What Eugene Yan thinks about ambition

@eugene-yan · 15 positions · On ppll ↗

Member of technical staff at Anthropic. He has led ML/AI teams at Amazon, Alibaba and Lazada, and writes about LLMs, recommender systems and engineering at eugeneyan.com.

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1 dated position, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Eugene Yan has said — not written or endorsed by them.

1 position so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

19 Oct 2025

Our readingReaching a senior level requires putting oneself on the critical path, but excelling beyond it requires removing oneself from it.

Their wordsTo get to principal, you need to put yourself on the critical path. To be effective as a principal and go beyond it, you need to actively remove yourself from it.

↗Advice for New Principal Tech ICs (i.e., Notes to Myself)eugeneyan.com 2nd of 3 in this piece