I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but neither do you. Students at universities ranked similarly to Michigan absolutely do spend a significant amount of time studying on the weekends, especially if they’re not business majors. And MIT has parties and pranks, too.
I’ve heard Foundry is not only insanely expensive, but to actually accomplish something comparable to the demos in your domain requires a huge amount of integration work to build it out in a way that locks you in.
This got me thinking. In any country or ethnic group, it’s so important to differentiate between the average person trying to get by and the aggressors who claim to be their leaders. When we look at the world through the lens of political and military leaders, we miss so much of the humanity of everyday people.
In technically deep domains like Bellard works in, Staff+ roles bias more towards technical expertise, and managers also tend to be more technical and able to more completely address technical coordination tasks. Sometimes we like to assume that if someone is good at one thing, they’ll be bad at something more mundane (to make ourselves feel better), but I sincerely doubt he would have any trouble in such a role.
Admittedly privileged counterpoint: I want to work with the best co-workers in the world. Most candidates I’ve interviewed both in the US and in other countries aren’t anywhere near that level. If just anybody will do for a job, I’ll probably get bored and frustrated by it.
High pay has been a mixed blessing for the tech field. For every aspiring top mathematician or physicist who’s been tempted by the pay and relevant new problems, I often feel like we’ve gotten 10x as many people who would otherwise have been uninspired doctors and lawyers or top business majors.
Yeah, it is shockingly bad. I’m assuming you’re using “talent” euphemistically here.
For a recent job opening I was looking to fill, HR sent us all of the applications rather than doing their own filtering (they did first round calls with people engineering highlighted).
The level of resume spam is absolutely staggering. So many applicants to jobs that have no obvious connection to their stated skills & experience, with job application questions filled out by LLMs. I’m not saying they’re all bad people, but all of these people who don’t know what they’re looking for other than an income is really disheartening.
> For a recent job opening I was looking to fill, HR sent us all of the applications rather than doing their own filtering (they did first round calls with people engineering highlighted).
If I can ask, what is it you think of work as? Most jobs are just that: a job, an economic transfer from employer to employee to perform specific tasks.
I hate to say it, but what do you think most Indians working for google, or facebook, or any of the other companies that open centers in India see their purpose there as?
As I mentioned, this is a privileged position, but I see work as an opportunity to do something I and others find meaningful and useful. I’m paid so that I can afford to focus my time on that work without worrying about money. I seek out employers and co-workers with whom my goals are aligned, and we go our separate ways if that ever ceases to be the case.
70% Advancing the state of the art in my areas of expertise
+
30% Enabling experts in other areas I care about to advance the state of the art by making all the problems related to my expertise just go away
Fair enough, but a huge amount of labor is much more aligned with the skilled but not SOTA work. People don't build payments systems, inventory management systems, or EHRs to advance the state of the art; they build them to provide a service for employment.
I think <5% of labor falls under what you are speaking about.
No, because the VPE was doing it out of ego and because he thought the problem was easy, not out of any practicality.
No amount of argument was enough.
This was his only job, he was at the company for 10 years, was a schoolfriend of the CTO and suddenly got promoted to VPE when the company grew over 50 devs. So total lack of experience.
The funny thing is we didn't even need to prototype: another team had already integrated the same third-party in their own project, so there was ZERO doubts, we had an in-house expert.
I agree. Of the two major US political parties today, one is primarily radical right with a small conservative branch that is struggling to stay in their party. The other is conservative to moderate with a small liberal branch that is fighting to make their party stand for something.
Not only that, but leading through a reporting line is 90% influence, too. Relying on pulling rank will get your best reports to find a way to leave ASAP, and others will follow.
Technically yes, but it’s not much different for line managers and often second level managers, though. Maybe you can approve expenses up to $500 at a time and get headcount for a couple more people approved from time to time. Not that different from an IC with a strong relationship with directors and VPs getting the same sort of allocations approved for a team/project they work with/are spinning up.
It’s definitely not for everyone.
But if the person, the org and role are a good fit, it’s not going to be that kind of worst case scenario.
IMO, “nothing is not your job” is odd phrasing that doesn’t really mean “everything is your job,” it’s more like “see something, say something—-in a way that is received constructively and results in positive change, whether through your own actions or others’.”
The unstated corollary is if you’re in a shitty organization that just will not get better, the most positive change you can make for the world is to stop wasting your time helping them and go somewhere better, where you can make a difference.
The way the author describes it (in contradicting terms; see the point where he claims if you're a Principal IC, you were promoted because you already acted like one, making the ~30 items of advice redundant) it's the most stressful position ever.
Be critical, don't be in the critical path, be laid back in an advisory role but be hands-on or you're setting yourself up for failure, work on stuff you enjoy but be ready to justify why it needs a Principal or you're "working on the wrong thing", sponsor, consult, explain to leadership, mentor, code, be present, do not be too present, "feel the pulse", don't attend too many meetings, don't attend too few, gently nudge, don't speak all the time, be careful about staying quiet, etc etc.
Seems like hell. And presumably, you'll get fired if things turn out badly with a project.
All that and also without a team of engineers working with you on the same problems, and you have limited formal power to actually set priorities and assign work. That sounds miserable.
> Want to get your PR approved? Influence without authority.
That's not really the case.
