How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time

Re:How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time by nine_k on Saturday October 17, 2020 @05:03PM (#24813341)

Fortunately, many companies have individual contributor engineering ladder all the way up. My personal ideal endgame is a position like a principal / staff engineer. While I can't compare to people like John Carmack or Rob Pike or Greg Kroah-Hartman, but they show what can be achieved.

(Founding a company is another possible route, much more risky, though.)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time by jjav on Monday October 19, 2020 @03:11AM (#24823961)

I wish, but haven't really seen any company with IC ladder "all the way up".

The other problem is that high level IC roles are very rare whereas the equivalent management roles are plentiful. At a previous company I was the one and only Principal engineer in a division with enough Sr.Directors (equivalent level there) to fill a school bus.

Currently I'm at a Distinguished engineer level which is even more limited, but it is still less than a VP. But we have hundreds of VPs of this and that on the management ladder.

The fact that you bring up celebrity engineers as examples pretty much showcases the problem. There are very, very few of them.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time by EpicEng on Saturday October 17, 2020 @05:07PM (#24813379)

Yep, I'm currently Principal and am enjoying it very much.

[ Parent | on HN ]