25 and 26 has been my experience with this as well (not at Amazon; at much smaller organizations) Those paradoxes happen there.
Just my opinion: one of the key mindset shift that happens before someone steps into staff and principal engineering is understanding that the technical choices you make are tradeoffs. You give up conceits (or one should) that a technical opinion is separated from context, while also getting to deeper technical principles that appear across architectural levels or disciplines (such as queues). You also see how technical systems are inseparable from the people using it, and being a part of it.
When you start seeing that, you start seeing that everywhere. You start to act in a way that is informed from that understanding. You need to be on the critical path in order to do what matters, but you also need to connect those dots that are overlooked.
But that is also one flavor of principal engineering. I tended to do the horizontal influence than deep technical and domain expertise. At early stage startups, people have to wear multiple hats, often exceeding the scope of what they were initially hired for.
Just my opinion: one of the key mindset shift that happens before someone steps into staff and principal engineering is understanding that the technical choices you make are tradeoffs. You give up conceits (or one should) that a technical opinion is separated from context, while also getting to deeper technical principles that appear across architectural levels or disciplines (such as queues). You also see how technical systems are inseparable from the people using it, and being a part of it.
When you start seeing that, you start seeing that everywhere. You start to act in a way that is informed from that understanding. You need to be on the critical path in order to do what matters, but you also need to connect those dots that are overlooked.
But that is also one flavor of principal engineering. I tended to do the horizontal influence than deep technical and domain expertise. At early stage startups, people have to wear multiple hats, often exceeding the scope of what they were initially hired for.