Google L4 includes people from 1 yoe to like 10yoe and some people are insanely good communicators and SWEs that make you scratch your head why they are still L4.. the variance of capabilities seems to be junior to senior in one level
Umm 🤔💭 @tessi so whoever gets promoted to L5 from L4 must be f****g genius or something, right? I meant irrespective of their exp.
Not really,, I find experienced L4s more capable than around 30% of L5s Just kind of tells some inefficiencies in caliberation
It’s also team dependent. Some org/team have mediocre l5 - I have seen some of them, I rate them as l4.
The spectrum at L5 is worse. For L6+ promos you need "business justification" with the usual ridiculous bar for "impact". For L6 external hires you need 2 system designs and 1 or 2 LC mediums.
This. After L5, promos are quite difficult and requires a lot of leadership. So you can have some very knowledgeable and solid engineers who don't bother.
Yeah, 5->6 really depends on your and your manager's political skills nowadays.
I'm seeing L4 new hires with >10yoe that were previously staff/principal engineers at their Fortune 500 companies. At the same time the L3 new grad in the team is crying about not getting promoted after one year
And this is similar in Amazon as well. Amazon SDE2 will literally be anywhere from mark Zuckerberg level coding skills to intern. The only problem is the intern level SDE2 thinks they are mark Zuckerberg.
Mark zuckerberg is IC5 level though. Maybe IC6.
Mark Zuckerberg is intern level
Bureaucratic and complacent workplace downsides. Comfy and cushy job usually means your promotion is based on being buddy buddy. Hard to actually have impact and have people care.
Amazon L5s are like this too.
And I’m the L4 that makes your scratch your head wondering how I got here, and why I haven’t gotten PIPed yet
Its the result of internal candidates blocked by ridiculous L5 promo bar plus a very low bar for L4 external candidates.
Not exactly a high bar for L4 for internal candidates either. At least, in old perf system, it was basically implied around 18mo tenure as L3 with compulsory CME, EE, SEE + Promo.
Manager and luck play a big role here. I know very strong L4s not promoted to L5 due to project timing, relationship with manager, etc., while some get promoted super fast as they keep getting the right project (not even delivered).