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Compare career levels across companies

levels.fyi

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Re: Compare career levels across companies

#71

Post by CM30 »

It's an interesting site, and it seems like a nice way to compare salary and the possibilities for advancement at the companies included.

However, am I the only one who kinda thought it'd give a bit of information about the responsibilities and required skillsets for each level? Personally, I've always found the hardest bit around shopping around for a job knowing exactly what they expect of a hire with X number of years of experience, or what they consider a junior/middleweight/expert engineer. It'd be interesting to see something like this which says say, Google expects a Senior Software Engineer to know these languages and have these skills, whereas Facebook expects them to know these languages and have these other skills or what not.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#72

Post by usaar333 »

lordnacho wrote: post #14

Can you really make a million bucks with just 10 years experience as a T7 at Google? What does a "Senior Staff SWE" do? Are there a lot of them?

Years of experience don't matter as much as output.

If you are capable of outputting at t7 level after 10 years of experience, that would make you one of the best engineers (by Google ratings) in the world. And yes, you could be earning a million a year.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#73

Post by bertjk »

Zaheer wrote: post #34

Maker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: http://www.comp.fyi :) Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

Where is the data sourced from? Is it all self-reported?

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#74

Post by tedsanders »

Zaheer wrote: post #34

Maker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: http://www.comp.fyi :) Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

Very interesting, thanks for putting this together.

One thing that I'd like to see - on compensation, can you clarify whether the stock grants are valued at time of grant or at time of vesting?

If they are valued at time of vesting then the numbers will be much harder to (a) compare against one another, and (b) extrapolate into the future.

Right now the submission form is ambiguous, which I worry is muddying your dataset. I highly recommend picking one and clarifying that on the submission form.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#75

Post by Zaheer »

vonmoltke wrote: post #63
Zaheer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that new hire salaries at the same level are typically higher than folks internally who have been at that level for some time. The market rate has actually gone up significantly in last 1-2 years.

I have 16 years of engineering experience and Google has made me two offers (original and revised) for a T4 position in NY that are well below the numbers reported on Levels (in fact, below the average on the site). So, either I am getting low balled like hell or there is skew in the numbers. Edit: there is skew in the numbers, not some in the numbers.

Did you have strong competing offers? From the discussions on Blind most folks get strong offers from Google only if they have another really strong offer. Keep in mind most of our data presented right now is Bay Area-centric. We're working on filtering all views of data by location still.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#76

Post by Zaheer »

tedsanders wrote: post #74
Zaheer wrote: post #34

Maker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: http://www.comp.fyi :) Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

Very interesting, thanks for putting this together. One thing that I'd like to see - on compensation, can you clarify whether the stock grants are valued at time of grant or at time of vesting? If they are valued at time of vesting then the numbers will be much harder to (a) compare against one another, and (b) extrapolate into the future. Right now the submission form is ambiguous, which I worry is muddying your dat…

The submission form [1] asks explicitly for what would appear on your W2 (ex. vested value). Part of the reason why comp packages have been so high in last 1-2 years is that stock grants that were given to employees 2-4 years ago have shot up in value via a bull run stock market. To attract these employees, companies have to outbid their current expected take-home pay. Thus the vested value is actually most relevant when you are comparing your current compensation and new offers.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#77

Post by Zaheer »

bertjk wrote: post #73
Zaheer wrote: post #34

Maker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html There's also a short url: http://www.comp.fyi :) Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

Where is the data sourced from? Is it all self-reported?

Yup, you can add your own here: https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#78

Post by Zaheer »

ummonk wrote: post #53
Zaheer wrote: post #3

Hi, I'm one the makers of Levels.fyi. Happy to answer any questions and would love to hear feedback! We have a lot of features in the coming months that we think folks will love!

I've been using levels.fyi and really liking it. It provides much more useful data than paysa. I strongly believe the economy needs a functioning free labor market, and price discovery is crucial to any free market. The main feature I'd like to see is information on typical refreshers. Also useful would be a way to just get a list of companies sorted by comp at a given approximate level. Additionally, information abo…

Thanks for the feedback! We've been currently been heads down working on adding account functionality so that folks can start reviewing companies / teams within companies. As soon as that's out (next few weeks) we're hoping to work on more granular compensation information as well!

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#79

Post by usaar333 »

yegle wrote: post #35
lordnacho wrote: post #14

Can you really make a million bucks with just 10 years experience as a T7 at Google? What does a "Senior Staff SWE" do? Are there a lot of them?

Most people won't reach T7 in 10 years. The expectation for each level is: L3: you are expected to do projects assigned to you well L4: you are expected to lead a project in your team well L5: you are expected to lead a project across multiple teams in your organization well L6: you are expected to lead a project across multiple organizations well I think the L6 engineer is basically a CTO role in many other companie…

Your L4+ levels seem pushed up by one to two. Levels should align to manager equivilent scopes.

Based on my own experience at peer company and https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the-job-levels-in-Googles...

L4: Capable of independent work on a project and coordinating with a small group (1-2 others). (note this is PhD starting level)

L5: Capable of leading your team (e.g. as a tech lead). Maps to entry-level manager

L6: Capable of leading a large team (e.g. large team TL). Maps to more seasoned manager.

L7: Lead project across multiple teams well. Maps to senior manager (manager of managers)

L8: Lead project across multiple orgs/large org. Maps to director (manager of managers of managers).

At a series B stage company (say 100 eng), on manager track, L7s might be called directors. L8 would be VP engineering.

Re: Compare career levels across companies

#80

Post by Zaheer »

Kaveren wrote: post #5

With anonymous submissions on sites like these (see also: Glassdoor), I wonder if there's any sabotage going on where companies submit fraudulent information about competitors. Isn't it a potential downside to this open approach without any verification?

We've had several HR reps from companies reach out to us actually thanking us for the data we have. There are consulting companies that gather salary data today and resell it to anonymously to other companies so that they know what they're competing with. We haven't seen many bad actors yet but that is something we'll have to look out for as we grow! Not sure honestly how we'll solve it just yet as we don't verify the information for low friction. Perhaps we could introduce a 'verified' salary process. Lmk if you have ideas!
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