> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.<p>Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. Nobody will care or remember what you did or what level you were given enough timespan. Take the bits that you want (money, skills etc) to live life, but don't get too caught up trying to win the game.
+1. Worth saying this is also not at all a software engineering thing, it’s a large organization thing. I found I could easily discuss career leveling with non-technical government employees. In fact they have much more context than my friends in software engineering that never worked for large companies.
> Take the bits you want (money, skills)<p>That’s exactly what the author did, and it’s why the leveling piece matters so much.<p>At big tech companies levels very directly control comp, and less directly control the scope of problems you’re trusted with.<p>You absolutely can tackle large, high-impact problems as a more junior IC, but it usually means pushing a lot harder to hold onto ownership. Otherwise it’s REAL easy for a more senior IC to step in and quietly take it over.
It might be nicer to go work for startups, acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack, then get hired at a high responsibility position.<p>Though most people into entrepreneurship never go back to big corporations usually.
>acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack<p>This is not usually how it works. In fact in my experience, the moment a company becomes a scaleup and brings new leadership in to handle growth, those people start getting rid of the hacky jack of all trades profiles.<p>Larger companies usually value specialized profiles. They don’t benefit from someone half assing 20 roles, they have the budget to get 20 experts to whole ass one role each.<p>Career paths in large companies usually have some variation of “I’m the go-to expert for a specific area” as a bullet point somewhere.
Smaller companies necessarily have a small team stretched across broad responsibilities, that usually describes startups. If it's scaling up then yeah, that changes. You want to join small teams for broad experience, startup or regular business.
Big tech companies are also notorious for down-leveling if you’re not coming from another big company, so it might not actually be that good of a move.
Very much so. Author here. I wanted to do so much more than the box they allocated me in. Once I knew they were not going to let me grow from my box, then I left. Not the level I was worried about, but it's a language most people can understand
It took me a long time to realize this.
Exactly, that’s why I feel pity for the people who destroy their lives to get paid extra 5% and having a pizza party with good boy remarks, and of course making someone else wealthier too. It’s not a flex to sleep in a tent at work, while neglecting your health, family, friends, maybe kids, this “grind” culture is pushed by corporations for obvious reasons.
See? That's his first problem--he bought into all that corpo bs that is placed there to steal your attention and keep you in their box. If they had liked the guy and he was truly talented, he would have gazzelled right up the org chart. I guess smart people think they're smart about everything?
Multiple denied promo applications. Warm, caring language but no attempt at retention on resignation. Other companies unsure of hiring candidate even after 10+ interviews.<p>The simplest explanation of these datapoints is simply that this person is not operating at the staff level in a way that is fairly obvious to others, yet hard to articulate in a way that this person can emotionally receive and accept.<p>None of this means they aren’t or can’t be a highly valuable and skilled engineer. Higher levels are more about capacity for high-level responsibility and accountability in a way that makes executives feel comfortable and at ease. “Not enough impact” means that even if this person is involved in high-impact projects, executives do not ascribe the results or responsibility for those results entirely to them.<p>While this is painful, it is <i>not</i> a bad thing, and it is not a disfavor. People who aren’t ready for great responsibility often underestimate the size of the gap. Watching a talented engineer get eaten alive because they were given executive-adjacent accountability that they weren’t ready for is not fun for <i>anybody</i>. Anyone who has operated in true staff+ or director+ roles at huge companies here knows just how brutal the step up in expectations is. It is far from trivial, and it simply isn’t for everyone.
Youtube is getting problematic. I write this as someone
who basically has some videos running in the background
all the time, mostly just DJ music in the background.<p>First, searching for videos sucks. Yes, the first few
results can be useful, then more and more crap shows up.
This just wastes my time. But, more importantly - more and
more AI videos means I am being bombarded with more time
wasters. I have about zero interest in AI videos; I am not
saying 100% of it is crap, but I am getting more and more
tired wasting any time in this regard here. Then the addiction
by Google to have us watch ads - they killed ublock origin too
on chrome. Even aside from this, I am noticing a drop of quality
lately; many of the channels seem much more boring. I guess
this kind of fatigue kicks in over time in general, but it seems
to me as if some youtube "content creators" are running out of
real ideas. They seem to be desperately addicted to "get the
likes" and "get subscribers". I stopped being logged in to youtube
years ago already and I also, oddly enough, want to completely
decouple myself from Google too (too much Evil in this company
now) - youtube is unfortunately something I still need and use
right now, but many things suck more and more. Also that "swipe
shorts down" - that activity is IMO a mental problem. After some
30 swipe downs, I ask myself why I am doing this. Google tries
to want to commit me to this swipe action. It is like psychological
manipulation. Click click drag drag click click click.
