
Tech company career ladders - tim_sw
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/04/23/pace/
======
peterburkimsher
"inhumane quasi-slavery visa situation that we do to our friends who happen to
be born somewhere else" \- thank you so much for this rant.

I've spent the last 3 years in Taiwan sitting tight and waiting until I have
enough work experience to qualify for the Skilled Migrant Category visa for
New Zealand (Canada and Australia are also options, with similar
requirements). Now I have those 3 years, I'm trying to get a job at one of the
75 tech companies on the Accredited Employers list who can actually give me a
visa. Then, if all goes well, I can get be a Permanent Resident after 2 years.
And only then can I think about getting married, learning to drive, settling
down. It's been a long road to get to where I am now, aged 28, and I really
hope some company will notice my plight and be willing to take me through the
last step of finding a country to call home.

~~~
GlennS
Is there a reason you need to be sponsored by a company?

Australia has a skilled independent points-based visa which gives you the
permanent right to live and work. I've actually just been granted mine about a
week ago.

I take it that New Zealand doesn't have an equivalent?

I've written up a little log of what I had to do, which you might find
helpful: [https://recklessclicking.com/notes/australian-
immigration.ht...](https://recklessclicking.com/notes/australian-
immigration.html)

~~~
peterburkimsher
Your log is very helpful, thank you! I've done a lot of research and made a
lot of life choices to plan this. MEng in Electronic Systems Engineering from
a UK university satisfies the education requirement from a Washington Accord
country. 3 years continuous relevant work experience was the hardest because I
like travelling and moving around, but I stayed here long enough I have that
now. Maybe I don't have enough money to do the skilled independent visa, but
if I could borrow the capital, I think I have the points.

~~~
sangnoir
Congratulations on your what you have achieved so far and good luck in the
future! Not a lot of people know the amount of research, effort, discipline,
money, sacrifice and luck go into immigration.

Hopefully your points are not just over the threshold - if they are, beware of
losing your "youth points" and going below the minimum accepted points when
you turn 32 or 35 (or whatever the limit is for the countries you're
targeting). The years go by so fast!

------
mlazos
I think this article unfairly paints small companies as some nirvana which is
obviously not the case. I have plenty of friends at small companies who feel
like their c-suite is filled with sociopaths and because the company is under
the radar nobody cares how the employees of said company are treated.

~~~
taneq
Even if the people are great, small (5-20 employee) companies often simply
don't have scope for much career progression. You might have one layer of
management between yourself and the company owner, so unless they start hiring
or you plan on taking over the company, you can only be promoted once.

~~~
busterarm
Yeah except your promotion isn't usually a level, it's lead, manager,
director, or chief. You leverage that and walk to a slightly larger company in
that new role after a couple of years. Then rinse & repeat once or twice and
you just shaved off years of slogging through the FAANGs.

After all of the above though, I would put 2-3 years in at a FAANG and then do
whatever the heck I want.

~~~
kibibyte
FAANG == Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google

(First time I heard of it; had to look it up)

~~~
WorkLifeBalance
I feel like Netflix is only in there to make the acronym, does it really
belong?

It's an odd collection, the others are tech giants yet there's no microsoft
and netflix thrown in. Netflix is big but it's not Apple big.

~~~
QGmLe
It is a stock thing. All of those companies have well performing stocks.

~~~
s2g
Microsoft stock is up 80% in the last 2 years.

edit: and they are ahead of google in market cap again. Been going back and
forth for the last little while.

------
sudeepj
What I also seen is people become victim of your their own success. If you
over-achieve in one appraisal cycle it is very bad for you because you have
increased your base-level of performance. It is like over-achieving sales
target.

I have learned the hard way that one needs to spread out the achievements. For
example if you have good number of ideas then don't spew out all of them in
one go. Introduce them say in each quarter and people will say "Joe always
seems to have an idea round the corner". Recency effect matters.

~~~
throwaway84742
That’s not really how this works. Right after a promo you’re not due for
another promo. They are dividing a fixed size promo budget pie. So they rank
you lower in order to be able to rank someone else higher. There’s no other
reason, because it’s impossible to accurately measure engineer’s
“performance”, or to even define it in the first place.

At Microsoft, for example, in the olden days at least, managers would keep
around a certain percentage of deadwood on the team to give their best people
good ratings and meet their firing quota if the need arises.

~~~
jeanmichelx
> managers would keep around a certain percentage of deadwood on the team to
> give their best people good ratings and meet their firing quota if the need
> arises.

Tragic consequences of stupid rules, I'm baffled.

