Why are Principal Engineers taking on reportees and performing managerial duties? Isn’t this a fundamental misuse of the role? A Principal Engineer is supposed to be a senior technical authority, driving architecture, innovation, and solving the most complex problems—not acting as a people manager. When they start collecting reportees, it raises a red flag: are they trying to shield themselves behind a team to inflate visibility and give the illusion of doing ‘more’ work than they actually are? This not only dilutes the technical bar but also creates confusion in accountability. Instead of leading by technical depth, they start operating as pseudo-managers, which neither serves engineering excellence nor respects the purpose of the role. In reality, it looks more like a strategy to hide from real technical challenges, while showcasing headcount as a false measure of impact.
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Three letters explain. DEI.
I worked with a lot of wildly incompetent straight white male PEs at Cisco. What does DEI have to do with it?
@e6
Thats good considering skills are below a freshman at community college.
Must be humbling for a PE/DE at Cisco to know their prospects and comp are inferior to a new grad at Nvidia or OpenAI.
"Principal Engineer at Cisco" = "world's tallest mid-et"
Three letters explain. DEI.
PE and DE at Cisco often have no external engineering qualifications and are just promoted out of the way from within. They wouldn’t even be an ordinary engineer anywhere else.
Bro, like someone said in the Blind thread, many of them couldn’t pass FizzBuzz. Better they do management tasks.
PE's & DE's are the worst. Entitled and smug.
We really are nearing peak "doing more with less", aren't we?
Double ironic. Most can do neither, neither truly innovative engineer, nor are they any kind of manager. Most seem not be be able to fight their way out of a wet paper bag, if push came to shove. Lots of doublespeak; little demonstrable skills. For many that probably also extends to the spouse, who are either in a marriage coma, or are hitting the bars on the prowl; while their technical guru is on the road; downing another big dinner on Cisco's time and adding another getting closer to 50" pant size yeah year. Cast them all into the LR bucket to fund Chucky-Golf 2026. Oh yeah, enlighted tech guru: please shower once in a while. Hopefully the person reading this maybe is re-reading this and asking if they fit the bill. Hint: check your car's mileage while you are out of town; you might be surprised.
My mgr is PE also doing exactly same - misusing role. He calls himself principal manager