[HN Gopher] What does a Principal Software Engineer do?
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What does a Principal Software Engineer do?
Author : awesometechguy
Score : 183 points
Date : 2021-12-14 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.devgenius.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.devgenius.io)
| rgrmrts wrote:
| The pay for principal SWE can get up to $1m+ (at large sv tech
| companies, or even at startups assuming their equity pans out).
|
| That $800k number is more accurate for staff/senior staff.
| rgrmrts wrote:
| Also, I want to add a more positive anecdote to accompany some
| of the more negative ideas of principal engineers. I'm a senior
| software engineer (L5 in FAANG terms) and I've worked with a
| handful of principal engineers who have all been incredible
| colleagues.
|
| All the principal engineers I have worked with have been humble
| and ego-less engineers. There's this notion that they just
| write docs but they're invaluable code/spec/design reviewers,
| they have taken on major refactors to tackle tech debt that
| just lingered for years, and have generally unblocked me on so
| many occasions. The strongest principal engineers have never
| taken credit for massive projects they have orchestrated but
| "everyone knows" they're valuable.
|
| It takes a lot of skill, and I've found they switch between the
| "archetypes" effortlessly. Beyond that, they've helped me grow
| in my career and find impactful projects that look good on perf
| reviews. In my mind, the good ones are definitely worth their
| cost.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > To achieve the "org-level" impact, principal engineers need to
| be very selective on what to work on and use as much leverage as
| they can. For example, to set them up for success and maximize
| their influence, a principal engineer usually directly reports to
| a "director-level" engineering leader.
|
| Whoa, that is a cynical take and smells a little of sour grapes.
|
| I 100% agree that the PE title is abused both out of nepotism,
| and out of site-wide populism, but the _intent_ is relatively
| pure, at least at large companies where the title actually
| matters:
|
| There are some engineers that are so good at solving problems
| that they can be dropped into any crisis situation and help fix
| it, like a special forces soldier. After 30+ years in engineering
| I've seen them in action, and most of the time they deserve the
| title. They are just that good. Those are your PEs.
|
| However, you need a large enough sample population to produce PEs
| because it is based on relative performance. It is harder to
| identify one in a group of 10, but in a division of 1000 it
| becomes abundantly clear.
|
| Typically how you become a PE is by waiting in line and keeping
| at what you do, because usually there are only so many PE's
| promoted per year to help mitigate abuse of the system (there
| will be some in bigger organizations). This idea of being
| selective is ... misguided. You don't really have a choice.
|
| Now combine those last two paragraphs and I can see how it
| appears there is room for gaming the system by only picking
| cherry products. However, it is unlikely you would be able to say
| to a VP or GM, "Hey, I want to work on THAT project, not this
| crap one you stuck me on, because I want more visibility for
| promotion!" Maybe that'll work, but good luck?
| xxpor wrote:
| >However, it is unlikely you would be able to say to a VP or
| GM, "Hey, I want to work on THAT project, not this crap one you
| stuck me on, because I want more visibility for promotion!"
|
| I think this is very dependent on the incentives that are set
| up for the GM. If they're being judged on how they're
| developing their org, and number of promotions is looked at,
| now they may agree with you that the non-crap thing is the best
| thing to work on.
|
| There's also the more implicit side of it, where if you're just
| generally good at what you do (or more cynically, if you're on
| the manager's good side for whatever reason), they'll be more
| inclined to let you work on what you want regardless of the
| motivations.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| This is what I was referring to with site-level bias. I've
| seen certain sites brag about their # of principal engineers.
| Ultimately sites are handed jobs based on their past
| performance, but this abuse of the system remains. I'm being
| a little naive, but that's just me, and these abuses aren't
| that frequent.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| I'm a principal engineer for the next 3.5 days, and then I
| retire.
|
| The key element is that you are half technical and other half
| people. You could say the other half is political, but that's
| just what happens when you get a bunch of people together. The
| key is that larger companies are hard to steer. You can't have N
| engineers in N directions, and you need to point them in
| direction.
|
| The way I look at it from a technical perspective is ensuring
| that the game being played is winnable. Is the project going to
| work? Or, is this a death march waiting to happen? Do people know
| what they need to do? Do they have the tools and knowledge? Are
| stake-holders bought into the picture? Is funding going to endure
| the march?
|
| The title is entirely useless if you are not in a large
| organization. Turning the ship even 1 degree is a lot of talking
| and organizing... Meh...
|
| I like to build, but I'm happy to never build a pyramid again.
| posharma wrote:
| Would it be fair to say that half of the job is project/program
| management?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Not in my experience: there are typically specific project
| and program managers. The job of the Staff/Principal Engineer
| is usually to perform some kind of technical leadership:
| guiding code reviews, mentoring, architectural or technology
| guidance (what framework should use use?), remember the
| lessons learned from previous projects, and also serve as a
| liaison between the technical and non-technical departments
| in a company.
|
| And in most cases, that's in addition to writing code. One of
| my last job descriptions as a Staff Engineer had me writing
| code about 10% of the time :-(
| ska wrote:
| > The title is entirely useless if you are not in a large
| organization.
|
| I don't think that is entirely true, but at a smaller company
| it should mean that you are largely the one steering, at least
| in your natural domain. On the other hand if you have a 40
| person company with a CTO, a VP engg, a dir of software, 2
| principals, 6 sr staff, etc. then yes it's meaningless.
|
| I've seen small startups where principal engineer is the
| highest technical position existing, which actually isn't
| crazy.
| rwmj wrote:
| PSEs are really earning $800k per year?
| vishnugupta wrote:
| At FAANG and similar companies yes. Note that it's total comp
| which includes RSUs. At senior levels RSU refresher is quite
| high and it all adds up.
| marstall wrote:
| nope.
| ryanianian wrote:
| At faang-level tech companies. Total comp. Base is likely 30%
| of that. By the time someone reaches principal they've likely
| been at the company for 5+ years which for many is long enough
| for equity to snowball such that previous years' grants are
| vesting at 5x their grant valuation. (Or if they're hired on as
| principal they're likely leaving similar comp on the table so
| hiring managers have to make up for it, usually with future-
| vesting equity of similar current valuations.)
