[eru]

That blogpost doesn't even contradict this.

In the terms of that article, Principal Engineers would perhaps be classified as 'losers'.

> The Gervais principle differs from the Peter Principle, which it superficially resembles. The Peter Principle states that all people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. It is based on the assumption that future promotions are based on past performance. The Peter Principle is wrong for the simple reason that executives aren’t that stupid, and because there isn’t that much room in an upward-narrowing pyramid. They know what it takes for a promotion candidate to perform at the to level. So if they are promoting people beyond their competence anyway, under conditions of opportunity scarcity, there must be a good reason.

> Scott Adams, seeing a different flaw in the Peter Principle, proposed the Dilbert Principle: that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to middle management to limit the damage they can do. This again is untrue. The Gervais principle predicts the exact opposite: that the most competent ones will be promoted to middle management. Michael Scott was a star salesman before he become a Clueless middle manager. The least competent employees (but not all of them — only certain enlightened incompetents) will be promoted not to middle management, but fast-tracked through to senior management. To the Sociopath level.

From https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

To be clear: I mean to imply no opinion on whether 'The Gervais Principle' is true nor applicable. I'm just saying that 'The Gervais Principle' is perfectly compatible with Principal Engineers at Google knowing their stuff.