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On Being a Principal Engineer

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Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#131

Post by thundergolfer »

pault wrote: post #74
erentz wrote: post #23

Unfortunately the Principal title has been abused and cheapened by some orgs. In some ways necessarily, as comps in tech have grown it’s become necessary to hire people at a Principal level in order to get the necessary comp. In other orgs it’s been a way to lure people who are attracted to the title. Ideally Senior positions would be more respected and have a greater comp range. But now it feels like Senior is almos…

In my experience developers are going straight from junior to senior and "lead" is the new senior.

As an example, I recently got offered a Senior Software Engineer position with 6 months experience @ Zendesk.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#132

Post by maxxxxx »

majormajor wrote: post #52
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hired into a company as a staff engineer, and I probably won’t consider it again. The existing engineers resented me for it, though it was super clear that the product was suffering because the existing engineers had serious skill gaps in critical areas. Meanwhile, to other managers & directors, I was just some new engineer they didn’t know, a political unknown quantity. I hit the ground running and earned a lo…

> The next time I will require the role to be some type of director or IC/distinguished engineer hybrid that is operating with an authority level above that. I've seen this go roughly. A director who brings in a lot of new technical views, challenging the perspectives and opinions held by the team, might not have an easier time than a staff engineer. The director was largely right, but dealt not just with technical r…

Authority certainly helps. It's not everything but without authority you almost have no chance.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#133

Post by johnwheeler »

Titles in software are so stupid. Where I work, everyone is “Software Engineer” whether they have 20 months of experience or 20 years. The respect and pay are commensurate with on-the-job performance and output.

I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy who’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#134

Post by javadocmd »

maxxxxx wrote: post #81
javadocmd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

In addition to tibbett's point (expressing technical accomplishments in terms of their value to the business), do some honest introspection on your value to your peers. I'm really just elaborating on Ms. Botros' article here, but for example you want to ask yourself these kinds of questions:

Do you improve the skills of the people around you? Do you identify and help resolve barriers faced by your peers? (This doesn't always mean fixing things yourself!) Do you improve the environment and culture where you work? Can you work collaboratively to establish a vision for change? How do you gain the buy-in of your peers when it comes time to implement change?

Internalizing these answers will prepare you to steer the conversation onto the skills that you know are important for the role.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#135

Post by enraged_camel »

johnwheeler wrote: post #133

Titles in software are so stupid. Where I work, everyone is “Software Engineer” whether they have 20 months of experience or 20 years. The respect and pay are commensurate with on-the-job performance and output. I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy who’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better…

>>I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy that’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better.

Perhaps you're measuring value too narrowly. A principal engineer can act as a force multiplier for the entire team, even if they themselves are no longer efficient individual contributors.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#136

Post by syndacks »

enraged_camel wrote: post #135
johnwheeler wrote: post #133

Titles in software are so stupid. Where I work, everyone is “Software Engineer” whether they have 20 months of experience or 20 years. The respect and pay are commensurate with on-the-job performance and output. I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy who’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better…

>>I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy that’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better. Perhaps you're measuring value too narrowly. A principal engineer can act as a force multiplier for the entire team, even if they themselves are no longer efficient individual contributors.

Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by "force multiplier" please?

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#137

Post by dcosson »

jameshart wrote: post #120
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…

The challenge I have interviewing people for very senior engineering roles is how to tell the difference between somebody who was nearby when some interesting work got done, and somebody who made something interesting happen . What I’m looking for in a principal engineer is someone who turns good teams into great teams; who steers the organization away from disastrous mistakes; who enables the business to accomplish…

Just curious, in addition to looking for those things do you do all of the same types of technical interviews for a principal engineer as for other engineer roles?

I would imagine a lot of principal candidates are older, maybe a little rustier at the rote algorithm type questions than a sharp new college grad. Do you expect a principal engineer to be along the lines of the best you've ever seen in every category, or do they just need a passing score in the various technical sessions and the differentiating factor is more of these leadership type questions and convincing you about their past successes?

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#138

Post by johnwheeler »

enraged_camel wrote: post #135
johnwheeler wrote: post #133

Titles in software are so stupid. Where I work, everyone is “Software Engineer” whether they have 20 months of experience or 20 years. The respect and pay are commensurate with on-the-job performance and output. I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy who’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better…

>>I know a “principal engineer” who can talk the talk, write books and articles but can’t produce any software of real value, and I work with a guy that’s been working 1/8 as long as me and he’s ten times better. Perhaps you're measuring value too narrowly. A principal engineer can act as a force multiplier for the entire team, even if they themselves are no longer efficient individual contributors.

I would argue that a principal engineer who can’t function as an individual contributor is a less credible leader than one who could.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#139

Post by jedberg »

erentz wrote: post #23

Unfortunately the Principal title has been abused and cheapened by some orgs. In some ways necessarily, as comps in tech have grown it’s become necessary to hire people at a Principal level in order to get the necessary comp. In other orgs it’s been a way to lure people who are attracted to the title. Ideally Senior positions would be more respected and have a greater comp range. But now it feels like Senior is almos…

Title inflation. When someone takes a job with you they want the higher title so that they can get the next title at the next job, because in most orgs title and pay are tied together.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#140

Post by hinkley »

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.

There’s a five level ranking at my company, and I applied for a level 4 position (I’ve been in level 5 equivalent positions before).

My boss somehow talked me into hiring in as a 3 for some reason that I no longer recall. I should have listened to the alarms in my brain. I started mid-year so around 18 months I had to wait for a promotion. My boss quits a couple months before that.

3 years and still a level 3. Gave my two weeks and people high in the pecking order are sad to see me go because I’m good at what I do. Well thanks for the complement, but how about a promotion instead of a heartfelt goodbye?

Sometimes it’s not the bureacracy, it’s a boss who either isn’t good at bucking for promotions or burns all their political capital on other things. Other groups get people promoted. Everybody but my boss thinks I’m a level 4 and has for years. That’s how you lose people and never get them back (I wouldn’t want to work for this manager again, not for reasons of aptitude, but simply because he doesn’t prioritize things that I care about).

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