I've had the Principal Engineer title for several years now. I think I got basically because everyone else seemed to have awesome sounding titles like that and

I've had the Principal Engineer title for several years now. I think I got basically because everyone else seemed to have awesome sounding titles like that and I asked for it. My manager probably felt guilty because he wasn't giving me a raise that year, so he gave it to me. I got a printed promotion letter and everything! What did I do? I was on a two person project with another Principal Engineer for all that time, sharing architecture, coding, design, refactoring work. writing tests, doing deploys, etc. basically the same thing I've done anywhere else. What made me a principal? Maybe the fact there was no-one telling me how to code? I guess that doesn't qualify me as a "true" principal like the OP is describing ... but thought I'd share!