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Principal Engineers are supposed to raise solutions to problems. This (3 year old) blog post raises complaints, but does not propose a solution. People who can
by skwirl 3y ago
Principal Engineers are supposed to raise solutions to problems. This (3 year old) blog post raises complaints, but does not propose a solution. People who can raise complaints are a dime a dozen.
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoThe solution is simple, but not easy: work for yourself. The corporate ladder is for people that need an externally mediated goal to keep working toward. That’s why it gets harder as you approach the top: without the artificial scarcity, the titles would be perceived as less valuable. I’ll take whatever titles they want to give me. But I’m not going to be grasping for them.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoIt's pretty easy to work for FAANG and make ~$500k. It's less easy to do it for yourself (with the same amount of hours).
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoEveryone wants to do that though. So you there’s going to be stiff competition on the ladder. Some people are energized by that. I find it exhausting and a waste of life.
- pc86 3y agoI'm sorry but the idea that it's "pretty easy" to make 10x the median personal income in the US by just working for FAANG is just plain idiotic. Even just among software developers, most make $120k or less. You're in the top 10% of software developers if you make over $170k. Even at FAANG, for example Google, you're going to be L6/L7 before you hit $500k TC. I don't know anyone serious who would say that getting to L7 at Google is "pretty easy," certainly nobody who's done it.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThere's plenty of people making $500k at L5 level...
- hospitalJail 3y ago>plenty dozens of us! You gave me some real medical vibes here. "Its rare", "like 1/10 rare or like 1/10000 rare?" plenty? Like 1000, or like 100,000?
- pc86 3y agoMaybe, if you're on the tail end of a particularly well-timed stock grant and you have a really crazy definition of "plenty." But Levels puts recent L5 offers much closer to $350k, which to be clear is still more than a lot of physicians and most lawyers make.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoGoogle is not the only high paying company. Some companies are paying a lot more for equivalent levels.
- pc86 3y agoYou said FAANG, so I picked the one that has the reputation for best work-to-pay ratio. Rather than nitpicking specifics perhaps try to justify that it's "pretty easy" to make half a million dollars a year typing JavaScript into a computer.
- hospitalJail 3y ago>You're in the top 10% of software developers if you make over $170k. Mind boggling. You wonder how much value they are creating. Software scales so easily.
- pc86 3y agoQuite a bit I'm sure, but I'm sure there are a lot of developers making less than that barely breaking even on the "providing value" front. We don't talk about it here often but a lot of developers are pretty bad at what they do.
- bottlelion 3y ago“Pretty easy” lol - could you be any more out-of-touch?
- hospitalJail 3y agoI'm so close to doing this though. I imagine its really hard to do this for most people, but I personally fell into a expensive niche and I knew how to program. The corporate ladder will pay me $200k for 1M/yr(compounding) of value. I imagine I can capture more of this, and potentially have employees. I never thought I'd do this, I thought I'd be a desk drone forever, but with every project, I stare at the numbers and realize its possible. (The last time I did this, my wife started a 6 figure company, where her non-mathy friends thought it was going to be impossible) Wish me luck on marketing, hopefully the thought of a compounding 1M/yr for a company sells itself.
- msikora 3y agoHonestly I would love to do this, but how to transition from my relatively well paid job (Principal SDE) to the uncertainty of own hustle? How to compete as a freelancer from expensive country (USA)?
- mattgreenrocks 3y agoHence the “not easy” part. Freelancing is probably not the way. Really, I’m trying to get away from the notion of selling my time altogether and instead build things.