| Kranar wrote:
| In total compensation yes. That means it usually includes stock
| and at that level about 50-60% of your compensation will be
| stock.
|
| Look at https://www.levels.fyi to compare companies, but yes
| overall 800k to over 1 million is quite common for a Principal
| and typically it requires about 10-15 years of experience.
| makecheck wrote:
| Having been at several companies, I think I was happiest about my
| career when I didn't have a fancy title and did not really know
| anyone else's either (aside from obvious managers). It was nicer
| just knowing who's in charge of what _thing_ , and seeing your
| influence grow as you are trusted with more _things_.
|
| When I see titles, it just makes unhelpful thoughts enter my
| head, like: are all these people "at my level" really
| contributing as much as me? Sometimes I even thought the reverse,
| like: how can this seemingly-junior person still be stuck at that
| level, when he is clearly doing all this great stuff we depend on
| every day? Of course the especially soul-crushing case is when
| you encounter people that _clearly suck_ at what they do, and
| they're 1-2 levels _above_ you; and worse, I have occasionally
| seen those people promoted _further_!
|
| It is also hard not to look at titles on places like LinkedIn. I
| know I shouldn't care, since titles mean different things at
| every company, and some especially-impressive-sounding titles can
| range from "meh" to "god-level" depending on where it is. And
| yet, it gets in my head sometimes, making me wonder every few
| years if I am at the level I should be.
|
| When the title "matters" at a company, it also makes me consider
| it a factor in annual reviews. If I get a raise, bonus, etc. but
| see my damned _title_ stagnate year over year, suddenly I _care_
| about this and take it as a complete lack of recognition by the
| company (that literally would not happen if they simply did not
| tell me what my title is!).
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I hadn't thought about it in this context before, but I used to
| train Kendo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendo), a Japanese
| martial art, a long time ago. One interesting thing is that
| Kendo doesn't have belts like most other martial arts, the
| principle being that seeing the color of someone's belt causes
| you to prejudge their ability. Ideally, you should only know
| how good they are by actually training/fighting with them.
|
| I've been very disappointed by comparing people's titles with
| their actual technical ability -- somehow it never seems to be
| the case that the ability outstrips the title.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> somehow it never seems to be the case that the ability
| outstrips the title.
|
| Really? You've never worked with a junior who's punching far
| above their weight? I've had several on my team and work as
| hard as I can to get them promoted asap.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| OK, perhaps I should have said "rarely." I've had direct
| reports who were like that and happily gave them the max
| rating on Performance Reviews and recommended promotions.
|
| That said, it definitely gets rarer the higher up you go.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Peter principle
| CodeMage wrote:
| I'm waiting to find a place that won't push me to keep
| advancing up the career ladder, without leaving my salary
| lagging behind the rising cost of living.
|
| Does having limited ambition make you a bad dev/engineer, if
| you keep learning new things and contributing quality code at
| your current level of responsibility?
| LargeWu wrote:
| It doesn't make you a bad engineer, but it does, generally,
| put a ceiling on the value you are able to provide to the
| company. Individual contributors can only get so much done in
| a given amount of time, and over a long enough time scale,
| are generally interchangeable with one another.
|
| Sure, you might have some specialized knowledge or understand
| system X better than anybody else, but there's diminishing
| returns on that, hence why you won't get big raises forever.
|
| As you move up the chain, it eventually stops being about
| your direct technical contributions and about your ability to
| multiply the value of everybody under you in your org.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> it eventually stops being about your direct technical
| contributions and about your ability to multiply the value
| of everybody under you in your org._
|
| I thought that was the whole point of the IC track: putting
| a technical person into a role where they can be a
| multiplier without burdening them with management
| responsibilities.
|
| Every staff/principle/architect IC I've ever worked with
| has had that kind of positive effect on the teams around
| them. Their schedules were indistinguishable from most
| managers, except they met mostly one on one and they could
| get a senior engineer's worth of work (impact wise) done in
| between the meetings instead of paying the management
| overhead.
| [deleted]
| pradn wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head. It was very different coming from
| Microsoft, where people's title and level (about one-two levels
| corresponded to a particular title) were visible in every chat
| dialog, to Google where you can edit your title to anything you
| want and levels can be seen only by going to a tool and looking
| it up specifically.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| I've personally set my title to "Shennanigans Regularly
| Effected".
|
| Also, lots of folk deliberately opt out of level visibility,
| too.
| pradn wrote:
| I didn't know you could opt out of level visibility!
| ghaff wrote:
| At my current company, where I've been for over ten years,
| I've always just made up a title to match my current
| focus/what seemed "fresh." My original external title that
| was made up to hire me didn't actually make a lot of sense
| and differed from the internal HR title anyway.
|
| Ended up doing something similar in my original tech job as
| well. I'm not sure I've ever really used my official HR title
| and would probably have to look it up to be sure I'm
| remembering it correctly.
| xmprt wrote:
| On the flip side, having a title is a good way to know if
| you're being compensated appropriately. If you see someone 2
| levels above you working on much less impactful projects then
| perhaps it's time to have a conversation with your manager
| about pay or time to start looking for new jobs.
| kstrauser wrote:
| On a side note, I use to see people with higher titles than
| mine not visibly doing as much as me, and found it grating.
| Now I have one of those titles, and I'm working harder than
| before, but a lot of it is with vendors, contractors, and
| overseeing projects. To ICs inside a particular project, it
| probably likes like I'm not doing much of anything. It
| changed my outlook on such things a lot.
| eadmund wrote:
| I have found the same thing over the years. A lot of times
| the folks who 'just don't do anything' and 'just don't
| understand' were doing plenty and understood plenty, I just
| was too immature to get that at the time.
|
| Not 100% always, mind you, but way more often than not.
| berto4 wrote:
| i feel like a lot of folks don't care for the title as much as
| the monetary incentives and perceived "power" that comes with
| it.
