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

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

#21

Post by alberth »

angarg12 wrote: post #18

Yes, but the market is particularly bad now. I have 15+ YoE, and currently working at FAANG. I've spent the last few years leading a team of engineers to deliver one of the top priority projects of my org with estimated impact of +$100M ARR, and I have been consistently rated high performer. I also have some niches skills that are particularly on demand these days. I am not actively looking, but I am open to hear fro…

> estimated impact of +$100M ARR

Revenue impact can be tricky, because more times than not - it’s a function of the size of the company you work for more than anything else.

Relative impact (%), along with absolutely impact ($) - is the more meaningful way to quantify impact.

Eg

  Increase revenue by 0.1% (revenue went from $100.0B to $100.1)

  Increase revenue by 100% (revenue went from $0.1B to $0.2)

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

#22

Post by toast0 »

IMHO, the very specific requirements with no wiggle room, especially if they have very specific requests for how to apply are likely in support of immigration requirements. For some immigration processes, the hiring company needs to show that there were no qualified domestic candidates despite doing a search.

If it's a lot of things with this or that, and the submission isn't send postal mail to this address with this reference etc etc, maybe it's just picky recriting.

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

#23

Post by siggen »

angarg12 wrote: post #18

Yes, but the market is particularly bad now. I have 15+ YoE, and currently working at FAANG. I've spent the last few years leading a team of engineers to deliver one of the top priority projects of my org with estimated impact of +$100M ARR, and I have been consistently rated high performer. I also have some niches skills that are particularly on demand these days. I am not actively looking, but I am open to hear fro…

To your last question, I suspect neither. I think screener was inaccurate.

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

#24

Post by jareklupinski »

> 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

all of these skills are also achievable within a couple years by being a relatively trusted engineer at a startup

nothing is more heart-pounding than the first time you push an update to 100 thousand people, with no guardrails but the ones you yourself have installed

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

#25

Post by Anon1096 »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #13
bluefirebrand wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their career has been less about accumulating 10-15 years of progressively more complex experience This is difficult to avoid because most companies don't have a progressively more complex requirements for people to learn from.

Then either jump jobs or get promoted. This is the nature of tech. High risk, high reward. Work for the public sector e.g. US Digital Service if you just want something boring and stable.

For a lot of people the only option is to jump jobs. At small and mid size companies, it's literally not possible to have the impact of an L6+ Google equivalent most of the time. Rough for people not working in the tech industry and wanting to get in, but that's why you get downleveled and honestly it's usually appropriate even if your previous title was staff and now you're a SWE2 or senior.

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

#26

Post by tsunamifury »

angarg12 wrote: post #18

Yes, but the market is particularly bad now. I have 15+ YoE, and currently working at FAANG. I've spent the last few years leading a team of engineers to deliver one of the top priority projects of my org with estimated impact of +$100M ARR, and I have been consistently rated high performer. I also have some niches skills that are particularly on demand these days. I am not actively looking, but I am open to hear fro…

You can barely get director with 1billion+ direct revenue from a division you start. Or even 1billion monthly active users at FAANG now. You have to solve specific political quagmires that affect the whole company.

Then when you leave every company thinks you’re insanely over qualified.

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

#27

Post by brailsafe »

SenHeng wrote: post #15
brailsafe wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I once worked as the sole maintainer of an old legacy product while the company spent 2 years trying to create a new product to replace it. Eventually they abandoned all work and most of the team left. During the transition months, I managed to convince upper management that now would be a good time to update the legacy product with all the knowledge gained over the past years. So I spent about a couple of months or…

Thanks for the example. I suppose that's a fairly unique position to be in, but one that you could have chosen not to pursue. On the surface, the only way that's different than my most recent experience is that of being the director of the initiative, or otherwise responsible for the whole project, (also being laid off doesn't help). Do you think things would have gone differently had people not jumped ship?

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

#28

Post by nsagent »

toast0 wrote: post #22

IMHO, the very specific requirements with no wiggle room, especially if they have very specific requests for how to apply are likely in support of immigration requirements. For some immigration processes, the hiring company needs to show that there were no qualified domestic candidates despite doing a search. If it's a lot of things with this or that, and the submission isn't send postal mail to this address with thi…

I wonder if this is what happened to me. I'm finishing up my PhD and despite being pretty set on going into academia, I applied to some industry jobs back in July that I was pretty uniquely qualified for based on my background and research topic (which is pretty niche). Never heard back. I have a nice postdoc lined up, so it's fine that I never heard back, but I was pretty surprised.

I recently checked and one of those job postings expired and was replaced with an equivalent posting in December. The other job posting (from a different company) is still open.

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

#29

Post by brailsafe »

bdcravens wrote: post #8

I wouldn't worry about crazy requirements; they aren't hard and fast. There have been hilarious examples of this. DHH, the creator of Rails, once posted about a job posting asking for ten years of Rails experience when at the time Rails was something like nine years old, meaning he was the only person on the planet qualified for the job. Job postings are often run through HR, who typically lack enough context for the…

The silly React requirements were definitely what I have been seeing for years prior, but now it's a bit more tenuous

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

#30

Post by blindriver »

The tech job market is the worst I've seen since the dotcom bust. What makes it worse is that hiring has been really incredible the previous 10 years, so there's an entire generation of tech workers that have no idea what a "normal" or "bad" job market is like.

My advice is assume there are 1000 people applying for the same job as you, and you need to tailor every single resume for the job. If it says "Staff" just go for it and don't downplay your experience. Give it your best and let THEM be the one that tells you you're not qualified. Make it your job to study and be so well prepared that they can't tell if you are qualified or not.

I'm assuming that the job market will be bad like this for another 2-3 years so buckle up.

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