I have seen this from the manager side at these kinds of companies, explaining to your manager that you are quitting because your level does not match your work is a waste of energy. Their hands are usually tied.<p>Promotion decisions are made by committees which are 1-2 levels above your manager, your manager presents the candidates. They round up a pot of multiple teams which are discussed at once and there are usually hard quotas (like 5%) of promotions to give out to this pot of employees. These hard quotas make it impossible to "do the right thing" because even if a lot of people deserve the promotion, only x% can get it. The composition of the pot of people can easily cause the problem which is described in the blog post, for example if you have a high number of juniors or a high number of employees who joined at the same time or employees with incorrect levelling from the start. If 20%+ deserve a promotion then it simply turns into a game of luck.<p>As a manager you try as hard as possible to get these promotions but the system of these big companies is just too rigid. Its like a pit fight instead of objectively looking at output.
I have seen a lot of people leave for the same reason but I haven't seen a single change to the system in 5+ years.<p>Next we could talk about layoff mechanics, its equally disturbing.
Author here. My manager and I discussed lengths about the capabilities they do, and it is just like this. It's not his fault at all. It's a game at the end of the day, and it's your choice whether or not you want to keep on playing
I'm sorry, but why did the author not mark this post as AI generated? It's clear from many different phrasings that this was written with an LLM. And no, I won't point out any particular spot, but I'm sure my fellow commenters will know what I am talking about. I get that the author had (most of) the experience described, and it was fine in terms of being interesting, but I feel offended when people post blog posts without warning that it's been written by an LLM.<p>Can the author please share the prompt containing the draft that he sent to the LLM?<p>I'd much rather read that!
> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”.<p>That bubble is not the world, I exist outside the ladder and I am legion.
I am also a renegade it seems. I just couldn’t institutionalize myself like that.
> That bubble is not the world<p>Hence the author's "In the software engineering world".<p>Nothing in author's write-up led me to think he doesn't understand that.
<a href="https://foreignlegion.info/ranks/" rel="nofollow">https://foreignlegion.info/ranks/</a>
I must say, life is a lot easier as a software engineer outside of Big Tech. It seems like a bit of a pressure cooker to me.
> The results of that meeting? The same from the previous promotion decisions; “it’s unfortunately a no. You don’t have enough impact.”<p>Promotion at Google, as in many places, is tough. Status is allocated partially on level, so it sucks to not see that growth.<p>Sometimes lack of promotion can be not having the right opportunities.<p>It's fair to leave a company for whatever reason.<p>For any other L4->L5s, or anyone wanting to become a senior engineer, it's worth self reflecting on whether there's improvement that can be made from failed promotion attempts.<p>> people all across the org knew me and said I was indispensable to the company and were surprised that I wasn't already at an L5/6 level.<p>No one in a large org is indispensable, but many are very valuable. Many L4s are very valuable, but at doing L4 work. It's not a value judgement.<p>L4->L5 is a step of responsibility: can you be trusted to handle a multi quarter project, without much supervision.<p>> I helped launch/lead features on YouTube, I led teams, I designed and implemented systems that were still in use to that day by many people<p>The details aren't clear here, but sometimes an engineer can be leading projects, and need supervision: poor delivery, poor communication, poor outcomes.<p>"Too little impact" in this context can mean "you needed too much supervision" or "too little impact per $TIME_PERIOD" meaning you can have delivered great technical solutions, but not at the rate or level of independence needed to meet the mark.<p>Again, not meeting this mark isn't a value statement. It's a different type of work, but it happens to be incentivized with more $$$.
It's also important to understand the makeup of the existing team, and headcount the team has.<p>If the team is already full of lvl5's/6's, there's not going to be enough senior eng work for a new one, particularly when headcount is being reduced.
All L4s are going to have supervision at Google, whether they “need” it or not. And most managers and tech leads aren’t going to just sit around twiddling their thumbs when no one “needs” supervision. Because most of them are bad at their jobs (I can count the number of good managers I’ve seen in 20 years on one hand).
Author here. I like statement. I think the biggest thing here is "not meeting this mark isn't a value statement"<p>I had a lote of doubt about my own ability because I never got promoted. Was I not doing enough, am I not making impact. But you should never measure yourself by this. I left for more opportunities and more impact. I actually only knew my own value after rounds of external interviewing
The problems of lack of independence are rarely the kind of thing you decide in a big leveling meeting though: Someone working in near the project has to be providing the feedback regarding the employee needing more supervision. If that's the reason someone fails to uplevel, the manager and the dev lead are failing you, or outright saying something different for your packet than they say to your face.
