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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

#141

Post by khazhoux »

nine_zeros wrote: post #44
lennoff wrote: post #8

I think the key takeaway is to never believe when someone says "Don't worry, you'll get promoted in no time".

This. Anytime management asks you to do some work, ask them - "How will this play into my promotion?" If they can't come up with tangible points, don't do the work. You are not risking anything because at this point, the manager has already decided they want to string you along.

If I had a direct report who asked me this for all the work I ask them to do, I'll have to tell them:

"All the work you do, every bit of it, plays into your promotion. I ask you to do something because it's important to the company and to us all as a team, not because it's going to specifically help you get promoted. If you deliver strong results, I will be the first to champion your promotion. But if all you care about is promotion, maybe you should start looking elsewhere."

I mean, it's perfectly fine (and expected) that I should be discussing with my direct reports how their work helps them on path to promotion. But it's not acceptable for that discussion to be a blocking question for every work item.

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

#142

Post by khazhoux »

I passed up a down-leveling opportunity with a "sure thing" FAANG several years before it went public, because I was insulted at the reduction in my team size/scope (and I knew a bunch of people getting hired in as Directors). That ego cost me... $20 million, maybe more?

There's a lesson there somewhere.

(of course, be in Silicon Valley long enough and everyone accumulates tons of stories like this, so in a way it's not a big deal)

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

#143

Post by summerlight »

pcmoney wrote: post #16

“For example, a senior title at Big Tech typically expects more from an engineer than a small developer agency, a non-tech-first company, or a recently founded start-up does” This is simply not true. Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much. Typically have a narrow specialty and a good grasp on how it fits into the larger Org’s strategy etc. Senior engineers at a small shop do EVERYTHING. Front end, b…

> This is simply not true. Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much. Typically have a narrow specialty and a good grasp on how it fits into the larger Org’s strategy etc.

I don't think this is true. Big techs have surprisingly many moving parts even for minor engineering projects and that complexity is the main motivation of hiring smart people from the globe. Most SWEs in big techs are generalists, not specialists.

Do you want to launch something in Google? Then good luck dealing with all the facets from general engineering to other topics like security, privacy, latency, quality, measurement, logging, scalability, redundancy, monitoring, resource management, access control, data retention, documentation, testing, release, i18n and even inclusion nowadays. Upon all the technical debts accumulated over 20 years. Oh, did I mention organizational dynamics? Usually you need to deal with 5~10 teams for getting anything non-trivial done. And it is a very fun thing to find out the current owner of very specific dependency to avoid accidental breakages.

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

#144

Post by UncleMeat »

morei wrote: post #126
aix1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It's rare, but possible. Known of v high level example that is just incredibly disciplined about how they spend their time (e.g. "I did this, but was slowed significantly by poor code over that. Estimate about 30% time loss. I'm going to spend N weeks more in this area, so it's worth me spending 3.5 days fixing that code, but no more. I think I can fix it in about 2 days, so I will fix it. If I can't see the end of t…

I don't know about other places, but volume of work does not matter for L5->L6 at Google. The kind of work you do is what matters. So doing 50% more doesn't get you there.

The L6 (and L7) ICs I know got there by implementing really tricky components way down the tech stack that are very difficult to update due to insane implicit dependencies and also enormously impactful in terms of savings across the entire company.

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

#145

Post by bb88 »

khazhoux wrote: post #142

I passed up a down-leveling opportunity with a "sure thing" FAANG several years before it went public, because I was insulted at the reduction in my team size/scope (and I knew a bunch of people getting hired in as Directors). That ego cost me... $20 million, maybe more? There's a lesson there somewhere. (of course, be in Silicon Valley long enough and everyone accumulates tons of stories like this, so in a way it's…

Hindsight is always 20-20.

What's more common I think is people working for failed startups, or worse, getting screwed out of their equity.

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

#146

Post by khazhoux »

bb88 wrote: post #145
khazhoux wrote: post #142

I passed up a down-leveling opportunity with a "sure thing" FAANG several years before it went public, because I was insulted at the reduction in my team size/scope (and I knew a bunch of people getting hired in as Directors). That ego cost me... $20 million, maybe more? There's a lesson there somewhere. (of course, be in Silicon Valley long enough and everyone accumulates tons of stories like this, so in a way it's…

Hindsight is always 20-20. What's more common I think is people working for failed startups, or worse, getting screwed out of their equity.

In hindsight, we'd all be billionaires :-)

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

#147

Post by kodah »

RHSeeger wrote: post #30
rizzaxc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean at the end of the day the title is only to feed your own ego. At family gathering nobody's gonna ask you why you were Principal and now you're Staff. I find no difference between being called a "Director" or a "Manager", because the title alone tells me absolutely nothing Reminds me of American Psycho, where everybody is a damn Vice President (reflective of the time)

It's more complex than that, though. If you're meeting with people outside your company, your title can influence how they see you. If you're meeting with a bunch of "Director" level people and you're a "Senior", they may treat you as a lesser member of the group. This can be impactful to your ability to accomplish your goals within that group at times.

That may be true, but definitely not in my experience. I have included my job historically on emails eg: Software Engineer but never my level. I don't even put that on internal emails because I see it as my business and no one else's. This includes when I worked side by side with sales folks from time to time at a start up. If you didn't feel like working with me if I was a SWE I but you feel like it with a Principal, why would I want to work with you?

People do care that someone will show up and answer all their questions in a thorough and non-elitist (read: talking over people's heads) way.

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

#148

Post by darth_avocado »

I recently jumped careers and got a down level. The only reason I accepted it was because of a massive compensation upgrade (almost twice).

The thing is, there is a reputation that titles are always inflated in smaller companies. And regardless of whether that is true or not, you'll always be held at that standard. So when you move to a bigger company, in the short term you get the down level, but you can easily kill it with your skills and demand a raise, or you can jump to another big company where you can get back your leveling.

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

#149

Post by barrkel »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #78
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.

VP Engineering/Director of Engineering/CTO are all essentially the same role.

They're not. VP Eng is a management role whereas CTO has an expectation of technical leadership or strategy. VP Eng has a focus on operations, the processes and mechanics of the engineering organization, whereas the CTO has a focus on the future technical path of the org.

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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