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That's all well and good, but those are highly competitive positions. Even joining the companies where this is possible in the first place is competitive. It
by vonmoltke 9y ago
That's all well and good, but those are highly competitive positions. Even joining the companies where this is possible in the first place is competitive. It isn't something you can "just" do.
Also, this only applies to an elite subset of "big companies". Few, if any, individual contributors at Oracle or IBM are anywhere near that.
- mrep 9y agoGetting in is definitely competitive but study enough data structures and algorithms and you should be able to get into at least 1. Making principal is even harder but I think it is pretty attainable if you put in extra work where the extra work is learning about your field and applying it to the business problems for your org. I work at one of these companies and most people are 9-5'ers who work as cog's, don't spend extra time learning about their field, don't think big, and don't apply them to the job (aka, aren't leaders which is what principal engineers are).