I would go further and say that the entire system is designed to not promote people. It is there as a barrier to promotion and upward potential. The upward moves are saved completely for the in-crowd people. I'm sure at places like Google it is brutally difficult to move up the ladder at all.
> I was leaving because I had outgrown the pot I was planted in<p>I wonder if the author had attempted to transfer to a different part of the company first, since a different organization might have more room to grow. It might not be possible to do a transfer plus a promotion simultaneously, but it's likely a less stressful option than leaving the company.
The levels are very similar to all those hierarchy used in big corporations outside of the tech. Classic selection and grooming techniques. We all get to decide if we want to play that game or not.
Reading this I feel like I live on another planet.<p>I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile.<p>I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L).<p>I am assuming he left the job this year? If so, more disconnect. I am working but looking, and this job search is the hardest I have faced in over 30 years. Just talking to a human is almost impossible. This guy went on a zillion in person interviews? Is he maybe talking about the distant past of two years ago?<p>The NDA minefield? Maybe I am naive or sheltered, but it’s never came up in interviews and was not something I ever sweated. For the simple reason that there is no secret sauce so magic that I could tell someone in ten minutes in an interview and spill all the beans. But what do I know, maybe YouTube has some secret variable this dude invented I am just too dumb to understand.<p>I could go on. But the entitlement coming off of this post as I stress about paying bills and keeping my kids in school and fed as I read this on Xmas eve is a lot to take.<p>Am I that much of an outlier that I need to get with the program? Or is this as out of touch with the current reality as I feel?
You do live in a different, underprivileged world. Many Google engineers have never not heard back from a job app.<p>I will never understand people who refuse to work at a big company yet complain about money of all things. For reference my last job at Google paid $450k+. It seems like it would behoove you to enter the other world.
And half of that is taxed. The rest is spent on over-priced housing. And now you have no time/energy left to build anything of value. Congratulations.
If you want a serious answer:<p>Most software engineers are not status-seekers, and are not driven by prestige or a big paycheck.<p>Big tech companies attract the same type of software developers that investment banks do to finance majors, or MBB management consulting firms do to business majors.<p>Of course, I'm not saying that those are the people that FAANG-companies get exclusively, far from, but you have to...immerse yourself, and drink some kool aid, before you enter that rat race.<p>Most people will look at leetcode marathons, infinite interview rounds, relocation, etc. and think <i>"absolutely not"</i>.<p>Of course some people are just really sharp, and can almost stumble into these jobs, but most will have to put some real effort into it, and jump through the flaming hoops.
>Am I that much of an outlier that I need to get with the program?<p>No! You’re right where you need to be (just not where you want). Many of us have had a ridiculously difficult year.<p>You’re not alone.
Reality is that different resources have different impacts on an eng. org. Some individuals are eng. orgs onto themselves and can own a whole stack (breadth). Some are very specialized in areas that require deep expertise or experience (depth). Some are good engineers, but lack both breadth and depth of knowledge. Leveling let's you delineate comp bands accordingly.
I've been at three FAANGs now and my experience has been that nobody really cares about your level for day-to-day work. The only times it has ever come up for me is when a) I was part of assembling a new team and we needed a mix of juniors and seniors or b) when some dangerous action like deploying during a holiday code freeze needed approval from an L9+ by policy, so you had to go find that person and justify it to them.<p>Now, your compensation is based entirely on your level, which obviously makes it matter a great deal, but my experience hasn't been that there are mind games around it.
The levels are a real thing, but "navigating the NDA minefield" is not, it's just something Googler's say to make themselves feel more special
> this job search is the hardest I have faced in over 30 years. Just talking to a human is almost impossible.<p>My advice: Don't apply on platforms that are filled with spam. I think the best choice I've made for work is posting on Hacker News that I'm looking for work rather than bothering with job sites like LinkedIn. Both times I've done this, this last time even after being laid off, I had a new position within the month. I've never even gotten replies on any other platform: not on LinkedIn, not on Indeed, not on Upwork... but commenting on Hacker News has gotten me a job in relatively short order, every time.<p>My personal hypothesis is that employers look here to find interesting people... or at least that's how I'd go about it. Both companies I've joined from HN have been filled with obviously autistic people.
> I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L).<p>This inevitably happens in any large organization. People just have positions like "Department Head" or "Chief Something-Something" instead of numbers.<p>If anything, engineering/research organizations are unusual because in "traditional" organizations your growth is basically linked to the number of people you direct. In technical orgs, you can be an individual contributor and be at a higher level than many managers.
