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The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#111

Post by aix1 »

nostrademons wrote: post #80
nkingsy wrote: post #5

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted aga…

Note that at Big Tech companies, almost all code is written by L3/L4 (the untitled "Software Engineers") and the few L5s ("Senior") that enjoy coding. L6-L8 ("Staff" through "Principal") are the political levels, where EQ is more important than IQ, your job is as much wrangling/convincing/selling/negotiating with other people as writing code. Most L6-L8 engineers are managers, but even those who are ICs spend the maj…

There do exist those rare creatures who manage to get promoted to, and beyond, L6 as ICs. I've been trying figure out how they do it, but can't say I've been making much progress.

(I'm Staff myself, but would not have got here without management responsibilities.)

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#112

Post by steveBK123 »

hinkley wrote: post #90
e1g wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that. Developers expect that work such as "refactoring", "platform architecture", "R&D", "investing into the future" has some intrinsic value to the business. At the company level, work such as "knowl…

What they value and what they need often are not in alignment, and only briefly come into alignment when something fails. You can either shop for another team that has its priorities straight, move on, or play games. Sometimes you have to develop a plan to fix something, and then not apply it until other people experience the pain themselves. Otherwise nobody knows how many land mines you’ve thrown yourself on. Games…

Sadly true.. From both a psychology & KPI perspective, an avoided unknown issue does not get the visibility of a quickly/competently resolved experienced issue. Sometimes one can be too proactive in this business.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#113

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #32
nkingsy wrote: post #5

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted aga…

One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day. There are entire weeks where I could have achieved absolutely nothing and I am not sure if it would have been noticed. And that is probably not conducive to promotion as nobody who has power has any idea what I do.

The unpleasant reality is that getting promotions requires a bit self-promotion. While good managers (which you apparently don't have) will clue you in on what's necessary and help out with it, the bulk of the burden is always on the employee to be able to explain their value to the company and to make sure their achievements are known and recognized.

(Taken to extremes, this can be as sociopathic as it may sound. So don't and avoid those who do.)

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#114

Post by commandlinefan »

seattle_spring wrote: post #108
eru wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even VP doesn't have to mean much. In tech, a VP is a big deal. In finance, everyone is a VP.

At big or established tech companies, yes. At "startups" / passion projects with between 1 and a small handful of people it's almost always a made up inflated title. The amount of resumes I've seen with "CTO / VP of Eng" at some hoaky parking app made in a weekend in enough to raise red flags anytime I see the title.

I was one of those people, about 8 years ago - my title was VP, but nobody reported to me (there were only five of us) and I spent all my time programming. I'm uncomfortable even listing it on my resume, but I was there for three years, and if I change my title on the resume to better reflect what I was actually doing then, I'd actually be lying.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#115

Post by allturtles »

lostcolony wrote: post #67
endtime wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle. As a FAANG SWE, what I am reading is "I spent two years cranking out code without doing any design work. My manager and TL never suggested I write a design doc, or didn't give me opportunities to do s…

Designing != documenting design. To get promoted in FAANG (and many large tech companies), yes, you need to document it. Interestingly, whether it works or not is completely unrelated to whether it's documented or not. In fact, the types of useful documentation (descriptions of how decisions were reached, known tradeoffs, API contracts, etc) often are completely different than the types of documentation management as…

> Interestingly, whether it works or not is completely unrelated to whether it's documented or not.

I disagree. Writing up your design gives others the opportunity to provide feedback and improve the design (and possibly catch major flaws) before you build it.

If you never write up your design there's a higher chance that you have built something that doesn't correctly fulfill the product requirements / won't scale / will fail under some race condition you didn't anticipate / is not compatible with the plans an adjacent team has to touch the same area in the next 6 months / etc.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#116

Post by nostrademons »

aix1 wrote: post #111
nostrademons wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that at Big Tech companies, almost all code is written by L3/L4 (the untitled "Software Engineers") and the few L5s ("Senior") that enjoy coding. L6-L8 ("Staff" through "Principal") are the political levels, where EQ is more important than IQ, your job is as much wrangling/convincing/selling/negotiating with other people as writing code. Most L6-L8 engineers are managers, but even those who are ICs spend the maj…

There do exist those rare creatures who manage to get promoted to, and beyond, L6 as ICs. I've been trying figure out how they do it, but can't say I've been making much progress. (I'm Staff myself, but would not have got here without management responsibilities.)

I'm an L6 IC. Basically I had a track record of delivering projects that other engineers said couldn't be done yet were a high priority to upper management. That's actually on the (Google at least) ladder: "At this level...most Google-caliber generalist SWEs could not own and solve the problem this person is owning and solving."

Note that even though I'm a coding-heavy L6 (meaning I spend ~50% of my time coding vs. the 0% that most L6s do), the majority of my time is still spent interfacing, negotiating, and communicating with other teams. The ability to silo in a particular problem domain and just become a local technical expert ends at L5.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#117

Post by ryandrake »

MattGaiser wrote: post #104
DamnYuppie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a list of the projects you worked on with measurable benefits to the company. Start by talking to your manager and then work your way up your reporting structure talking to the directors/cto/ceo's. If they don't know you you need to walk in an introduce yourself, don't drop all your accomplishments on them at once but something I have used many times in the past is just "Hi I am X I work/ed/ing in/on Y, loved he…

I could do all this regularly or send out resumes/answer recruiters every year or two? No wonder tenure is so low.

Everywhere I've worked, it's an order of magnitude easier to get a L+1 job at another company than it is to get promoted to L+1. Until and unless that's fixed, expect tenure to remain low. The fact that no company fixes this tells me this is employers' desired end state.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#118

Post by brundolf »

sponaugle wrote: post #19
geoffjentry wrote: post #7

The thing that many folks don't understand is that it's not that "Titles don't matter", it's that "Titles don't matter when compared across companies". There's not a universal definition of say, "senior software engineer", so comparing titles across companies will always be an apples/oranges exercise. Titles do matter, but only when in the proper context.

One area that was not discussed at length was the transition from a high tier to a medium tier. In that case the HR at the medium tier often put a lot of weight into the title. I have seen HR teams say thing like "That person was not a principal engineer in their previous job" so they need to come in at a lower level here. They (HR) often don't recognized tiers within the industry, and use titles as a proxy for skill…

I worked at a company that called everyone Member of the Technical Staff (were you at Cycorp too?), and I just put a more descriptive title on my LinkedIn, resume, etc. I never had a use for business cards so the issue never came up

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#119

Post by mrbonner »

nkingsy wrote: post #5

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted aga…

I’m sorry to hear this. Please take care of your health, mentally and physically. Management usually promotes folks showing “visions” rather than those who keep their head down and make sure the plumbing works smoothly. It’s a sad state.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#120

Post by gr_m »

hired as a senior manager, reshuffling happens and job title becomes "senior analyst".

now I feel dir+ folks do not have the same respect as before and overall treat me like crap.

I have 10+ years of experience in my line of work. I'm afraid I'll need to update my linkedin job title at some point and I won't be able to interview for a manager role anymore.

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