Name: Rockstar Software Engineer Story: SW2 -> Principal In Just 4 Years
Uploaded: 2022-05-10T01:59:24+00:00
Duration: 7 min 3 s
Description: An engineer joined Mixpanel as a level 2 Software Engineer, and received 4 promotions in 4 years to become a Principal T

Rockstar Software Engineer Story: SW2 -> Principal In Just 4 Years

- An engineer joined Mixpanel as a level 2 Software Engineer, and received 4 promotions in 4 years to become a Principal Tech Lead Manager (TLM).
- Key to his success was the ability to make rapid progress on one of the company's top priorities: reduce infrastructure spend.
- He had a hypothesis that the majority of the cost incurred came from a few customers where the economics were backward for Mixpanel.
- Rather than solving a gnarly technical problem, the engineer worked with these customers to change their use of compute resources, resulting in massive savings for the company.

For more resources about becoming a rockstar engineer:

- ["What's the core insight behind quick growth?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nJ762p255cGyuth36H6w/whats-the-core-insight-behind-quick-growth/)
- ["What's the difference between a low performer software engineer and a high performer?"](https://www.jointaro.com/question/nMxx2EMVIlJbl1oK4SGu/whats-the-difference-between-a-low-performer-software-engineer-and-a-high-performer/)
- [Mentoring Junior SWEs \[E3\] to Senior \[E5\] In Just 2.5 Years At Meta](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/EX9563YnxcJb62cCmetg/case-study-mentoring-junior-swes-e3-to-senior-e5-in-just-25-years-at-meta/)

An engineer joined Mixpanel as a level 2 Software Engineer, and received 4 promotions in 4 years to become a Principal T

VP of Engineering at Mixpanel, Engineering Manager at Twitter + Amazon, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft - David Pan has quite the resume. He’s now a coach and advisor to other engineering leaders.

This collection represents the best of what Taro has to offer, personally curated by Alex and Rahul. If you're short on time, go through the content here.

Principal engineers have massive scope, always greatly transcending the boundaries of their immediate team. They own success at an organization level, and their impact can often be felt across the entire company.

The clearest way a company can acknowledge your growth. At the end of the day, you can't solely interview your way to a principal engineer; promotion is the true foundation of your pay and career.

Rahul has worked at Kosei, Pinterest, and Meta where he was a tech lead and manager. He's now building Taro, empowering engineers to have more effective and fulfilling careers. You may know him from his 75,000+ subscriber YouTube channel.

Becoming a tech lead is the most common growth path for software engineers as they grow to senior and staff levels.

Taro offers advice for tech leads who want to manage their projects or teams more effectively

A tech lead is responsible for guiding multiple software engineers throughout the execution of a project. They usually have many years of software engineer experience and system design knowledge to help them navigate through complex software engineering situations. They work with multiple stakeholders to ensure that a project is delivered on time. They also set expectations for deliverables and quality of the project.