| soheil wrote:
| > when you encounter people that clearly suck at what they do,
| and they're 1-2 levels above you
|
| I think this is a logical contradiction. If there exists people
| that you are in a position to judge their competence you
| deserve to be in their position or higher, therefore it cannot
| be that they are 1-2 levels higher than you.
| burnished wrote:
| Do people get what they deserve? It seems unclear. Therefor,
| no logical contradiction.
|
| Logic is a great tool by the way, but unless you are applying
| it formally you might be better off not trying to invoke it
| casually.
| trgn wrote:
| That's all true, and yet, and yet.
|
| > and seeing your influence grow as you are trusted with more
| things.
|
| That's the ideal scenario, that you earn the esteem and trust
| of your peers because the work you do speaks for itself.
|
| The flipside with this is, this process takes time. It really
| takes years. Sometimes there will not be that time. You are a
| new hire brought in to do a high-impact thing; or a high-impact
| project crosses across the entire organization where suddenly
| all participants are relative stranger; or the team you worked
| in was of very low external visibility but a mentor recognized
| your potential and pulled you out to help recalibrate a
| different but malfunctioning team, etc...
|
| Then titles are important. It is very unfortunate that we are
| very cynical of titles, because, in well-run organizations,
| they are meaningful, and in fact, should be meaningful. Imagine
| in the military if every officer had to prove themselves over
| and over again. It's unworkable.
|
| At some point, larger organizations will need to grant leverage
| to a technical individual. A title helps with providing that.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Same things as senior but more. Source: I've been one.
|
| Senior and principal prefixes are there to provide respect in
| orgs that rely on titles for respect (possibly a sign of
| toxicity), or a way to explain to HR why someone's salary is
| higher.
| lawn wrote:
| > or a way to explain to HR why someone's salary is higher.
|
| This is exactly how my company motivated it when I asked for a
| higher salary.
| lanstin wrote:
| A bit of a problem tho for most orgs. If you can only pay
| more money by promoting people, the job market is suddenly so
| hot people will leave if you don't get them more money, but
| it is a bit silly to just promote every one, and there is a
| useful distinction to be had between people whose work is
| mostly heads down coding vs people whose work is also
| mentoring and communicating technical views to larger numbers
| of people. The words around promotions usually seem to be
| about expanding influence and affecting larger numbers of
| coworkers. That is useful, and fun if you like it, but the
| purely awesome coders might also need big raises when job
| market spikes.
| [deleted]
| davidw wrote:
| This all sounds like it comes from the world of Action Item,
| Professional Super Hero ( https://professionalsuperhero.com/ )
|
| Me? I just want to write, improve or even remove code to make
| software better.
| baby wrote:
| 800k TC for a 7? That seems low
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| 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 people and making everyone
| maximally happy. That often means the decisions you make you know
| are not the most optimal, but the most politically optimal. Just
| our observations.
| phekunde wrote:
| > 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
| people and making everyone maximally happy. That often means
| the decisions you make you know are not the most optimal, but
| the most politically optimal.
|
| A colleague of mine at previous company once described all this
| in two words "managing expectations" :)
| lumost wrote:
| It goes beyond managing expectations. What goals do you take?
| What goals do you ouah back against? How do you do this? How
| do you route around cranky groups that get nothing done?
| dkarl wrote:
| The political part is so important, and such a departure from
| solving technical problems. I feel like nothing in my life has
| prepared me for it, or maybe I just ignored everything that
| would have.
|
| I think there's a continuum of political savvy, though, where
| most developers have some level of it. For example, if one of
| your developers creates a new service using a technology that
| is new to the codebase, and half of the senior developers say,
| "Ugh! I'm not touching that. It's just <developer's name>
| showing off his big brain. I'm not wasting my time figuring out
| that unnecessary academic crap," you can understand how that
| was a failure even if a purely technical evaluation concluded
| that the learning curve was reasonable and the benefits
| outweighed the effort required. Before committing to the
| technology, it was necessary to introduce the idea in a way
| that got the senior devs to buy in, and if you can't accomplish
| that, you can't use the technology at all, because it's going
| to create morale and social problems as well a creating an
| isolated service that few people will work on.
|
| That's a basic level of political savvy I think most people can
| relate to, so, if you can understand that much, you have a base
| to build on.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| In my experience the issue experimented technical
| contributors have with politics is not savviness, it's
| managing frustration. Unless you enjoy playing politics for
| politics sake and value the grind of improving your position
| in the system, the mix of ineffective compromises and letting
| things rot because the blame will go the right way tends to
| wear you down in the long run.
| joshdev wrote:
| Another way to look at it is you are expected to include
| business factors into your decision making. Sometimes the most
| optimal engineering solution is not the most optimal business
| solution. Politics can definitely be a factor, but being able
| explain clearly why doing something helps the business can be a
| big part of making the jump to more senior roles.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > That often means the decisions you make you know are not the
| most optimal, but the most politically optimal.
|
| Not intended to quibble, but to me that smacks of the dreaded
| "mid-level management" tier.
|
| As a lead or principle, I describe what I do as being a "fire-
| and-forget resource". I build everything myself and don't
| require supervision. I will deliver regardless and am also able
| to justify my decisions. People seem to be happy so far.
|
| That process is almost completely independent from meat-space
| concerns, aside from the requisite UX design.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > As a lead or principle, I describe what I do as being a
| "fire-and-forget resource". I build everything myself and
| don't require supervision. I will deliver regardless and am
| also able to justify my decisions. People seem to be happy so
| far.
|
| Terminology is subjective of course, but:
|
| I would also expect the above from a "senior" developer.
|
| I would expect a "lead" developer to additionally be involved
| in leading a team and coordinating work within that team.
| (either from a project, people or tech perspective, or
| all/both).
|
| I would expect a "principle" developer to be working at a
| higher level coordinating work between multiple teams and
| making architectural decisions that cut across the whole org
| or a large subsection of it at a larger company.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| This gets tough. My company also loosely views Senior as
| the pinnacle of technical achievement with Lead and
| Principal engineers essentially being much higher level
| with no direct reports, but still doing policy,
| stakeholder, and political activities. Recently, some have
| pointed out the flaws in such a system as it leaves out the
| potential for promoting and giving a pay raise to senior
| staff that have continued making themselves far more
| valuable, but don't want to be capped or go into politics.
| There needs to be a path for someone who is just beast on
| the technical side and can be brought out to solve any
| problem. If that person is an order of magnitude more
| knowledgeable than your seniors, then they deserve to be
| distinguished as such. Our competitors that have figured
| this out have titles to better reflect this reality.
| jason-phillips wrote:
| Those are great points to consider, thank you
| frizzle112 wrote:
| I think it depends on the complexity of what you're
| building. If it's something very novel or something that
| requires a lot of domain or technical expertise, then you
| might need a principal engineer to be the point person to
| figure out how to even build it, or build it right. Some
| problems are best solved by a single person with the right
| skills.
|
| Some career ladders allow for this, others are more rigid
| about the size of team you need to be directly leading .