At Amazon, level is public. Microsoft, only the title (Senior etc) is visible not the precise level is visible is my impression. At Google, it can be public but apparently can also be hidden. At Facebook it's always hidden.<p>I'm interviewing engineers right now, it is tough to judge what their current level mapping is especially if they come from Facebook. You can guesstimate from their resume accomplishments and tenure but the rest is just interview performance or asking directly - there are staff engineers that get there from 3 years out of college and there are seniors that are at that level for a decade.
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This is why it's honestly not worth working that hard. Work hard enough to get noticed, spend the rest of the time making sure the right people know what you're doing. After a certain point it just doesn't matter anymore. The company has quarterlies to hit, and they aren't going to budge from whatever they have allowed for salary. And they're going to take the money they won't pay you and put it in an exec bonus package.<p>If you're that passionate focus the excess energy into your own projects, technical or otherwise. But don't give your life to a corporation that couldn't give less of a shit about you.<p>And this is also why you should be applying and interviewing along the way. Always keep your options open. The corporation is only looking out for itself, you need to be doing the same.
i would like to push back a bit on this and say, it is worth working hard, but i would argue a lot of programmers get hindered by the illusion that programming is important, or even delivering results. unfortunately in software this is exacerbated by the very real world-wide impact that programming actually does have, but: it will always be subjugated by <i>the</i> most important job...<p>the most important job, that has ever existed, and that will ever exist, is politics. moving up the career ladder you have to start thinking in terms of people, or maybe even in terms of mammals and mammalian group dynamics, cos thats who youre "programming" now, not computers. and most programmers aren't cut out for that, just as most regular people aren't cut out for programming. its hard to say why, but thats the on-the-ground data i see again and again.<p>i also would like to push back on the "personal projects" mindset - the sentiment often being "just live in your own little world" (not saying it is here, but this is what it often implies.) if youre going to admit defeat and retreat, be honest about what youre doing. dont dress it up as a 'win'. ceding financial/social/political agency is never a victory, but sometimes a neccesity. quitting a mag7 like google is objectively a step down whichever way you slice it. you can count on two hands the number of companies that have the level of resouces that google does - it might be worth to swallow ones pride and slog it out.
If you look at my comment again you'll see I said "work hard enough to get noticed... And make sure the right people know". I'm saying the same thing you are. You also don't have to be a Tyrion Lanister level political manipulator to get ahead. You mostly just have to make sure a few key people are aware of you and like you.<p>The comment about working in your own projects was to say that if you are so passionate you want to keep working behind what you need to put in to your job, work on something important to you.
> quitting a mag7 like google is objectively a step down whichever way you slice it.<p>Great comment. I'm having some trouble correctly slicing the "step down" on the front page of HN where some ex-Googlers sold their biz for $20B. Can you help with your objective eye?
Levels in big tech are just a way to keep you motivated. You'll work harder to get a promo.<p>In the end it doesn't matter, you'll make more money by either leaving or getting a retention offer.
I guess lying on your linkedin "senior swe" is also helpful for getting a staff engineer position?
> And I had to highlight the incredibly talented team I worked with and the amazing managers that taught me so much.<p>I wonder what it was that the amazing managers taught him. I've never had an experience with managers that would leave such an impression on me. Fellow developers, sure; but not managers.
Two questions:<p>1. Is it normal for someone who graduated in 2018 tell “with over 13 years” of experience?<p>2. He quit Google but not got hired anywhere else?
Re. (1): It can really depend on what they did before and during school. While in school, one could have real internships, real personal projects, open-source contributions, working for the university, contract gigs, etc.<p>Personal anecdata: I was solo building software projects in highschool that earned income (real product, creating real value, some of which were acquired) and worked on the school district websites. During college I contracted with startups part time while also building projects of my own.
Re 2), this reminds me of those situations where people are given the opportunity to resign rather than being fired. They get to save face on their next job interview, but it does the next hiring company a disservice. It might be something that comes up later in the hiring process, but nothing that would be identifiable at the start of that process
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>The strain comes from context switching. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, I had to care deeply about our quarterly goals and production stability. Then, from 6:00 PM to midnight, I had to care about inverting binary trees and system architecture design.<p>>This duality is exhausting. It forces you to lie by omission to people you respect. You can't tell your team, "I can't take that ticket because I need to study dynamic programming." You just have to work faster.<p>Guess what promo will get you? More context switching. Maybe that’s a thing to work on.
