[distortionfield]

But now you’re just moving the goalposts and inevitably someone else will make the same declaration about principal engineers and will instead insist that only Chief Architects (or whatever next step up the corporate ladder of madness is) are the really truly experienced class of engineers.

It’s a pointless challenge to try and bucket engineers by skill levels like that. Titles are for compensation and rank, and nothing more. A senior at my company would’ve been more like a staff engineer at my last spot. Every company is different and thats okay.

[bee_rider]

When I worked on a project that had a dedicated architect, they really seemed like they were the only one doing engineering work (design). The rest of us were assembling their design, like technicians do.

[patrick451]

If drawing over-simplified block diagrams of software components is "engineering", we'd be better off just letting the technicians follow their intution. My experience with principals engaging in this sort of naval gazing is they just fuck everything up. The project was in much better shape before they came along with their fancy engineering ideas.

[bee_rider]

IDK, I’m a grad student, so most of my programming does not really need engineering, in the same way that carpenters and machinists don’t generally need mechanical engineers to go over their side projects, sheds, and home-made shop tools.

The architect seemed to have a pretty good path mapped out, but it was early on in the project, and I was just an intern so I wasn’t there long enough to see the mess of reality asserting itself.