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I think this is the appropriate answer. In my experience
| as Staff engineer, the tasks I was best suited to were
| the nebulously defined "the customer needs X" where X
| cross cut a lot of domains and required input from a
| variety of people that would be affected by that feature
| X. This usually meant that I'd have to get them all
| together at some point and find a way to satisfy all
| their contradictory needs before even coming up with what
| the _real_ task definition of X was.
|
| That's generally more than you'd expect from a typical
| Senior Engineer.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > Not intended to quibble, but to me that smacks of the
| dreaded "mid-level management" tier.
|
| Reminds me of the classic: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-
| gervais-principle/
| baq wrote:
| so, making it possible to ship at least the org chart?
| willob33 wrote:
| Life is a human communication game first, as the "best system"
| we've socially engineered is externalized support towards
| common goals. It's not science or engineering; it's sympatico.
|
| The problems we're solving at these jobs (I reserve work for
| its meaning in physical systems, jobs/career for you know), are
| ostensibly people problems. So the decisions I make are
| optimized for that. I don't call it politically optimal, but
| optimal, because that's it; that's THE game of life.
|
| It's subtle language emphasis maybe, but I used to visualize my
| thoughts as a text stream and "rewrite" constructs I did not
| appreciate in the moment. Redefining ideas like "optimal" to be
| human first behavior. Ideas like "optimal technical solution"
| are boxed away for when I'm working.
|
| It helped me understand managements drive, to have folks doing
| useful things, but also made me question how useful much of
| this is except as busy work.
| vp8989 wrote:
| Nice post, I think "software engineering" is slowly becoming
| yet another "bullshit job".
| names_are_hard wrote:
| > She and I agree that everything past a senior engineer is
| political
|
| At the big tech company I work at, we're often told that even
| even senior is primarily a non-technical designation. Technical
| expertise and independence is expected of the level below
| senior, and in order to make the jump to senior you need to
| demonstrate leadership and other for skills - influencing
| others, project management, coordinating between teams, etc.
| Principal is a level above that that is kind of the same but
| more.
|
| All this to say: every company is different.
| alpb wrote:
| I would highly recommend reading articles/guides in
| https://staffeng.com/ for Staff+/Principal career path. They also
| have a podcast!
| etimberg wrote:
| I'd definitely recommend https://staffeng.com/ for anyone who's
| making the transition from senior to staff+. I found it
| invaluable when I made that transition.
| darepublic wrote:
| When I started out as a developer the engineering part of the
| title wasn't as widely used. I was working at large enterprise
| and my manager started to use the term engineer to describe us to
| other teams, and my coworkers found it funny. It was chalked up
| as typical overblown language from my manager. Fast forward to
| now and everybody is an engineer. Also I have noticed a general
| inflation of the titles associated with it. Senior is the new
| Junior, etc. I'm sure its company dependent but my 2c
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Some busting of ass, some dicking around. Same as a lot of
| people.
| makach wrote:
| He makes the first mistakes.
| fourseventy wrote:
| "What would you say ya' do here?" - Bob
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Principal software engineer: the old grumpy guy who berates and
| borderline verbally abuses new/junior engineers and jeopardizes
| mental health across the org.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'd fire that person immediately. No one's so valuable that
| they get to poison the work environment.
| hu3 wrote:
| I'm sorry that was your experience.
|
| I have met some amazing people that were tech leads during my
| career. Some of them titled as principal software engineers.
|
| Sometimes it can be hard to find friendly and kind teams. But
| they do exist. I promise.
| ryanianian wrote:
| You can form a pithy but unnuanced and unhelpful caricature
| about every level.
|
| 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.
| herbturbo wrote:
| Who want to know when they are being promoted in every
| review.
| activistee wrote:
| 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 who
| berates someone? Your new mission is to get them out of the
| organization, and teach everyone who has been in the blast-
| radius of their bullshit that they were not a god, that their
| behavior _was not worth it_ no matter how good their code was.
| You'll change lives for the better, more so than your code ever
| will.
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Thank you for your service!! We need more of you. The problem
| is where I work these toxic characters are supported and
| enabled by equally toxic leadership and executives.
| activistee wrote:
| I've found that the shield toxic people have around them is
| often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leadership can be in a
| difficult position, because their interface to the people
| suffering the toxic element is often through the toxic
| element -- and the same is true in reverse -- which masks
| the problem. Leadership might think "this person is
| unpleasant to work with" but also think "their team is
| delivering so they must be doing something right!" which a
| team can perceive as protection or an endorsement from
| leadership, but can be challenged quite easily by
| demonstrating that their behaviour is harming the team.
|
| Even if you're confident they do have immunity, and that
| there's no way to pierce through their immunity, there's
| still opportunities to have a positive impact. A great
| place to start is with junior employees: every time there's
| an incident, reach out to them and let them know that this
| behaviour isn't normal or acceptable. Junior employees are
| in the worst position: they don't know what is normal and
| what is not. As a senior employee, you can say with
| confidence whether behaviour is normal or not, and so just
| saying "this is not normal" can make the world of
| difference to someone junior. Also, depending on the
| organization, reporting incidents can be useful even if it
| feels like you're just shouting into the void: you never
| know when these reports will come in useful.