~~~
throwaway84742
Inviolable rule of management: you get the behavior you reward.

------
fyfy18
Does anyone else feel really put off on the idea of working at a big tech
corporation by articles like this? If I wanted to play the career game, I
would have studyied something more business related and got a graduate job at
somewhere like KPMG.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
Honestly, having worked for startups for three years, joining FB was a breath
of fresh air. I know my level, I know what is expected of me. When I say to my
manager 'I want to get promoted' he says 'ok looks like you're on course' (or
not). My compensation is no longer based on how much my manager likes me, it's
based on my work and how I present it.

Startups were a mess of failed products, misguided work, and managers who
showed no interest in managing, let alone investing in the growth of their
reports. Good management is awesome.

~~~
sgift
> My compensation is no longer based on how much my manager likes me, it's
> based on my work and how I present it.

"and how I present it" sounds suspiciously like 'how much my manager likes me'
(or whoever you present it to). Seems more like "same thing, different name"
to me than a real difference here.

~~~
joshuamorton
It's not. For example, up until recently, you didn't need manager approval to
get promoted at Google. Obviously feedback from your manager was considered,
but if you could demonstrate your growth and your manager didn't like you, it
was possible to be promoted anyway.

The people who made this decision we're specifically selected to not be
familiar with you or your work. So it couldn't have anything to do with how
anyone liked you.

But even beyond that, larger companies more commonly have codified ladders and
clear rubrics or criteria for advancement and performance. This means that a
manager must justify their rating against a set of objective criteria.
Managerial bias can still creep in, but only on borderline cases. (And
elsewhere in the workplace, but that's mostly unavoidable)

------
hugs
I wish I had this information before I took a job at Google 11 years ago. I
probably would have still taken the job, but I would have realized I was
really signing up for two jobs:

1) The job I was hired for;

    
    
      ... but *more importantly*...
    

2) The job of navigating the leveling and review systems, including managing
your manager.

~~~
falcolas
To be fair, this second job exists at every company. Whatever the
levels/review systems are called, managing your future is your job, and only
your job. Your manager is your employee when it comes to setting up your
future.

------
tomerico
For those looking to compare levels between the mentioned companies, I found
[http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi) useful

~~~
tejasmanohar
Can anyone attest to the accuracy of this? Levels have pay _ranges_ , right?
If so, does this site portray the lower or higher end of the range?

Also, are levels pretty translatable between big corps? Does level at one
company have weight when interviewing at another?

~~~
gthrow
For Google at least. Salary and Stock are low end of the range. Bonus numbers
seem ridiculously high: 49k bonus for an L4, even with Superb you don't get
that.

~~~
jrockway
I never got a $100k bonus as a T5. I was at Superb when I left too.

------
wheresmyusern
i hesitate to pursue a career of any kind, especially tech, because of all
this. you have to have a pretty good personality and charisma in order to work
well with your manager, or else you will make no progress which means you get
fired. people are born with all kinds of quirks, peculiarities and qualities.
while im a better programmer than most of the people who i went to college
with, i have a special problem with my personality and charisma. i have
absolutely zero intuition about what to say to other human beings.
conversations with me are always like chewing sandpaper, unless they focus on
some very narrow interests of mine. conversations that are very focused and
intellectual always get a good response but i seldom meet people who want to
have those even among engineers. 99 percent of the people i meet, even among
"tech" people, i am rejected. i guess ill just scrape by.

~~~
Afforess
> _conversations with me are always like chewing sandpaper, unless they focus
> on some very narrow interests of mine._

Basically, that's the problem. In order to establish a repertoire, you need to
have more than dense interests. It's cool to be passionate about one or two
hobbies. Lots of people have none, and this makes conversation dull. However,
it is vital you can maintain ordinary conversation on lay topics too -- It's
strange to not be able to talk about the local flair, family or relatives, hot
vacation spots, annoying ordinances, and neighborhood politics. If you can't
maintain a casual conversation about some the above, you are quickly deemed
"dangerous", as you failed the "same species as me" test.

This is not an indictment of you. Just plain fact.

The good news is that it's straightforward to learn. Plain osmosis works. Find
some meetups which you won't find totally repulsive (say, boardgames, movies,
etc) and just listen to how conversations between normals work. You can
literally copy and paste these and pass the "am I human" Voight-Kampff tests
with this information.

