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Because [as Janko Jeneric said] it is true.It is simply a fact.Edit added paragraph (and not below): At most companies there is a cutoff level, a level that not every engineer is expected to make in their career and there is no shame in not making. That level is often (but not always) called Principal Engineer.I’m a pretty good software engineer. By my third year of work, I was a team lead for compiler projects. Either by myself or teams I led did several major pieces of software and most people who worked with me remember me and what I did. I successfully ran a startup for 15 years and created a product that thousands of engineers at major companies used to build other products. I leveraged my specialty into a consulting career where I had customers that called me back for project after project. I designed a portion of a chip for Intel that actually got built and shipped.However, I never made principal engineer at a major company. Only twice was I even close to doing so. If I had stayed at Pr1me Computer, my second job, a year longer, I probably would have been promoted to principal engineer (see note below)—I was on track to do so, but I left to form my startup with my ex-wife. Similarly, at Intel, if I had done the marketing part of my job as architect well enough to convince a major customer to require our chip at part of a design win, I would have probably have been promoted to principal engineer, but I didn’t. Those were my only two chances.You need to understand that in most companies principal engineer is a very select position. Your manager cannot promote you into that position. Becoming a principal engineer requires being nominated to the position and having the people who already hold the position agree that you are their peer. That means you have to not only do outstanding work. It must be work that is important enough that your reputation exceeds the boundaries of your team, your department, and possibly even your division or business group.In a company with 10k engineers, the number of principal engineers will number only in the low 100s. You need to be recognized not only as a 1 in 10 engineer but more like 1 in 20 or 1 in 50.Becoming a principal engineer takes more than simple engineering skill. It takes being in the right place at the right time to make a difference. It takes doing things that are beyond one’s comfort zone. It takes doing those things and making them make a difference. I didn’t manage to do that. I never made that cut.Edit: Thanks to Yen Kaow Ng for pointing how I consistently misspelled principal, which I now have hopefully corrected. It’s one of the faults of being a phonetic writer. I literally hear my words as I write them (and when I read which keeps me from being a speed reader) so I sometimes make phonetic substitutions their/there is a common one.Edit added note:The level of cutoff at Google is “Level 6”. Every engineer is expected to strive to make level 5 and the company is up or out if you don’t and even once you make that level (Level 5 at Google), you are expected to maintain that level of performance or you are still out, although I think that is more discretionary. But the cut-off level is often like being a tenured professor, once you have made it at a company, your reputation at the company is intact. They get rid of you by eliminating your whole job area.Anyway, apparently from reviewing my resume recently. Yes, I am considering coming our of retirement, I saw that at Pr1me my title was Principle, which means the cut-off level was “Technical Consultant” or “Consulting Engineer” or some similar title, because I know I never went through the voting process, and there was one and after leaving at becoming a contract engineer I generally used the term “Consultant” to describe my title.But, the point of this note is that there is a cut-off, a level that is hard to reach. The exact title may vary and how many steps it is from the starting level can vary too, but there is a pinch point, a point that most people don’t make.There are similar pinch points in the management chain. Nearly everyone can become a team leader and have around a dozen people reporting to them, if they can become a manager at all (and leading a team of four or five is often an easy transition to make). But having twenty to sixty people reporting to you and multiple teams under you is a bigger step. It is even bigger step to have hundreds of people reporting to you, etc. The C-suite (as I have heard it called) is particularly exclusive. So, if you want to be President or CEO, start your own company, you can hold that title until you need venture capital to flow in and they want a person with experience at the helm. (I know because my partner and I were approached by “angel” investors and that was one of their criteria and my partner said No to that. It wasn’t the kind of company she wanted to be part of. We had a “lifestyle” company and becoming the “other kind” of startup wasn’t for us.)

At Citrix, where I am a Principal Designer reporting to the VP of Design (and helping enact various initiatives), we have intro'd a company-wide design strategy anchored to a few core elements: UI standards, design education/outreach, and new concepts.Central to this strategic effort is an umbrella program called Design Matters, featuring the CEO's own personal commitment. This is echoed in his actions (participating in design reviews, giving specific directions, attending UI design summits) and his words (constant evangelism for design in company events, speeches, videos). And of course his constant support for the VP and design team.Design Matters advances one of our top 3 strategic imperatives for this year, to drive a culture of design thinking and doing. This also involves many things: 1) a beautiful website of tools/resources/case studies of employees doing design, 2) UCD training workshops on personas/scenarios/prototyping, 3) office hours to consult with teams on their product designs, 4) an evolving visual/interaction design language with patterns and styles, and 5) recognizing efforts by employees as "Design Heroes" and "Ambassadors" to help spread the word and convince managers, engineers, etc of the value of design process and outcomes. This includes folks in HR updating their onboarding program, and Facilities reinventing Citrix workplace design, etc. Whew! :-) It's a TON of work. Lotsa arguing and influencing and presenting.Going beyond Citrix though, a design strategy (in whatever situation) necessarily involves some major cornerstones to be successful. Consider them as multiple levers to be controlled in varying degrees and emphasis (taken from my recent blog post here: http://www.ghostinthepixel.com/?p=456)IMHO, I’m not totally convinced a company needs to hire a specific role for “design strategist” per se. In my view, that is the part played by your VP of Design, Creative Director, UX Director, and various other “design leaders”…which (as demonstrated by Apple, Dyson, P&G and Target) may also include the CEO!a) Standards & patterns: Defining a strong, flexible visual and interaction design language common across products, with core components, widgets, patterns, templates for everyone to uptake and integrate to achieve a family feel. Truly, this defines the DNA of the main products, connected to the brand and central design values.b) Education & outreach: This includes internal education efforts within the company to get people excited and informed about design process, outcomes, methods, etc. Also this includes reaching out to design schools for talent-spotting, building name recognition, co-sponsoring projects that can help guide internal projects, etc.c) Creating new concepts: Want to create a great strategy? Build great products! Prototyping hi-fidelity concepts are the true surefire way to make a strategy visible, by provoking questions about what’s most important, and visualizing possibilities as compelling forms that can be validated and iterated upon.Fundamentally, design strategy is about creating and delivering value, from a deeply humanistic POV that supports your business goals, and advances the state-of-the-art in shaping people’s lives for the better…while evolving your core mission, expanding markets/customers, and envisioning what’s next.This requires heart, energy, vision, persistence, iteration, and smart collaboration, not a powerpoint slide deck or 3 hour meetings. It’s a shared commitment at the leadership level, that mobilizes and enlists the “in the trenches” workers at your company.

Different industries and different companies have different reports. Also, different departments have different reports. The reports might be formal or informal, written or in presentation format.Design departments write reports after studying the feasibility of a proposal. This can include technical feasibility and an evaluation of cost effectiveness. Depending on the industry this might be for internal use to select which project to fund or for external use to compete to win a government award or something similar. After a decision or award several design approaches could be studied and the findings (merit and demerit of the approaches) can be discussed in a report. After some development a report can be written to summarize the selection of design parameters. This may be the result of a designed experiment.Manufacturing departments study different processes to produce products, how the processes affect the cost, labor, tolerances and quality of the product. This information is reported back to design as it can impact design. It is also reported to production in the form of work instructions or to be used for production to generate work instructions.Some companies use a stage gate process and hold design reviews in which different groups report to the other groups. Other companies have project teams which have representatives from groups involved and may have a matrix organization where employees report to their own department and to the project manager(s).