| pc86 wrote:
| Wrong, I've met plenty of seniors who fit that bill as well. :)
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| No one said it was an exclusive property of principals alone
| :)
| synergy20 wrote:
| They write specs, High level design with lots of flowcharts etc.
|
| Many of them can not really code anymore, just like those system
| architects.
|
| I do respect those who can both talk and walk: design the system,
| write key sample code for major components, and let the team to
| enrich and expand.
|
| If they only know how to write design documents(talk the talk), I
| can hardly trust them that much.
| dnndev wrote:
| freedom to work on whatever they want!
| aenis wrote:
| Speaking as a principal software architect for a large (30bn)
| company: - convincing others to one's ideas of good architecture
| - and contributing to enterprise architecture, - lots of time
| spent to evaluate designs, ideas, products, acquisition targets,
| - every fourth blue moon - some actual low level design work and
| programming pet projects/pocs/prototyping. Rarely :-(
|
| I like this type of work, gives good exposure to new tech and the
| ability to choose what tech is being used. For my next job I want
| something more focused on actual programming though.
| fatnoah wrote:
| 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 was much more of a peer
| partnership than manager/IC. I let my manager know what I was up
| to, progress on things, and any challenges that needed help. The
| latter bucket was usually empty, but occasionally some cross-org
| priorities need to be clarified and sorted out.
|
| As others have noted, it really varies between companies, but the
| main difference between Senior/Staff and Principal is that the
| latter can be a much more "people" oriented role. You still own
| and carry the technical vision, but you increasingly interact
| with non-technical people to enable it and to make it happen.
| herbturbo wrote:
| I am currently a principal engineer and have exactly the work
| life you described. Maybe in a bigger company the Principal is
| split from those archetypes but in my smallish team (within a
| large global org) I am the Principal because I do all of those
| things.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > My relationship with my manager was much more of a peer
| partnership than manager/IC.
|
| 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.
| agentultra wrote:
| 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 move the ball on big-picture
| projects that span multiple feature teams/code-bases/etc.
|
| This kind of work needs high-functioning social skills, excellent
| written communication skills, an ability to understand a large
| problem domain and all of the organizational levers you need to
| move to get it done. You'll also need to be able to tolerate long
| feedback cycles as the projects you take on will probably take
| months to see the light of day and you won't be writing the
| software yourself most of the time. At most I've seen engineers
| at this level write prototypes or reference implementations. Some
| enjoy it while others quickly learn that staying at a senior
| level was probably better for them.
| almog wrote:
| While I haven't read it, I listened to Will Larson's interview
| on SEDaily (before the show em... changed). It was quite
| interesting and it was in my reading list since then.
|
| The interview itself is here:
| https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2020/10/29/staff-engine...
| BossingAround wrote:
| I feel like the summary of the whole article could be "important
| and/or impactful stuff". Saved you a click and a "you have 1
| Medium article left" banner.
|
| The definition bullets will probably be highly dependent on the
| company and while companies will likely copy those, they are
| likely not even transferable within a company, let alone across
| different companies.
|
| For example, within company A, Mike is a manager that is a
| perfectionist leading a Java EE mid-sized application. Mike is
| hard on himself and is hard on his people. His people are
| probably underpaid, and that's how he likes it. Getting to a
| senior level is difficult. Getting above is political.
|
| Within company A, Janet is a manager leading a relatively recent
| PaaS offering. She likes nimble, agile teams. She rewards quick
| thinking, wants her team to be satisfied, and gives her team
| yearly stock options because she doesn't want anyone to leave.
| Getting to a senior level is fairly manage-able after 1 to 2
| years, provided one is viewed as a senior. Getting above is
| doable, provided one has peer support.
|
| Now, company B is a consulting company that wants to offer
| "senior" engineers for $1000+/hour. They never hire anyone with
| the title "junior" (not even fresh grads) and promote practically
| everyone after 8-16 months to a senior title. Principal level is
| then another 6-8 months away, but they have very few of those due
| to insane attrition rates by that point.
| dkarl wrote:
| 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.
| eadmund wrote:
| Are there many folks who care more for a title than
| compensation? Granted, a higher title might help one win more
| compensation when negotiating one's _next_ job, but
| fundamentally one must back that up. I mean, you could hire me
| as a principal engineer for $100,000 today and I could hope I
| can get hired as a distinguished engineer for $800,000 next
| year, but somehow I don 't think anyone with that much money to
| spend is going to make that terrible of a mistake.
|
| Right? Because if not, I need to have a discussion about
| titles!
| digitalsushi wrote:
| I'm stuck inside a 5000 person IT company hiding inside a much
| larger consumer product company, and 3/5 of us are all
| 'principal' engineers by title. This includes a bevy of old
| timers who exist just to run a few ancient shell scripts and
| otherwise keep a chair warm. Although they are shrinking
| quickly, they still vastly outnumber us coming in from the
| software industry. There is no title above principal here; we
| are hired into principal and that's it until we invariably get
| bored or stressed out and leave.
|
| We have other titles above principal, which I wont name here
| because you could figure out where I work, but suffice, those
| titles are gated and only promotable by multiple director
| consensus. It keeps their numbers very, very low. My department
| wont mint a new one, but only hire outsiders already at the
| title.
| yupyup54133 wrote:
| > My department wont mint a new one, but only hire outsiders
| already at the title.
|
| Yikes, that sucks.
| [deleted]
| black_13 wrote:
| Your right on the pay thing.
| throwarayes wrote:
| Title inflation is real.
|
| 2 years ago I was hired as Staff with pretty high bar to clear.
|
| This year I know a team where all the seniors complain they're
| not Staff, and now half the team are Staff engs.
| idunno246 wrote:
| i had a job where i was the first staff, but when they
| started promoting everyone to staff cause every senior wanted
| a promotion, they had to create new levels of staff to
| differentiate
| rightbyte wrote:
| Why not just go all in?
