Ask HN: Do companies hire principal and staff level engineers from job postings?

I'm in the same hole as a ton of other people in Canada and the U.S, such that I'm unemployed and prospects are nil. What I'm seeing is that most companies, if they have any postings, have chosen to only advertise positions for people who are comically well-decorated; Principal engineers with 10 years of experience, plus the masters degree, plus a bunch of specific cloud orchestration, scalable systems, or other devops experience that just seems entirely impractical to accumulate without simply advancing at the same company or FAANG for 15 years, which seems itself to be an unachievable tenure in this millennium.

I've been some kind of software developer for nearly 10 years, not all in a professional capacity and I don't claim that, but I'm not qualified for these positions; I just don't really have any other option but to chance it.

My question is, are qualified people actually hired through this channel, or are these postings just a formality so they can bypass some bureaucratic requirement?

Edit: Is it worth spending the time on a decent cover letter that indicates I'd be interested in discussing a lower seniority position if they don't consider me qualified for the Staff or higher? Also, this isn't relegated to startup land, more traditional online retailers, and others who's core competency isn't necessarily software

> only advertise positions for people who are comically well-decorated; Principal engineers with 10 years of experience, plus the masters degree, plus a bunch of specific cloud orchestration, scalable systems, or other devops experience that just seems entirely impractical to accumulate without simply advancing at the same company or FAANG for 15 years, which seems itself to be an unachievable tenure in this millennium.

You don’t need to spend 15 years at the same company or at FAANG to acquire these skills.

One issue that a lot of people face is that their career has been less about accumulating 10-15 years of progressively more complex experience and more about accumulating 1-2 years of experience 7-10 different times. It can take some deliberate planning to work your way upward over time and across companies rather than repeating the same arc over and over again.

Another trap is when people who want to be high-level ICs end up in management for a while, slowly getting further and further from working on the tech.

In this job market it’s hard to go from unemployed in one country to direct hire Principal in another country unless you have an extraordinary skill set. It will make more sense to get your foot in the door at any job that might work, then move up from there.

"One issue that a lot of people face is that their career has been less about accumulating 10-15 years of progressively more complex experience and more about accumulating 1-2 years of experience 7-10 different times."

This could also be worded as:

"One issue that a lot of people face is that they did not work at prestigious technical companies. Having a long tenure at such companies gives hiring managers confidence in placing them into principal level roles, regardless of what the candidate actually learned at said company. Everything is about the illusion of competence."

I suppose the nature of that quote is more about the exaggerated nature of the requirements compared to the rather unlikely ability to fulfill those requirements without gradually climbing at a company with an endless level of advancement in an IC role, but not excluding the possibility it could be done otherwise. That said, I definitely suffer from this problem, but it's in-part a result of both no clear way to advance in most circumstances, and repeated volatility in both the market, world, and my life. Now, there aren't jobs to advance from, even if I could land one, and prior to being laid off, I'd most likely have just continued doing either my regular course of work or eventually being offered a managing role. My impression is that it would be a rare circumstance to be offered a higher level IC position at a different company without making a horizontal move in role and building the trust there.

I wouldn't say I've actually repeated the same arc ever, it would just seem that way on the surface, and maybe I should think about how to make it not seem that way.

Can you provide an example where this has happened both outside of a FAANG and outside of management?