[m0zg]

Becoming principal engineers is usually just playing the cards right in general. Very rarely does anyone get this far on technical merit alone. I know several people at Google who easily deserve the title based on quality and volume of their contributions, and several "principal" engineers who do not. Life isn't fair, what can I say. In addition to being good, you have to be at the right time at the right place, please the right set of people, and "play your cards" in other ways. In fact, if you do the "soft" things right, "being good" at technical stuff matters very little, beyond a certain basic threshold.

[retiredcoder]

Very true, I see that the higher one goes with the increasing requirement of greater influence radius turns into politics.

However what I have noticed recently is that title inflation has arrived to big companies too; mostly to increase retention. So, when I mention played their cards right, I wasn’t referring on how they leverage the soft skills, etc. It was more on individual ability to do salary negotiation each perf review, bluffing/threatening to leave, etc.

At the end of the day I guess it is good for them and everyone who is in those markets. But again, my main point was around title inflation is not exclusive to startups, although director level and above seems still to be hard to get in FAANG (at least in the companies I worked for those require board approval) while in startups they are given more freely.

[m0zg]

Threatening to leave is not the best strategy at Google BTW. You never know (by design) if a counter-offer will be extended, and you're very likely to be taken up on your bluff. :-)