|
| * Engineer First Class
|
| * Special Engineer
|
| * First Engineer
|
| * Staff Engineer
|
| * Staff Engineer First Class
|
| * Principal Engineer
|
| * Staff Major Engineer
|
| * Principal Engineer First Class
|
| * Staff Engineer of the Office
|
| etc. Need matching insignia on the collar, of course.
| unbanned wrote:
| Possibly they're just better than you were 2 years ago? Tech
| education moves as quickly as tech itself
| amznbyebyebye wrote:
| Yes because everyone is resigning. L+1 today is easily what L
| was 2-3 years ago.
| Konnstann wrote:
| I was under the impression that Staff just meant you have
| some sort of leadership role, as opposed to just being an
| individual contributor. Is that not the case?
| throwarayes wrote:
| Yeah for us it means you have a team tech leadership role.
|
| It's hard to imagine a team where everyone is "leading".
| Some people have to be doing.
|
| TBH I doubt the actual work people are doing has changed.
| It's more about status and salary.
| closeparen wrote:
| The only job in the tech industry that's not some sort of
| leadership role is Intern. Everyone leads and mentors.
| Senior Engineers at the level of a single team, with
| perhaps some cross-team impact. Staff Engineers at the
| level of an org with several teams.
| pc86 wrote:
| IC just means you don't have reports, and neither Staff nor
| Principal roles typically have reports.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| Someone should tell HBO that, their Staff titles come
| before Senior Software Engineer, which is very confusing.
| manesioz wrote:
| Same with IBM, very confusing
| coldcode wrote:
| Exactly it's just a job description and name. In my last job
| our org rarely promoted anyone technical (only managers and
| above) so almost everyone was either Lead Software Engineer, or
| Senior Software Engineer. Other orgs promoted everyone to the
| max no matter what they did - I knew a group where the lead was
| a Director but coded, and all of his reports where Principals;
| yet they did simpler work than anyone in our org did.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| 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 that titles only indicate
| relative seniority within a company. Interviewers must actually
| interview candidates to determine what their role was, how
| experienced they are, and other factors.
|
| It can be a warning flag, however, if a company is giving
| titles like "Principal Staff Software Architect" to someone who
| is clearly junior enough that they would require a lot of
| mentoring and guidance if they were hired. It's common that
| candidates are resistant to downleveling their titles when
| changing jobs, so handing out enormously inflated titles is one
| way companies try to trap junior employees in their companies.
| At least until they realize that nobody cares about their
| inflated titles and they still have to pass the same tech
| interviews as everyone else.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| This reminds of a story I encountered in finance where
| everyone in the department got a bump in title as their
| bonus. I asked one what was difference in their role:
| nothing. Since everyone got bumped, everyone's role stayed
| the same. This was during the financial crisis and was the
| bank's (well known) cheap ass way to get away without paying
| a monetary bonus.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| My very first job was 'senior'.
| pc86 wrote:
| As someone whose _first job title_ was "Assistant Director
| of IT," and who did nothing but write really bad PHP for a
| couple hours every day, this tracks with my experience. It
| also made interviewing harder because if you get a resume
| from someone with one job they've had for two years, and that
| job is Assistant Director, you're probably - rightfully -
| trashing that resume. I eventually learned to just change the
| title but then explain on first contact that my actual title
| was different, it just didn't bear any relation to what I was
| actually doing.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Yup. And I always am weary of any manager at a startup.
| They think just because they were a manager at a startup,
| it means they can be a manager at a much larger company.
| How many people did you manage? (some of them managed 1
| person) What did you actually manage? (can't explain other
| than order people around) Don't assume the title means they
| know how to actually do the job at your company. Titles
| tend to be severely inflated at small startups.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I had the inverse experience: I worked for a startup that
| gave literally everyone in the engineering department the
| same title of "Senior Software Engineer" in the HR system
| because they had one boilerplate offer letter used for
| everyone.
|
| I was a manager-of-managers, but officially I was a "senior
| software engineer". Burned me badly on a couple reference
| checks, until I specifically started explaining the
| situation during interviews.
| dkarl wrote:
| At one of my jobs, all the developers were given the title
| "Member of Technical Staff" because our boss had worked at
| a particle accelerator (he had a PhD in physics) and that's
| what the scientists running experiments had on their
| badges. He did it for morale, and it probably did make us
| feel a bit fancier while we were writing Grails and GWT
| code.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I always thought it originated in vmware but maybe they
| are copycats too. There are lot of these places around
| the valley big and small
| neilv wrote:
| I've always thought of "Member of Technical Staff" as a
| Bell Labs thing.
|
| I almost did it at my last startup, to signal the
| egalitarian, cooperative engineering culture that I
| intended. One of the concerns was that it could hurt
| people's career mobility out (and willingness to join,
| since the startup was unlikely to be the engineer's home
| for the next few decades until retirement).
|
| I think it works easily when your organization is known
| as one of _the_ places to go, everyone knows that they do
| titles that way, and that anyone there is worth
| considering as a hire. (But not when recruiters filter
| their resume keyword searches for senior, staff, or
| principal.)
|
| I don't know why Google didn't do it, way back when,
| since they did a few other culture things. I suppose that
| might've set a different tone for our industry today.
| (Though what seemed at the time to be low-loyalty culture
| coming out of California was already in force when Google
| started, most conspicuously in what I called "IPO-
| hopping", and maybe Google just had to work within that,
| at the time.)
| pradn wrote:
| Well, every dev is listed as "Software Engineer" unless
| they change it specifically. Maybe you're forced to
| change it if you're a manager, but I'm unsure of that. So
| you never exactly know the level of the person you're
| talking to unless you work with them a lot or go out of
| your way to look it up.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think it's sort of a labs (whether national labs or
| more broadly) thing. I have a good friend who works for
| one of the national labs subcontractors and they use the
| technical staff terminology.
| micro_cam wrote:
| I think this is pretty common at early stage YC
| companies. At least the one I started at did this until
| they needed to give us fancy titles to impress investors.
| MillenialMan wrote:
| The vast majority of titles in tech confer more prestige than
| deserved, because there's no downside to a company handing
| them out like candy. I don't look at it as a portability
| issue, the incentive isn't to be accurate to begin with.