~~~
Aeolun
I think the problem is that most casual conversation just isn't relevant. If
we're having a conversation to have a conversation, what's the point?

I happen across a lot of conversations where people are just blabbing at each
other, but don't actually listen to what the other is saying (or are clearly
not interested in what each is saying), but still continue to have a
conversation. I don't get that...

~~~
jerf
"If we're having a conversation to have a conversation, what's the point?"

You're actually halfway there with the question. Indeed, the point is not
conversation, or at least not the literal contents of the conversation.

When I was younger, I had a hard time understanding this stuff too. I'm not
100% sure why (I'm not convinced I'm even slightly on the spectrum, but it's
not out of the question entirely; it's also just possible that I was simply
too different as a kid from the other kids), but one of the steps to resolving
it is just to realize that yes, there _is_ logic to almost all of what is
going on, and it isn't actually _that_ complicated of a logic either. The
biggest impediment to not being able to understand these interactions is the
belief that you can't understand them, or that there's some sort of virtue in
not understanding them. The second-biggest impediment is the belief that these
things are essentially irrational, in the older sense of "essential" as
meaning something like "inseparable from the whole"; there is actually a level
on which this is all _shockingly_ rational behavior. Once you get over those
ideas, and accept that the surface levels and what's actually going on in the
relationship between two people is not the same thing, it doesn't really take
long to figure out what's going on.

(There's... a few other ideas you'll find you may want to discard. For
instance, while politically incorrect today, there _are_ reasons to be
initially distrustful of people not in "your group". If you can't believe
that's true today, it was certainly true in evolutionary terms. So there are
instinctual protocols for determining whether someone is "in" or "out", and
there are reasons for them, and there are reasons why they involve difficult-
to-forge signals like simply knowing some in-knowledge from a culture, or
burning time on seemingly-inconsequential conversations. And these things
operate at instinct level; it doesn't matter if you think they are wrong, out
of date, or politically incorrect; they do what they do anyhow. Start putting
a few of these things together and it all starts making much more sense.
There's reasons why these things exist and persist.)

~~~
Aeolun
Unfortunately, I don't really think I got what you were intending to say with
this message.

You basically said there 'is' a reason for inconsequential conversation, but
then only proceeded to hint at it's existence outside the last paragraph, and
that was described as a different idea I might want to discard.

As such I can only hope that I'll eventually figure it out as I get older. So
far the only thing I'm finding out as I get older is that humans are indeed
irrational, and that often you just have to deal with that.

------
crabasa
>> What's the takeaway here? Know how the company works before you take the
plunge.

This is good advice, but I think it's good advice for any company you join:
_understand how performance is going to be measured_.

This is a key question that you should ask during the interview process.
Remember, they're not just interviewing you, you are interviewing them.

~~~
paxys
Yup, not having a well-defined comp structure is a red flag even for smaller
companies.

I interviewed at a decent-sized company (100+ engineers) recently and when I
asked about their salary bands/career ladder/review cycles they just said "oh,
we're too small for all that. We'll just promote you when the time is right."
Got out of that quick.

------
markbnj
I work at small companies, not because they are perfect or things are always
better and easier, but because I know the things I'm responsible for and the
people I'm accountable to, and the thought of being slotted into a byzantine
human management framework run by small-minded rule writers fills me with
Orwellian dread and disgust.

------
thinkingkong
There are a few issues which make moving backwards incredibly difficult.
Notably, its almost impossible to negotiate a reduction in pay without being
accused of constructive dismissal. When a ladder is put in place its usually
tied to comp, so that the engineering organization can have some _semblance_
of a predictable budget.

I really respect Rachel and all her writing. Our industry needs something more
widely accepted as a best practice which is transparent to existing employees
as well as new people getting into the field.

------
tejasmanohar

      Within a job ladder, you then have levels. They tend to map onto
      years of experience, *whether you have a degree or not*, 
      what kind of degree it is, how well you do in your interviews,
      how much money you ask for or hint about, and possibly how
      well you did as an intern.
    

I don't work at a big corp. Has anyone seen career growth stall directly
because they lack a (bachelor's) degree (in CS)? This article doesn't directly
state that, but I'm tangentially curious.

~~~
jaggederest
No, but I have seen people's career stall because they worked on the wrong
project.

