> From another former Az eng now elsewhere still working on big systems, the post gets way way more boring when you realize that things like "Principle Group Manager" is just an M2 and Principal in general is L6 (maybe even L5) Google equivalent. Similarly Sev2 is hardly notable for anyone actually working on the foundational infra.

Before the days of title inflation across the industry, a a Principal at Microsoft was a rare thing. When I was there, the ratio was maybe 1 principal for every 30 developers. Principals were looked up to, had decades of experience, and knew their shit really well. They were the big guns you called in to fix things when the shit really hit the fan, or when no one else could figure out what was going on.