How often is an L9 engineer "eccentric" and not very fun to work with?
I'm going to guess not often because... you don't get to that level without learning how to work well with managers/co-workers, right?
I'm going to guess not often because... you don't get to that level without learning how to work well with managers/co-workers, right?
Not everyone is a perfect angel 24/7 (one of my favorite high-level engineer's hobby was to antagonize our Director, probably decreasing his manager's lifespan by about 10 years due to the stress), but I guess one social skill you can have is knowing what bridges you can set on fire for your own entertainment. (I was also entertained.)
The "eccentric" folks tend to find their own way, outside of corporate promotions. You don't have to be nice to anyone to win a chess tournament or make a popular open-source library. You just do those things, and your work speaks for itself. Those are kind of more narrow areas in which you can succeed and measure, where Big Tech promotions are a little bit more nuanced, requiring not only technical excellence, but some social skills and navigation of corporate politics.
I think Sr Principal and Distinguished are achieved by excellence AND tenure. Too much context/tribal knowledge is required so hard for anyone to be effective at a high level otherwise.
To be clear, these people often times deal a lot with operational issues. And they're keeping track of a lot of initiatives and fires. So sometimes I see some lose patience in meetings against managers/leadership. But that's understandable I think given their stress. Happens pretty rarely.
L9s are usually having industry-wide impact and that involves a shit ton of just talking with people and convincing them that your path through the forest is the right one. You need the right ideas, but you also need the skills to convince a whole bunch of smart people, often at other companies entirely, that your ideas are right.