As my manager put it at the time "Nobody gets promoted for reducing the size
of a tire fire by 50%".

You have to be really strategic about what you work on, and for who. It's not
about the technical contributions, it's about finding and retaining a sponsor
higher in the organization. You help them torpedo competing initiatives and
increase the headcount they manage (headcount is points), and they help you
navigate the political climate to get onto the project du jour.

I worked at an old school BigCo for 3 years and we shipped not a single
product from a team of ~300 people if you count peripherally involved people.
The only thing that saved us was that we managed and maintained a small
software tool used directly by the CTO of the conglomerate, which we could
wave as a ward against interference.

Some of those 300 got promotions, some got transferred (far away from their
home and family, into different divisions that they had no experience with,
aka exile), and some got laid off, even though as far as I could tell none of
us had any ability to affect the end result (priorities changed too quickly to
make any headway). For the record, I quit.

Mean time between reorganizations, management shakeups, and goal shifts was
~2.5 months.

~~~
commandlinefan
> I have seen people's career stall because they worked on the wrong project.

... and then they wonder why there's so much turnover in our industry. "Due to
circumstances completely outside your control, you have no future at this
company." "Hm - well, maybe I have a future at this other company then." "What
ever happened to loyalty?!"

------
manish_gill
I joined a startup directly from college and only worked at small (3-4 people)
companies for the first 3 years of my career. Going from that to a ~250 people
organization, when I joined, I figured "Software Engineer" was a good role,
but it turned out everyone was surprised that I wasn't a "Senior Software
Engineer".

Even though I basically designed and coded the entire data layer of the
platform, maintain and administer the entire pipeline (including the
production databases), am on call any time anything goes wrong, my title was
only very recently changed to "Senior Software Engineer" \- and it was
independent from any increase in salary, which didn't happen. The title change
was also "promised" to me for a few months after appraisal - presumably to
retain me.

It's all weird but strangely, it had started to grate on me the last year that
despite all the critical work I did, the salary and position did not reflect
it at all. Still doesn't.

~~~
Aeolun
To be honest, the fact that the title doesn't reflect all the work you do
matters to me not at all. I'm happy to change that later.

If the pay doesn't reflect all the responsibility you have though, that's a
serious issue.

------
biztos
> Know how the company works before you take the plunge. Ask how much
> influence the manager has on your progress.

Is this even knowable in most companies?

I'm quite sure that regardless of the official system, charismatic and
ambitious managers who deliver results will have much more influence than the
rest... and perfectly competent managers may have less influence than the
system assumes just because they're not pushing.

So while there's probably a lot of variance between companies, I am very
skeptical you could get actionable info on that in the interview process.

------
kevan
If anyone's wondering SDE2/L5 at Amazon is the first 'career' role on the
engineering ladder.

~~~
zwkrt
Is that true? I would have guessed it was 3 based on the expected level of
responsibility of the respective roles. As an engineer I felt like L5 was a
position that meant I could trust the coworker to be effective, but I would be
wary of joining a team that had no L6s.

~~~
TheHydroImpulse
L3 at other companies is an L4 at Amazon (I believe only contractors or part-
time employees can be < 4). L5 also has a much wider surface area and the gap
from L5 to L6 is quite big.

~~~
discodave
Correct. All corporate roles are L4 or above at Amazon, even outside tech.

------
commandlinefan
> If you're a citizen or have the appropriate paperwork, this is no big deal.

To a certain extent. However, too many job changes, over too short of a
period, looks really bad on a resume. It is possible to job hop yourself into
unemployable territory, citizen or not.

------
49bc
> _Some companies will dangle money at you as an alternative to going on the
> PIP._

Can someone tell me a little about this? Is this a situation where a company
pays you to quit without firing you?

~~~
lstyls
It's called a severance package. The company isn't giving you money to quit -
you're working at-will and they can terminate your employment at any time for
any reason. The amount is usually equivalent to a few months worth of
paychecks.