| Inflated seniority is just a perk they can offer that doesn't
| cost them any money, so _everyone_ offers it. Titles across
| the industry are meaningless unless you 're calibrated to
| that company's levels.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are only a few titles that mean anything, and
| normally it isn't what you think.
|
| Legal at a bank only a vice president or higher can make
| some loan decisions. Thus if you go to a large chain bank
| to get a mortgage you will talk to a vice president. Their
| title must be vice president, but they doesn't make a lot
| of money, and don't have much power other than the ability
| to give you a mortgage.
|
| Last time I posted the above someone chimed in "yeah, even
| though all I do is write code all day I'm a vice president
| because what my code does can only be done by a vice
| president"
|
| You also see a lot of salesmen who are vice presidents -
| again they don't have a lot of power in the company, but
| the places they sell to want to talk to a vice president so
| sales hands out those titles.
| [deleted]
| destitude wrote:
| I've seen this exactly. Someone at my former company was a
| Principal engineer but when they left to go to Netflix they
| were then just a Sr. Engineer. They definitely were not
| Principal engineer material so think it was all to appease the
| pay-band gods.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Netflix doesn't have SWE titles other than "Senior" and "New
| Grad", so this means nothing about your former colleague.
| opportune wrote:
| Yes, this. Principal means something vastly different between
| Microsoft and Google (where at Microsoft it means "Staff"). I
| even got recruiting emails from some not-popular SV firms for
| "Principal software engineer" when I had 3 years of experience.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| One company out there 'staff' is entry level. Whereas in all
| the companies I worked at 'staff' was a very prized title to
| have. Another company I worked at my title was basically just
| some random bits of roman numerals and something that sounded
| vaguely like a engineer. I usually just put sr software
| engineer/developer depending on the company and role.
| vp8989 wrote:
| I "normalize" my previous titles to whatever pattern/scheme
| my current company uses. It more clearly demonstrates the
| career progression on your resume and you typically only
| get a reference check at your previous employer so putting
| an "inaccurate" title for jobs older than that is unlikely
| to matter. Obviously don't inflate the titles.
| thrwawayhack_ wrote:
| My friend is a "Vice President of Engineering" at a fintech
| company. It's the lowest rung on their engineering ladder.
| andi999 wrote:
| Probably because their engineering team has a bus factor of
| two?
| vultour wrote:
| Vice Presidents at large financial institutions are a joke.
| Coming from any other industry you'd think it's some sort of
| executive position. Nope, just a random senior software
| engineer 8 levels down on the corporate ladder. To be fair
| the first 6 levels (all the way to the CEO) are all "Managing
| Directors".
| bluGill wrote:
| Vice president at financial institutions have legal
| meaning. Thus a lot of people need to be a vice president
| just to legally do their job.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Certain documents must be signed by an officer of the
| company. So many become vice presidents, to have that
| ability.
|
| Then other people of the same rank become vice
| presidents.
|
| At one bank anyone at director level (manager of
| managers) was a VP, for example.
| clavalle wrote:
| Beyond just titles for pay reasons:
|
| Principal Software Engineers are essentially the Engineer Owner
| of a solution or closely related set of solutions.
|
| They're expected to know the ins and outs of the solution both at
| a business level ('Hey, Principal, how much would it cost and how
| long would it take to do 'x'?' -- Some Sales Person), and have
| responsibility for the solution's engineering ('Two months?
| Great! See you at the February demo for the users group!' -- Some
| Sales Person), and be able to solve the more difficult
| engineering issues that crop up ('The app you promised to
| integrate with by February only uses SOAP and consists of around
| 14,000 on-prem installs...I graduated after the year 2000 so I'm
| not sure how SOAP works, can you walk me through this 'wizdal'
| thing?' -- Some Senior Engineer that you asked to look into the
| new project).
| hackingforfun wrote:
| For anyone who is a Principal Engineer at a FAANG, what do you do
| day to day?
|
| I'm a Principal Engineer, not at a FAANG, and that mostly means
| i'm an expert at what I do and know the product inside and out,
| and I spend a good amount of time coding. I do also help others,
| answer questions, and deal with complex problems. I'd say I do
| 80% coding and 20% meetings / other things.
|
| I interviewed somewhere else and they wanted me to do 50% coding
| and 50% meetings / other things. Was a bit surprised, since i'd
| personally rather code and keep my skills up.
|
| My take is companies should have their top engineers spending a
| sigificant amount of time coding, or at least architecting, but I
| could imagine, and have read, that at FAANG sized companies it
| becomes more political? Also with so many employees I guess in
| theory the idea is to have Principals spend more time leveling up
| the rest of their workforce? In practice does that happen?
| topkai22 wrote:
| Staff/principal level here. I accelerate my team. Sometimes
| that involves writing code, sometimes that involves
| teaching/mentoring others, sometimes it means improving our
| tools and processes, sometimes it involves hammer out our
| architecture and security approach, and sometimes it involves
| figuring out what baroque process I need to go through in order
| to get legal's approval to launch our new product. I make sure
| almost all of what I do is well documented and communicated to
| the rest of my team.
|
| The three rough metrics I've heard for how staff/principals are
| evaluated are "creating clarity", "impact", and "leadership."
| Those metrics are all very difficult to perform on if I were
| focused on my code related output as an individual, although
| there are people who make and achieve within that level in my
| company who do more straight up coding then I do. The important
| thing is good judgement on where to spend your time to have the
| most impact.
|
| If you wanted me to put numbers on it, I'd say my time is
| probably 25% coding, 20% meetings, 20% working on
| infrastructure and tools, 20% documenting/communicating, and
| 15% mentoring/recruiting.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| this is a great summary, and pretty much exactly reflects my
| role. My job is to help other engineers in our org be as
| productive as possible. That _always_ means trying to include
| other people in what I 'm doing from a mentor/career-
| development perspective, but otherwise follows your % splits
| pretty well.
