap.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#90

Post by valleyjo »

maxxxxx wrote: post #19
ryanong wrote: post #2

This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…

"But I am also at this weird point where I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred to another company. A lot of the value that I add now is because of the historical knowledge I have. What we have tried as a company, what we haven't, why we built some things the way we did, how things work currently, how the politics works and the trust I have built. " This worries me too. Within my company I…

I’ve seen this happen even within the same (large) company. Someone is a director level who has maybe 100 reports. The entire product gets cut. The IC’a find other jobs within the company. There are only so many Director level positions around and many of them are achieved organically. The ex-director then goes somewhere else as a regular engineering manager unlikely to ever have such a position again.
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