On Being a Principal Engineer
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On Being a Principal Engineer
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Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#2This rings true to my experience.
I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers.
I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work around the company, process strategy and such. I never expected this to be such a large part of my job, and how much value comes from it.
But I am also at this weird point where I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred to another company. A lot of the value that I add now is because of the historical knowledge I have. What we have tried as a company, what we haven't, why we built some things the way we did, how things work currently, how the politics works and the trust I have built.
In the past year, I have seen less than 5 job posting for a staff engineer.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#3Interesting article. A lot of the qualities the author descrives as required trains of a principal are things I always say a senior engineer/tech team lead should have—e.g. ability to act as a force multiplier, leading by example, and being active in less technical activities like mentorship and recruiting.
Am I off the mark? I suspect I may just not have been at enough orgs with a well developed career track, what the author here calls a 2-level technical track.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#4This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…
I think you are right that seniority at the specific company plays a large role.
Anecdotally, I was told that GitHub does not hire from the outside above the senior level. Going from senior to principal engineer is expected to happen inside the company.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#5This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…
In my experience it’s rare for orgs to hire for principal/staff/architect roles. What I’ve seen instead is people getting hired on as senior engineers and get promoted up from there after they’ve settled into the org.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#6This rings true to my experience. I'm a Staff engineer and of my 40 hour week about 10-15 of those hours are interviews, meetings, and answering questions. Questions about technical feasibility, architectural discussions and planning, long term strategic planning, and lots of one offs from other developers. I enjoy the soft work I do, a lot of emotional labor for other developers, soft sells for tech/feature work aro…
I think you are right that seniority at the specific company plays a large role. Anecdotally, I was told that GitHub does not hire from the outside above the senior level. Going from senior to principal engineer is expected to happen inside the company.
Which is interesting to me, because once you get to staff inside such a company, how would you move to a different company? Are you locked to the company because any other move would be a drastic reduction in comp (because it would be a drastic reduction in value)?
Or are there transferable skills that are valuable enough that a transfer could happen at roughly the same comp level?
I don't know but this is an interesting question in terms of human capital and labor mobility.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#7Is there a path where one can get to work on code without getting to design and architectural space. Is this thought as career stagnation when someone doesn't wants to work more on higher level design and to remain close to implementation side of things?
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#8Interesting article. A lot of the qualities the author descrives as required trains of a principal are things I always say a senior engineer/tech team lead should have—e.g. ability to act as a force multiplier, leading by example, and being active in less technical activities like mentorship and recruiting. Am I off the mark? I suspect I may just not have been at enough orgs with a well developed career track, what t…
This depends on the culture & hiring philosophies of the company.
I've seen many places that "only hire the best" or "only hire seniors" then end up with a bunch of engineers who dont mentor or force multiply but tend to just focus on what ever pice of a system they own.
I've also seen senior used only to justify a pay bracket as well.
Personally I agree that a senior or lead enginner needs to have these skills.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#9Is there a path where one can get to work on code without getting to design and architectural space. Is this thought as career stagnation when someone doesn't wants to work more on higher level design and to remain close to implementation side of things?
Ultimately it's going to come down to the value you provide the company. The reason senior engineers get paid more than juniors is because of the value they provide over a junior. The same applies to principal over senior and so on. Eventually, there is only so much value you can provide if you limit your skills to one specific area and are unwilling to expand.
I can't speak for every company, but I imagine that if you got to a point where you are the best coder at the company, but you refuse to discuss architecture or design, your salary and advancement opportunities will stagnate. This isn't because you're not a great coder, but rather because the value your code provides in isolation, without architectural context, is limited.
Re: On Being a Principal Engineer
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are right that seniority at the specific company plays a large role. Anecdotally, I was told that GitHub does not hire from the outside above the senior level. Going from senior to principal engineer is expected to happen inside the company.
Which is interesting to me, because once you get to staff inside such a company, how would you move to a different company? Are you locked to the company because any other move would be a drastic reduction in comp (because it would be a drastic reduction in value)? Or are there transferable skills that are valuable enough that a transfer could happen at roughly the same comp level? I don't know but this is an interes…
Staff/principal SWE compensation is the premium an org pays for your tribal knowledge, and arguably non-transferable. “Golden handcuffs”.