Youtube is very tough for promo- I wouldn’t recommend it
>The problem of "doing more work and not getting compensated" is pretty well-known.<p>Yes, the reward for more work is always more work. Hard work is the best way to make yourself unseen. Those who get promoted are busy advertising themselves, befriending strategically and may even take credit of your work while you are busy sweating.<p>>My final conversation with my manager was heart-wrenching. I had prepared a script, anticipating a counter-offer or a guilt trip. Instead, I was met with soft and understanding empathy.<p>Too much naivety out there to mention empathy even in a startup, let alone when working for a shark as Youtube. That was rather a good news for your manager: no counter offer, but also the fact they never rewarded you internally (L5/6) was a way to push you to leave.
>At one prominent tech company, I underwent 13 separate interviews for a single role.<p>In what insane world does this make any amount of sense?
I went through a loop at Meta that was probably 10-11 rounds. I would have done 100. The compensation is truly life changing and the engineering problems were world-class.<p>I'm sure OP is correct that this is a signal for a bad org - but from the outside looking in you'll do anything.
I did 13 interviews in 2 days at Microsoft Research (in 1998). I did not get the job.
I see that as a manifestation of Buridan's Ass --- when they're very indecisive about it, they will naturally try to measure more.
> Do say: "I optimized a high-throughput distributed system to prioritize user retention metrics, reducing latency by 150ms through a custom caching layer."<p>Ugh. Pain. I'm hiring, and I've been filtering out resumes that are heavy on these kinds of metrics.<p>Because I literally get thousands of entries with these kinds of wording. Often with excessively precise numbers, like "by 23.5%".<p>My problem is that it's hard to tell the amount of real work it took to do that. It might have been as stupid as creating an additional index in the database, or it might have involved a deep refactoring across multiple systems with a zero-downtime gradual rollout.<p>I would prefer something like: "I worked as the hands-on leading developer to do a large-scale refactor on the highly loaded front-end network routing system, resulting in user-visible latency decrease on the Youtube front page".<p>For me the key words are: "hands-on" (and not just writing a product brief and getting resources for it), "large-scale refactor" (so likely not just creating an additional database index), "highly loaded".
Why does OP's linkedin say Senior then?
And??? Where did you go? Did you get L5/L6? Or did you just leave and not get another job? What a wild article to have the interviews so prominently featured but not have a conclusion.
I really don't feel it's that unique that it took a while to quit. A big reason these cultures are so popular is because a lot of of the time people don't quit right away and you can keep extracting work above their pay grade until they do. Even if you have some churn, you can keep getting that kind of work for cheap as long as you have a good supply of new hires.
The article title is actually "How I Left YouTube".<p>Maybe someone could update it?
Love how he’s critical of the 13-interview hiring process despite having done all 13 of those interviews.<p>“Nobody drives there anymore. There’s too much traffic.”<p>These companies can do 13 interviews because people will put up with them.<p>The little place I work does phone screen, work sample, final interview, reference check. We can be done in a week. Nobody wants to work with me bad enough to sit through 13 interviews.
13 interviews suggests he was interviewing for multiple roles within the same company; in which case it's not that shocking. In many places every team runs their own interviews.
You manage to live a life where if you don't like something, you can just avoid it?
Even more so for such a great engineer that in the words of his colleagues is "indispensable for the company".<p>If you're such a rockstar you can probably get shortened loops in good companies through referrals
...did you find a new job before leaving YT?
I read the title and thought it would be about migrating from youtube to something self hosted/self made. Oh well :) Good luck in your future endeavors or sorry about your "ai" layoff, whichever applies.
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You’re thinking about the “Professional Engineer” title or some variant thereof.<p>You’ll be happy to hear that anyone can call themselves an engineer, even in Oregon, as a Federal Court correctly decided in a first amendment case brought by Mats Järlström.<p><a href="https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-light-timing-lawsuit/" rel="nofollow">https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...</a><p>You’re welcome.
Strange hill.<p>Police is a protected title but anyone can be a thought police. One can be a spin doctor without any academic acumen. Notice how when qualified, the words take on a broader and sometimes illustrative meaning than when used in isolation. Context matters.
Now do every other common term in software engineering.
Seems like a warm reboot for a career coach hustle<p>Expect a mailing list subscription with courses coming soon
Tried to read through the article, but couldn't finish. I felt this writing heavily alluded to a ChatGPT generated response. Too many punchlines and paragraph breaks.
Some version of this comment shows up in just about every HN comment thread on a blog post. It must be LLM-generated.
If paragraph breaks are a sign of LLM slop now, then I’m in trouble. The ones in my blog posts are rarely longer than 2 sentences and they are all handcrafted.<p>I have a hard time staying focused when reading long paragraphs and that includes rereading my own while I write them.
It does look LLM-assisted, but I'm fairly sure the experiences shared are genuine.