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Comment by alexjplant | Hacker News Reader

As I've so fond of pointing out on HN "Principal" means two different things depending on the culture of the company. In SV/BigTech "Principal" is a step above Staff. In many other companies, however, it just means "non-junior employee"; these are the same companies that also have titles like "Lead Architect" and "Systems Administrator". Without context "Principal" is meaningless.

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I've found Staff having very different qualities depending on the company.

Principal means above staff or at the very least above senior in every company I’ve ever encountered it.

Senior may have diluted to just mean “non-junior employee”, but I’ve never heard someone using principal for that.

Word. Where I work that's 15-20+ years experience and often means "would become a director if there was an opening and they wanted the job"

It's usually above senior but it can be below staff at equivalent companies. Check out levels.fyi for salary bands.

Principal at Microsoft is between senior & staff at Google. Principal at Amazon is directly above senior, but is generally higher than staff at Google. Principal at Roblox is about the same as Microsoft.

Right that's what I meant by "at the very least above senior". Within a given company principal is generally always higher than staff, but for companies that don't have staff, principal is generally always higher than senior.

My point was that I've never seen principal used to mean "non-junior employee" in the way that senior occasionally is.

My god, sysadmin has become a meme title?

Really starting to feel old here because to me that's one the most legitimate and accurate titles in the industry.

There will be riots in nursing homes when they find out

I want to know where all the Webmaster roles have gone, personally.

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