alt Hacker NewsI hit principal pretty early on in my career. I keep a detailed work history for anyone interested in what that journey is like: https://www.tyleo.com/professional-work-history
It's both hustle and luck. One reason I left Microsoft was because I wasn't on track there. The organization was good but also top heavy so there wasn't room for growth. When I joined Rec Room the tech I built really clicked and the company scaled rapidly. Our team became critical and helped hundreds of coworkers advance their goals. I've heard another principal engineer describe this as, "being pulled into the white hot burning center of a company".
As far as I can tell there's no "trick" to hitting the role. I'd describe it more as, "repeatedly move mountains". There's some luck identifying the right mountains and luck + hustle moving them at all.
I like the insight of luck combined with incredible talent. Too many people get a bad taste in their mouth by leaders who only attribute success to hard work and dedication. Knowing what battles to really fight and die for is a talent in and of itself, but it's also a bit of luck to both have access to systems to allow you to impact important projects and also to end up impacting the right ones.
It's very frustrating to be able to have a massive impact, but not get any sort of notice for it. Many people just start punching a clock when that happens. I've done it.