[charles_f]

This post is good in that it doesn't try to define what a principal engineer is, but just give the author's opinion on what their job is.

One thing I realized with getting jobs with increasing degrees of ambiguity and autonomy is that you can _somewhat_ make it what you want. If it turns out that what you want aligns with what is needed, then things go super well.

The other thingis that titles are just a construct. They're nice badges that help rewarding people by giving ego instead of money. being a principal in a startup is different from being one at Amazon is different from being one at Facebook.