What they pay you for is you signing away your ability to sue for wrongful
termination. Because they can't really fire you for _any_ reason.

~~~
humanrebar
It's also because companies want the managers and co-workers to know the
company did right by the terminated employee. Laying someone off isn't fun.
Seeing your co-workers get laid off isn't fun either. Severance keeps the
process more humane.

------
pascalxus
Sometime s coming in at a lower level will help you stay longer at that
company.

------
mlady
<redacted>

~~~
itronitron
In my view a PIP is all (and only) about management expectations. A person
that is being railroaded by incompetent management can outlast them by staying
positive.

~~~
sethammons
The parent comment is removed, but on the thought of a personal improvement
plan (pip), they are often paperwork to protect the company when they
terminate you.

This is not always the case, and if you can turn it around, that is fantastic.
It really helps to have a manager who can help guide you. A coworker of mine
was place on a PIP and, honestly, was expected to be managed out by just about
everyone. However! He rose up with guidance from manager and became a _very_
productive team member. To the point now that I am very glad he is on my team
and I think a big part of our latest project's success came from him. He grew
a lot and is on a great path in our org now.

~~~
sokoloff
Similar story here. Most PIPs do end in termination or voluntary resignation,
but I have seen some engineers completely turn around and blossom under the
focus and structure (and frankly, scrutiny) that a PIP provides.

Sometimes people just don't know how to work or how to accomplish what's
expected of them and outward observation of lack of productivity can miss the
underlying cause that might be correctable.

(It's still the least common outcome, of course, but it's not as rare as I
first assumed.)

~~~
mercutio2
Are PIPs public knowledge at your BigCo of choice?

Sounds like your (peripheral) experience has been positive, so not
criticizing, just curious. I’ve always treated PIPs as something only to be
discussed between manager and struggling employee.

One of the most painful things for me in administering PIPs is not the “you
are on thin ice, here’s a bunch more structure and documentation” part, but
rather, the requirement to keep the main focus of my management energy a
secret from the rest of the team.

I can’t exactly say, “Yeah, [strong team member], I know it would have been
way better if I’d done a prep meeting with that hard-to-deal-with team
yesterday rather than throwing you in the deep water, but I was too busy
making [failing team member]’s life miserable by hyping up the scrutiny and
guidance so they stop breaking the team’s morale with their shoddy work.”

PIPs take a lot of time and effort for managers and the unfortunate recipient
of them, so it’s kind of a hard thing to conceal.

~~~
sokoloff
> Are PIPs public knowledge at your BigCo of choice?

We try to have them not be. I'm an exec and have 5 tribes reporting into me
for years, so I've had the opportunity/obligation to discuss, strategize, and
track the outcome of a couple dozen PIPs in my org over the last decade.

Leaders spending extra time and attention on team members who are struggling
is no secret and doesn't need to be. (It's not like the rest of the team
doesn't have any idea who is struggling.) It's only the "PIP-p bit" that is
formally secret.

I had initially thought of a PIP as a ceremonial formality to be processed
along the path to a lawsuit-free termination. Having seen them play out over
the years, I now think that's an overly skeptical viewpoint.

~~~
itronitron
Is there a common performance shortfall that initiates PIPs or does it vary
widely?

~~~
sokoloff
Great question; I can’t think of a single, general theme as they are all over
the map. Attendance, competence, intelligence, collaboration, work
ethic/drive, judgment, inability to follow process, you name it.

Of the success cases, I think a common/typical unifying thread was lack of
good, nearby leadership (team/squad lead or even a “buddy/onboarding mentor”)
intersecting with someone who wasn’t already competent, curious, and self-
motivated. I view those successes as (at least partially) leadership failures
that we corrected alongside the employee. This framing is both generally
accurate, but importantly, also removes the “stain” for future reviews and
promotions. We truly do “put it behind us.” Anything less would be
terrifically unfair. We have ex-PIPers get promoted, go on to lead
teams/projects, etc.

------
sillysaurus3
_Through all of this, if your manager isn 't supporting you, you're probably
doomed. Unless they do something that's obviously going to get the company in
legal trouble, HR won't care. Remember, HR is there to keep the company out of
hot water, and they are never there for you._

This is very true in my experience and probably worth underscoring. How many
of you feel like your boss isn't supporting you? Whenever that happens, watch
out.

There's a flipside, though. It's not as scary to change jobs as it seems. And
you'll probably be much happier.

~~~
Afforess
On the dark side, the real advice is to join teams where none of the engineers
are supporting the manager. Ensure the manager is not a literal demon; just
sidelined by engineers "who know best", and then do better. With only a
trivial amount of work to meet arbitrary management deadlines, you'll be a
hero or saint. "Exceeds Expectations" and promotions will rain down on you.

~~~
commandlinefan
"I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you"

------
xrd
So true. Definitely.

