https://www.levels.fyi/companies/cisco/salaries/software-engineer/levels/principal-engineer
The link above shows Half Million? Is it true? Cisco principal engineer get paid this much?
8 replies (most recent on top)
Yes its true.. after spending 10-12 years in Cisco. Even as in every other Cisco projects the bonus percentage is also more than others. I think its very less compare to other organizations
@vt+1jgwvyefw - be careful what you wish for. Many of those people are unemployable anywhere technical leadership is expected. Dream of a good retirement built on a large pile of good investments.
@p2+1jgwvyefw
I want that kind of life
my principal engineers never get on the late night call, always pass the hard work to TAC or field SE, mostly sit there prepare ppt (or simply surf) .. sometimes in the team meeting, so something that is always true ( like innovation, reduce cost) .. and always right to everyone ( work family balance) .. usually stuck in the past ( back then I did this and this at the lunch time to all of us) ..
have a doubtful eyes across the others and think everyone else is stupid enough..
get a bigger salary than anyone of us, usually either extremely fat or extremely slim (have work out time in RTP gym)..
usually goes round to attend social interactions with sales and lady project managers .. or social batterfly around the campus..
What goes up, must come down. Many senior principal level folks have gotten the axe lately in LRs as Cisco promoted too many, and can’t keep them.
The link above shows Half Million?
People who can sc--w up at a cost of tens of millions for each bad decision are hard to come by and therefore demand a high price. The same goes for the executives who allow these decisions to be made unchecked.
...given that 95% of the work involves containing the blast radius of past tech debt, its not like they have anywhere to direct their energies anyway...
They've been given many chances and failed miserably. The fact of the matter is many helped create that technical debt because they have neither low level nor high level skills and they rose up far enough to make mistakes causing significant cascading problems.
the equivalent TC for someone at this level at FAANG is probably 2-3x Cisco
Back when Cisco's stock was skyrocketing "the salary was the bonus." I know people up to the Engineer 4 category who accumulated over $10M in stock in 2000 dollars. At the moment FAANG has the kind of money to pay for their own failures but infinite growth is still not a thing so they'll hit walls eventually.
that is less than a rank-and-file dev will make at Netflix
the equivalent TC for someone at this level at FAANG is probably 2-3x Cisco
in any case, being a high-level IC at Cisco is a worthless position - given that 95% of the work involves containing the blast radius of past tech debt, its not like they have anywhere to direct their energies anyway...
you can see these folks desperate to offer some "hey everyone, I'm alive!" input in any meeting since they feel the need to justify their existence, kinda sad actually since it is so obvious
if you really want to have "impact" at Cisco, the best way is to be a senior dev on a team that Cisco acquires...you'll make more $$$ through the acquihire, and Cisco tends to be hands-off with acquisitions until they reach their own stagnation point, at which point the dullards from the mothership take over
Yes, in total compensation that's correct. Which makes you wonder why since most of them are incompetent. When it comes to driving technology or understanding what it takes to drive technology they tend to create slides and banter about like they have some level of intelligence. Though, one might accept this abundance of denseness if it wasn't for the next level up. Most Distinguished level employees basically do nothing most of the year until they need to justify their existence. At which time, they ask others for ideas. This allows them to appear to to be doing something to their management.