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On Being a Principal Engineer

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Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#271

Post by tracer4201 »

imetatroll wrote: post #181
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 think you are wise to worry. Last year I was laid off from a company whose technology I helped build for years. I was promoted up to the position of "CTO"... with no team below me. It was a very small company working on email archiving and encryption that still runs today. As the system admin and solo developer I was spread thin, working on a system that now processes anywhere from 80 to 120 (150?) million emails a…

Contributing a ton and then not being able to speak to it isn’t that abnormal. Well, at least I felt in the same boat.

I keep a daily log of outstanding and completed tasks. It includes everything from high level sprint stories or tasks to setup meeting with such and such for some project or write status report for z.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#272

Post by hk-mars »

01100011 wrote: post #65
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…

> I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred It depends on how you got to be a principal. If you fell into the role because of accumulated knowledge and promotions, probably not. If you are self-driven, work to achieve complete knowledge of your company's products and technologies, push for high standards, and can transfer knowledge well to others...yes.

agreed

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#273

Post by hk-mars »

throwaway98988 wrote: post #158
md5person wrote: post #104

I appreciate the idealistic take on what a "principal" role should be like, but in all actuality, principal engineers are commonly the ones that simply stayed there long enough (ie. to survive multiple re-orgs), and played their politics cards wisely. They were playing the title game. Often, their work is invisible to most. They perpetuate tribal knowledge, and have trouble letting go of the past and accepting change…

Unfortunately, I have to agree. I've been hired into an informal "staff/principal" role for my part of the organization and it's simply impossible to work. The other staff/principal engineers I see here are exactly how you describe. They are against anything that will make their roles as "the oracle" less important. Documentation is such a mess because of that and the onboarding process specifically says there are a…

So how to improve this situation? I think it’s human problem :)

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#274

Post by hk-mars »

candybar wrote: post #98

In my experience, the best principal engineers are those who think of themselves as just engineers and simply focus on the best ways to make a difference without much preconceived notion of what that entails. The worst are those who have these strong preconceived notions about what they are supposed to be doing, often focusing exclusively on the more visible, politically expedient tasks in the name of having organiza…

good comment,thanks

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#275

Post by gricem87 »

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Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#276

Post by stonewhite »

md5person wrote: post #104

I appreciate the idealistic take on what a "principal" role should be like, but in all actuality, principal engineers are commonly the ones that simply stayed there long enough (ie. to survive multiple re-orgs), and played their politics cards wisely. They were playing the title game. Often, their work is invisible to most. They perpetuate tribal knowledge, and have trouble letting go of the past and accepting change…

I do agree with your sentiment and I am always genuinely curious about whether an organization chart would stay the same if the whole team was fired and re-hired. If not, then how can you counteract this organizational-rot problem. Also how to understand if you yourself is the part of this problem.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#277

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

I can confirm this; about three years ago, I was in a position that was similar to this post's description of a principal engineer - doing a lot of code reviews, meetings across teams, interviewing, etc. I haven't had a similar position since; it's a very er, opportunistic one? In that you need to be in an environment where there is a need for a role like that. It's a role one needs to grow into.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#278

Post by throwaway000111 »

Could just aswell have called it on “On being morally righteous”. I worked with several PEs in my last job. Two that stand out to me right now to make my point...

PE 1: Complete fraud. He was also a people manager in addition to his endowed “expertise”. He oversaw an Outlook mailbox, and had a chokehold on any communication with the team. Any person emailing anyone in the team directly would be reprimanded that they should contact him instead. His primary job purpose was to read email, forward it, get reaponses, and then reply as himself. Doing this for about 20+ years makes you look like a 50x engineer. Especially when the people you forward to are other PEs and generally smart people.

PE 2: Was actual expert, worked for PE 1. This guy was humble, generally helped all the junior guys in the right direction, asked you how your day was, wishied you happy 3/14 (pi) day, and had rolled plenty of his own software to have cred. He made contributions that impacted 100s of millions if not billions of people worldwide.

PE 2 was sacked. PE 1 was promoted to Sr PE. Sr PE has serious employee retention issues, and is constantly on the prowl to sucker the next PhD grad into his honey trap. He has snaked his way into academic conferences with other people’s work. But who cares... I’m not about to get into a discussion about being morally righteous...

Context: large blue semiconductor shithole.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#279

Post by blattimwind »

lugg wrote: post #247
Klathmon wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel I do great during the interview, it's just getting to that point is where I'm struggling. Writing that out seems to really bring out a part of my brain that makes it always feel braggy. (I really think it's the fact that during a conversation I have realtime feedback on what the interviewer wants and what parts I should focus on) I'm "full time" looking for a job at the moment, and it's rough with how much of…

> A lot of no responses, no way to gauge how i'm doing, and even when rejections come in there's no information along with them to help me understand why or how to improve If you don't come out of an interview and know you have an offer coming your way: assume you have no offer coming your way. It's usually very obvious and both parties are trying to say your hired without actually showing your cards. It's kind of a…

> You need to be asking for feedback if you're not getting it. Get blatant if you have to.

Also consider that at that point it's completely risk-free. If you just leave, you're not hired anyway, so regardless their response, you can only win from there.

Re: On Being a Principal Engineer

#280

Post by tristanperry »

throwaway98988 wrote: post #157

What should a staff/principal engineer do if company culture is against change? Posted a related question here, if that's a better place to discuss this question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19130451

It can be a tricky one, but fundamentally the _reason_ why change isn't happening needs to be understood. A company full of smart people is unlikely to _never_ want change for any reason - especially if that change would clearly make everyone's life easier. But maybe everyone is overloaded with work and a bit burnt out, so 'big' change is scary to them? Or perhaps the 'important change' really isn't that important? I've worked with devs before who have spoken for hours a day on the need to change x, y and z, when in reality it wasn't fully needed (and/or their suggestions stemmed from misunderstandings).

I guess my latter point there relates to the fact that there's not always a single "right way" of doing something.

Now I know that this might sound like I'm the same as the people shooting down your suggestions in your linked 'Ask HN' thread. Trust me, I'm not like that: I left my previous job a few months ago for the exact same reasons that you have outlined (i.e. there was clear change that was needed, but the 'powers that be' weren't willing to make those changes).

But to circle back to your question: assuming there aren't massive organizational problems at a company, change usually needs to be made slowly-but-surely with the buy-in of any previous 'change blockers' (where possible). Anyone trying to force through lots of change in a short period of time will usually struggle.

If even minor change is not possible, there's two main possibilities:

1) You're wrong about the change, and you might be the problem. 2) You're right about the change, the company is dysfunctional, and moving to a new job is the answer.

From your linked thread, (2) does sound like the situation in your case (fortunately/unfortunately).

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