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Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?

#21
post #14

Don'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...

Nope, built a leading recruiting platform. You probably have a profile already.

Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?

#22
post #18

In 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" ?

sounds like getting the right things to happen in the right order and JIT fit schedule

Re: Ask HN: What are the expectations of a principal engineer in your company?

#23

This varies wildly by company, and dynamics of the org/team. The best summary I’ve found is the staff/principal engineer archetypes article[1] by Will Larson. He identified 4 archetypes: Team Leader, Architect, Solver and Right Hand. This categorisation broadly matches my own observations & experience at Uber - even if the formal, internal company definition does not put these as such. This comes after he interviewed…

Great links; thank you.
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