[the_af]

Yes, but the stakes at your job are different. You don't get fired or get bad performance reviews if you fail to convince your friends to go out for dinner. You're not expected to be constantly be doing this either. You are not paid a top salary and get performance reviews based on that.

Principal ICs sounds like a high stress occupation...

[questionableans]

I’m sure the stress level varies by the individual.

The upside to a more collaborative role like this is you don’t have the stress of having to know everything. Individual developer roles can be more stressful because if you say you’ll solve a problem in a certain amount of time, and then you’re off on your own coding, and things aren’t working out… you’re personally on the hook for the whole thing. Whereas if you’re leading an effort and company priorities shift so people can’t contribute as much, you communicate that to all your stakeholders, and look good for letting higher priority efforts have more resources.

[imiric]

You're painting a very rosy picture of what this role entails.

> The upside to a more collaborative role like this is you don’t have the stress of having to know everything.

It's the opposite, actually. The person in these roles has to wear many hats, and have an overview of many areas and teams in the company. The article is explicit about this. They may not be an expert at everything, but they should certainly have working knowledge of each area, have the ability to jump in and steer each ship—whether that involves communicating with each team, removing roadblocks, or writing code themselves—, and be able to communicate all of this in a language useful to executives.

When individual teams are not working well, when multiple teams are not working well together, and ultimately when value is not being produced, it is people in these roles who will be on the hook first.

So the stakes are indeed much higher for this role than for someone working in a single team.

[questionableans]

It’s different for different people, but IMO, knowing something significant about everything is easier than knowing everything about something significant.

And if you understand the organizational dynamics, being in a position to fix (or recommend the cancellation of) projects that aren’t working gives you more control over your destiny than being just another person trapped in a dysfunctional org.

So I’m not saying higher level roles are easier for everyone, but I am saying lower level roles can actually be harder for someone who has mastered higher level roles.