First of all, software development is—or should be—a collaborative effort. The PRs I create are no more "mine" than the ones I review from my peers. We're all working towards the same goal, and developers shouldn't have to defend or vouch for their work.
Secondly, politics plays a role in every organization, unfortunately IMO. So people who are held in high regard for whatever reason certainly have more authority, and thus influence, to enforce their will over others. Reviews of their code often have a single "LGTM!", or they might even merge without approval.
Similar situations happen outside of software development as well. A highly charismatic person in a friend group has more influence, even though everyone is aiming for the same goal ("get dinner", etc.). An opinion from popular people on tech forums like this one carries more weight than an opinion from someone unknown, even if it's the same opinion. And so on.
So coming back to "principal" ICs in companies, these are mostly political rather than technical roles. The person got to that position because they proved their ability to be influential and lead teams, which generated increased revenue for the company. The company is betting that putting them in a position with more authority, where executives lean on them directly, would lead to even greater revenues.
Authoring and reviewing PRs when no one person owns them individually sure sounds like influencing the direction of the team without any authority to make a unilateral decision to me.
You’re right about politics, but I think the part where people may vary is the definition of authority. Does being consistently influential make someone an authority? It depends on what that means. They will be believed more often (they have soft power) but they don’t have hard power to command someone to do something. What makes it a gray area is they almost surely have influence with someone else who does have hard power.
Yes, but the stakes at your job are different. You don't get fired or get bad performance reviews if you fail to convince your friends to go out for dinner. You're not expected to be constantly be doing this either. You are not paid a top salary and get performance reviews based on that.
Principal ICs sounds like a high stress occupation...
I’m sure the stress level varies by the individual.
The upside to a more collaborative role like this is you don’t have the stress of having to know everything. Individual developer roles can be more stressful because if you say you’ll solve a problem in a certain amount of time, and then you’re off on your own coding, and things aren’t working out… you’re personally on the hook for the whole thing. Whereas if you’re leading an effort and company priorities shift so people can’t contribute as much, you communicate that to all your stakeholders, and look good for letting higher priority efforts have more resources.
You're painting a very rosy picture of what this role entails.
> The upside to a more collaborative role like this is you don’t have the stress of having to know everything.
It's the opposite, actually. The person in these roles has to wear many hats, and have an overview of many areas and teams in the company. The article is explicit about this. They may not be an expert at everything, but they should certainly have working knowledge of each area, have the ability to jump in and steer each ship—whether that involves communicating with each team, removing roadblocks, or writing code themselves—, and be able to communicate all of this in a language useful to executives.
When individual teams are not working well, when multiple teams are not working well together, and ultimately when value is not being produced, it is people in these roles who will be on the hook first.
So the stakes are indeed much higher for this role than for someone working in a single team.
It’s different for different people, but IMO, knowing something significant about everything is easier than knowing everything about something significant.
And if you understand the organizational dynamics, being in a position to fix (or recommend the cancellation of) projects that aren’t working gives you more control over your destiny than being just another person trapped in a dysfunctional org.
So I’m not saying higher level roles are easier for everyone, but I am saying lower level roles can actually be harder for someone who has mastered higher level roles.
It’s all about being balanced and picking the right strategy for the situation, not doing everything all at once. A guide like this could be useful for someone to consult when they find themselves in a different situation, regardless of their seniority level.
And in my experience, more senior engineers don’t have a greater risk of being fired for a project going badly because they identify problems to work on that matter and are within their areas of expertise, and evaluate possible risks early and communicate them.
Being balanced about political/soft skills makes me nervous, especially when it becomes a mandate and your main role. Some people are good at it, some are bad -- but it's completely irrational to expect this to be the logical next step for ICs and senior engineers.
I've seen it backfire spectacularly when a very senior engineer who worked in a critical part of the product was forced into this "because of promotions", then because he was an introvert did it poorly and got a really bad performance review ("underperformer"), got upset and quit. Aftermath: his manager ended up getting fired because of this screwup, but truly that was scapegoating. What's worse is he was happy in his previous role, doing groundbreaking work, didn't want the promotion and wasn't planning on leaving.
I'm not disputing what you say, but in my experience the middle technical roles are the safest. Too junior and you'll be the first to be axed for mediocre performance, too senior and you'll be blamed for failures and fired (sometimes for playing the political game and losing). Meanwhile, the mid/senior programmers doing the work will keep on.
Unless there's another round of layoffs, those upset everything.
That’s why a lot of companies only promote after demonstrating a track record of performing at the next level.
It can also be an argument for secret levels. Although I’m not sure how useful that really is in practice.
For someone who does well at influence, it’s not a mandate, it’s permission to spend some time on the nontechnical factors that are necessary to make your work turn out better. And that also means helping others who have good ideas but aren’t comfortable with the influence part themselves.
I don't think this is like looking up a reference. This article is a general guideline on how to be a good Principal IC, the thing you're supposed to already know if you're a Principal IC.
This is like reminding a top doctor "do differential diagnosis". Nope, top doctors already know this, it's redundant advice.
This is like reminding a good thinker they must think about things: they already know this and it's presumably how they got to the position in the first place.
I think this article is a promotional piece for the author's personal brand, thinly veiled as advice for others. It's "look at what I know, and here's why you should pay me". These people love to talk about themselves.
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