I like this overview of Mozilla's engineering track: https://twitter.com/Gankra_/status/1046438955439271936/photo...
Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#12In my experience they walk around all projects making the odd comment. They are across all projects, but don’t do a lot. If there are issues between projects, they will help solve them.
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#13In my corner of Amazon, PEs are the technical peer to high-level people/program managers. The people/project managers are there to make sure that human work proceeds according to plan and have small understanding or concern for nitty gritty technical architecture. In comparison, the PEs have small understanding of the nitty gritty of the human labor management and are there to drive design reviews and act as kind of…
You can be more specific using the role guidelines. Principal Engineers work on projects that span the entire organisation, usually addressing cross cutting concerns of several teams. They advice Directors and VPs on strategical, mid/long term technical decisions. They set the standards of quality for the org and engage with the community at large. They work on extremely complex and highly ambiguous problems. In a ch…
Thanks, that is mind expanding. I'm young in my career and I don't think I've looked at the role guidelines for any role other than my own.
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#14Don't worry so much about the role, just make sure you're working under/with someone who'll get the best out of you.
Having a good manager is the single most important factor to success and happiness at work.
(I've placed over 10k developers at 100s of companies, mostly startups)
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#15What I hope for:
Someone with plenty of experience who chooses to invest in interesting people problems and tries to coordinate towards a future that is shared across silos
What I usually expect:
Someone with plenty of experience who chooses to invest in interesting software problems. Said investment may or may not ever propogate out in a tangible sense, being more akin to an R&D project or something.
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None of the above is based on what the role is meant to be but what it "feels" like having observed a few people with that title
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#16Here (noris.de), a principal engineer is expected to: * do some publications and/or publications in their field of expertise * provide technical leadership (input on technology decisions, some architecture support, help write guidelines etc.) * be part of the escalation path if problems cannot be solved otherwise * help others in the company level up with their skills (at least as far as they are interested) Here, pr…
I meant to write "publications and/or public speaking"
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#17In my company there are several types of Principal Engineers.
I would say they usually have 3 role dimensions and each principal has a different percentage of each: 1) Architecture 2) Orchestration 3) Direct Problem solving
Some are 10/0/90, others are 70/30/0, others are almost like Project Managers, something like 10/90/0.
My personal preferred for them style is something like 40/10/50, but usual expectations are more like 40/50/10, which very few are.
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#18In my company there are several types of Principal Engineers. I would say they usually have 3 role dimensions and each principal has a different percentage of each: 1) Architecture 2) Orchestration 3) Direct Problem solving Some are 10/0/90, others are 70/30/0, others are almost like Project Managers, something like 10/90/0. My personal preferred for them style is something like 40/10/50, but usual expectations are m…
Can you please expand on what you mean by "Orchestration" ?
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#19Don't worry so much about the role, just make sure you're working under/with someone who'll get the best out of you. Having a good manager is the single most important factor to success and happiness at work. (I've placed over 10k developers at 100s of companies, mostly startups)
Are you a headhunter? And if so, would you put your contact info here? (Don't feel bad. You didn't put yourself forward or advertise. I asked.)
I'm not looking at the moment. But I keep a file of headhunters for when I am looking...
Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?
#20I'm not sure we have that title at my company. Our senior program technical leads might fit there. Theres really no set criteria - it's just if the people above you think you deserve it (kind of like any position). I do remember HR put out some example competencies. The only one I remember around that level was that a person could demonstrate that level of knowledge by having a book professionally published on a pertainate technology. Needless to say, there are very few people at my company in that level.