Yeah that sounds way more enjoyable, but first you need the 250k and up salary that a principal engineer at MS makes for 20 years, then you have plenty of equity to focus on whatever your hobby is
I think MS like other big tech companies has started to run out of “senior” positions without paying more so many people just end up as “senior” principal engineers which is basically “this is as far as you can go if you don’t want to get involved in management”
“this is as far as you can go if you don’t want to get involved in management”
Yes. That exactly. This typically comes with a nice perk: Principals are supposed to have the same clout as lower-level managers. Which is to say they usually report to Directors or even the CTO in some organizations.
Another one is “Independent Contributor” which is similar but, as the name would suggest, is very self sufficient and does not work on (or for) a team. They’re basically one-man engineering shops and are expected to perform well everywhere in the company’s tech and talent stacks. As a result, ICs are very rare.
alas, many of us will never reach goose-farm level success
Yeah that sounds way more enjoyable, but first you need the 250k and up salary that a principal engineer at MS makes for 20 years, then you have plenty of equity to focus on whatever your hobby is
Average 350k according to levels.fyi.
I was expecting higher for principal tbh
I think MS like other big tech companies has started to run out of “senior” positions without paying more so many people just end up as “senior” principal engineers which is basically “this is as far as you can go if you don’t want to get involved in management”
Yes. That exactly. This typically comes with a nice perk: Principals are supposed to have the same clout as lower-level managers. Which is to say they usually report to Directors or even the CTO in some organizations.
Another one is “Independent Contributor” which is similar but, as the name would suggest, is very self sufficient and does not work on (or for) a team. They’re basically one-man engineering shops and are expected to perform well everywhere in the company’s tech and talent stacks. As a result, ICs are very rare.
Jokes on programming. Hated life before being forced into it…
Edit: it meaning programming. This isn’t supposed to be that edgy.