|
| The bits that people don't talk about frequently are things
| like "what do you actually do in the 20% of the time you are
| coding?" It's usually things like performance analyses and
| optimizations, solving misc tech debt that I have the
| flexibility to work on since my time isn't allocated to
| project teams/squads, architecture and PoC work for new
| capabilities we think we will need, and honestly sometimes
| its just picking up a couple super low level tasks anyone
| could do because keeping team members focused on other things
| is what's most important.
|
| At least in my org the common theme is almost always "there's
| a hard problem over there, go help them fix it'.
|
| Source: principal engineer for a couple years, senior for 6
| or 7 years before that. Not at a FAANG, but in a ~350 person
| technology org at a company with nationwide offices and
| consumer product presence in the USA.
| hideo wrote:
| It depends.
|
| On the whole my responsibilities are a mix of things:
|
| 1. Technical strategy - primarily writing strategy docs and
| discussing with other tech PEs. Usually precursor to
| architecture.
|
| 2. Business Strategy - reviews with non tech staff and
| leadership (across the org) about what the business needs are,
| where we see the future going. Often takes the form of
| reviewing other peoples documents or contributing sections to
| those
|
| 3. Product design reviews - reviewing CX/UX documentation
|
| 4. Architecture - Creating architecture documents - lots of
| text and boxes and lines. Several rounds of reviews. Usually
| precursor to coding or reading other people's code.
|
| 5. Coding - takes the form of staring at various IDEs and
| scratching my head.
|
| 6. Reading other people's code - same as above. Also include
| code reviews.
|
| 7. Operations - On call stuff. Usually where all the
| architecture stuff falls apart :-)
|
| 8. Mentorship - structured 1:1s, feedback, etc
|
| 9. Prototyping and demos
|
| I spend probably 90% of my time doing the items above. The mix
| among these items varies but I consider all of it my work. For
| the rest I sometimes get pulled into the items below that are
| not officially my responsibilities
|
| - Conferences and public speaking - I could, but choose not to
|
| - Project tracking and reporting
|
| - Managing people's careers directly
|
| - Funding decisions
|
| My work is rarely political depending on how you define
| politics. To me politics is about "who gets the cool stuff" so
| mostly funding decisions. I do get pulled in occasionally to
| sort out "who should build this" discussions but they are
| usually good faith discussions trying to align expertise and
| charters before funding decisions are made. Biz and tech
| strategy does involve consensus building but I suspect the Real
| Politics(tm) happen behind the scenes at higher levels.
| Apofis wrote:
| I'm in love with #9. Looks like you have a good handle on the
| situation. The rest proves you're going places.
| hideo wrote:
| I admit #9 is fun but I try not to do too much #9, because
| there's a huge risk to doing too much of that: losing touch
| with what's important to the bottom line, and indirectly
| influencing all the other ICs that prototypes get you
| promoted. That's just not true in my company. My prototypes
| are usually for exploring something important to the
| company or validating a tech hypothesis of some sort. I try
| to spend more time writing production code where possible.
| Apofis wrote:
| I meant I love the way you phrased it.
|
| A lot of programmers ignore the fact that they're serving
| a business function.
| hideo wrote:
| Thanks :)
|
| It does feel like some folks ignore the business side of
| things but I think I enjoy being a part of the larger
| picture. It's definitely not for everyone. I know several
| people who are personally happy and have had WILDLY
| successful careers being hands-on tech specialists and
| ignoring the business side. It's great that it works for
| them.
| [deleted]
| decodebytes wrote:
| I am happy to be open here if it helps others. I am not with a
| FAANG, I am employed by Red Hat. My title is Senior Principal
| Software Engineer. At Red Hat it goes Software Engineer ->
| Senior Software Engineer -> Principal Software Engineer ->
| Senior Principal Software Engineer -> Distinguished Engineer.
|
| My main duties are that I lead a team of 7 engineers and we all
| work on open source security projects.
|
| My day is a mix of half coding / half meetings. I am UK based,
| so my mornings are nice and free (while the US sleeps) and then
| around 2pm I have a large chunk of meetings. The meetings are
| mostly with my team, senior management, and open source
| community meetings.
|
| For me being a Principal is a much more than just coding
| prowess. You also need good 'soft skills'. You need to mentor
| engineers and think about their growth. Make sure they are
| challenged enough to grow, but not so much that they end up
| stressed and out of kilt. You need to be able to communicate
| with not just other software engineers, but also product
| managers, directly with customers and many other verticals
| within a business.
| sciurus wrote:
| You might find https://staffeng.com/guides/what-do-staff-
| engineers-actually... interesting.
| elric wrote:
| If you're a senior engineer and you're sort of wondering "what's
| beyond senior?", you might be interested in the book "Staff
| Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track". I found it
| enlightening, and it's nice seeing companies embracing the whole
| "Staff plus"-track.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This is an awesome book. It's not just based on one person's
| opinion or experience: it talks about different archetypes of
| staff+ roles (https://staffeng.com/guides/staff-archetypes).
|
| https://staffeng.com/book
| malermeister wrote:
| Same thing as Senior, but better at office politics. That's what
| every title above Senior comes down to.
| anononaut wrote:
| Is that unreasonable?
| malermeister wrote:
| Depends on your perspective I suppose. There's definitely an
| advantage to being able to play that game, but if you overdo
| it it tends to be to the detriment of the team or the company
| culture.
| 727374 wrote:
| My definition is "Finds and creates the most valuable work for
| other engineers to do."
|
| I really started to see the value once I moved from Principal to
| Manager. All of a sudden I was busy with boring manager stuff and
| needed an IC who could get deep into the details of our
| initiatives and make sure everyone's efforts were lining up. You
| don't need the title of Principal to do this role, of course, but
| ICs who see the big picture and understand what's important for
| the business are invaluable.
|
| The other points in the article are on the money as well,
| especially around modeling and amplifying a good dev culture for
| the organization.
| huetius wrote:
| I like this definition, even if it overlaps with the PM role.
| In effective teams I've been part of, the PM and engineering
| leads help each other winnow down the work, with the PM making
| the final call for priority (except in circumstances where that
| doesn't make sense).
| rurban wrote:
| The principal is the one with bus factor 1
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