Are these just titles OR the responsibilities and pays defer ?
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I would say that DE and Fellow are really rockstars (some times they may be a rockstar of declining technology, but they universally have big breadth of knowledge. At least all those who I met, were like this. PEs and TLs however are quite often a very different thing. The key difference is that wile Fellows and DEs are governed at the corporate level, PEs and TLs are promoted within BU without much oversight as to quality of the people material. And that brings in some cases typical Cisco pains - cronyism/villageism, sometime blatant bribing and generally all kind of favouritism instead of meritocracy. Of course - not every BU is the same, and hence PEs and TLs from different BUs are quite often really two different worlds - competence-wise. And yes - there are cases that G8 > PE. Not often, but it happens.
So, -mbn, all the work is done by GL8s, then?
@2hvp What's rubbish, grasshopper? The last poster said that people do not understand what they do, which is not rubbish. I'm just listening to a video playback of Fellow's presentation at the moment - good luck getting a grade 8 to do this session. Of course some of them in some fashionable BU's got over promoted or are specialised in an area of diminishing use to CSCO - like that's just a problem with PE, DE and Fellows? And like at least 4 from the 15 Fellows in CSCO just got whacked - seems like they are taking their fair share of culling.
Rubbish, they are not all that good.some are yes but by no means all of them.
@2uyk - agreed, most people have no idea what they do. Just because you might know an RFC better than the DE in the room, those sorts of people can hold the room captivated with discussions you cannot even understand.
They are all just titles next to grade levels.
The progression for ICs is:
Technical Leader -> Principal Engineer -> Distinguished Engineer -> Fellow
As with anything the quality level at those lower levels differs.
I've worked with outstanding Tech Leads. I've worked with God awful ones that couldn't spell IP.
Most of the PE's I've worked with are pretty good, but there have been a few that made me scratch my head.
The DE's and Fellows I've worked with have all been stellar. I remember one conference call I was on where a DE was presenting an idea he had. I was actually on the call listening while driving my wife to a doctor's appointment. I turned to her and said "that's a billion $ idea". I was right.
In my opinion, the detractors to the DE's and Fellow's tend to have a mixture of jealousy and a lack of comprehension of what exactly they do, and how hard it is to come up with things from a blank sheet of paper.
I'm still shocked by them impacting some of the Fellows. Literally these are some of the people that invented the Internet.
Tough crowd. PE's is a tough gig to get in some BU's and a walk-in in others. There are quite a few 'historical' PE's whose better days are behind them, but there are some very sharp ones (it's basically director level for technical people). DE is based on quotas. There can only be 2% DE.
And the amount of RSU is based on the whim of your manager...
In the early 90's Technical Leaders were as rare as hens' teeth, and they were as sharp as hell. I don't think there were any PE's, DE's or Fellows.
Now the average BART driver is brighter than these Cisco heroes.
TLs -that depends, some are doing real work, and some are puppies of their directors. Depending on level (there are two), they earn about +150k. Sometimes got RSUs
PEs - 90% of PEs don't produce anything. They fly a lot, and whatever they have to say, has been prepared by someone else, from whom they stole an idea. Got RSUs.
DEs- you generally don't see them, other than in directory. They travel, put their names on patents to which they didn't contribute at all, and mingle with executives. Usually they already forgot even the powerpoint. Got tons of RSUs.
Ha ha ha
PowerPoint guru
PowerPoint warriors.