The Principal Engineer Question
Someone asked me last week if I miss being a principal engineer.
I had to think about it longer than I expected.
Where I Came From
I spent several years as a principal engineer before moving into consulting and leadership roles. Deep technical work. Architecture decisions. Code reviews that mattered. Long stretches of focused problem-solving.
I was good at it. I liked it.
The Honest Answer
Yes and no.
I miss the clarity of it. When you’re a principal engineer, the success condition is unambiguous. Does the system work? Is the code good? Did the architecture hold?
Consulting and leadership have fuzzier success conditions. Did I help the right people make the right decisions? Is the team more capable now than before I showed up? Hard to measure. Impossible to know immediately.
What I Don’t Miss
Politics. Navigating organizational complexity was the part of the role I was least suited for.
As a consultant, I walk in, do the work, and leave. The politics exist but they’re not my long-term problem to solve.
That’s not entirely healthy—I’m aware of it. But it’s honest.
The Trap
Some engineers keep chasing technical depth as an avoidance strategy. Staff engineer. Principal. Distinguished. The title ladder goes up, and it feels like pure technical merit is the operating system.
It’s not. At every level, the work is increasingly about people, communication, and influence.
The principal engineers who last are the ones who realized this and worked on it. The ones who didn’t end up in roles where technical credibility masks underdeveloped soft skills—until it doesn’t anymore.
What I Tell Engineers Who Ask
If you’re asking whether to stay deep technical or move toward leadership—both paths are valid. But be honest about why you’re choosing.
Good reasons to stay technical:
- You love solving hard technical problems more than anything else
- You’re genuinely better at it than at people leadership
- The organization needs your specific expertise more than another manager
Bad reasons to stay technical:
- You’re avoiding the hard work of developing leadership skills
- “Technical” feels like a safer identity than “leader”
- You’ve conflated depth with worth
And the reverse is also true. Moving into leadership because it comes with status, not because you want to develop people—that’s its own trap.
What Staying Sharp Looks Like Now
I code. Not every day, but enough to stay honest.
When I’m in client environments, I build proof-of-concepts myself before handing off to their team. When I recommend an architecture, I’ve tried to implement it, at least at a small scale.
This matters. Advice from someone who doesn’t code anymore drifts. The abstractions stay but the texture—the part where you actually feel the friction—fades.
The goal isn’t to be the best individual contributor on the team. The goal is to stay close enough to the work that my perspective is useful.
The Question Worth Asking
Not “do I miss it?” but “what work actually energizes me now, and am I doing enough of it?”
For me, the answer is hybrid. Deep technical work on hard problems, combined with helping teams navigate those problems. Neither alone is right.
I’m still figuring out the ratio.
The Bottom Line
There’s no wrong answer to the principal engineer question. There’s only an honest answer and a dishonest one.
Know what you actually want. Know why.
Everything else is just the path to getting there.