31–40 of 176 posts
When my partner and I first meet we were both senior engineers at larger SF tech companies. Three years later she is a principle engineer and I stayed a senior engineer. She and I agree that everything past a senior engineer is political. She is much better and handling the complex social dynamics of the management class. It's kinda a game of finding the least common denominator that works best by not pissing off peo…
Principal software engineer: the old grumpy guy who berates and borderline verbally abuses new/junior engineers and jeopardizes mental health across the org.
Principal software engineer: the old grumpy guy who berates and borderline verbally abuses new/junior engineers and jeopardizes mental health across the org.
Principal software engineer: the old grumpy guy who berates and borderline verbally abuses new/junior engineers and jeopardizes mental health across the org.
Wrong, I've met plenty of seniors who fit that bill as well. :)
Principal software engineer: the old grumpy guy who berates and borderline verbally abuses new/junior engineers and jeopardizes mental health across the org.
As a Software Engineer, I consider it my obligation to ensure that people across an organization understand that it is not normal and not acceptable for a Software Engineer to be rude, angry, grumpy or dismissive. The genius mystique must be defeated. I behave as an activist employee: if there's a nerd bringing shame upon nerd kind, I make sure to tackle it head-on. I implore everyone to be activist employees. A nerd…
Principal software engineer: the old grumpy guy who berates and borderline verbally abuses new/junior engineers and jeopardizes mental health across the org.
Junior software engineer: arrogant, self-entitled child who thinks they know everything but doesn't even know what they don't know but insists that their ideas are better, creating a people-hostile minefield across the org.
Try reading: https://staffeng.com/about/ tldr; it varies from company to company. In my experience the more senior you get the more like an organizational therapist you are expected to become. Instead of writing code you're helping engineering teams and executives communicate, fixing communication silos, writing specifications and requirements, reviewing progress on large multi-team features, and generally trying to…
The interview itself is here: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2020/10/29/staff-engine...
I've been a "Principal Engineer" at a large software company and I feel like I embodied each of those archetypes at various points. At various points I was neck deep in critical code, doing the dog and pony show at the executive level, coordinating with other engineering teams and several product managers, and generally doing all of things required to keep pushing something forward. My relationship with my manager wa…
To all the managers out there please make note of the above. Do yourself a favour and please give senior engineers enough autonomy and freedom.
At my previous place I managed a senior engineer and made it amply clear to him that we are peers. Between us my job was to handle all the bureaucracy (including scheduling meetings, finding meeting rooms etc.,) and his was to be the team's tech lead.
Always keep in mind that sometimes the "principal engineer" title is just a company's only way of hiring a senior engineer because their pay bands are so far below market rate. Don't let a description of a Google principal engineer scare you away from inquiring and applying for principal engineer positions at other companies. Source: have been that person.
Or more generally: Job titles aren’t portable between companies in the tech industry. Don’t assume that they mean the same thing at every company. Don’t assume a company is underpaying people just because they’re giving out Principal Software Engineer titles. Principal Software Engineer at one company could just be the equivalent of Senior Software Engineer II at another company. On the hiring side, everyone knows th…