I’m guessing this was really just a way to brag about where they work. Seems oddly common among people that work at that company.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been at more than a few companies and this lines up. Managing a refactor or migration that’s long term and creates significant impact across an org chart or product area is definitely in the purview of promotion to senior or staff, whatever it’s called.
Given that the tool mentioned in this thread, rf, is written by Russ Cox, who works at Google, to help refactor go, a language developed and maintained by Google, how Google addresses these things feels not totally irrelevant.
I also think that "migration" and refactor are completely different concepts. And only the first is going to get you promoted (in the context of Google), because there's so much tooling for making even large refactoring relatively trivial. Pretty much every language has something like this, the build system also supports it too, so the process of, for example, taking a file, renaming it, querying and updating all dependencies (both source files and the build system), testing and sending out pull requests is essentially entirely automated. Unless there's something unique about a refactoring, it's not challenging enough to be promo-worthy.
Refactors are rarely as simple as moving a few file names or symbols around, at least where I work. While we do have some automation to help (and not break existing consumers), it’s significantly more involved in an SOA architecture for tier1 services. These sorts of big refactors also generally come with data model changes, performance profiling etc. This tool seems fantastic for parts of that, but not all of it.
Just as a friendly aside, your tone seems strangely defensive (though this may just be my fault reading this tired at 3AM) - Levels tells me you make on the order of half a million a year, while I’ll be lucky to make half of that in the next decade at my employer, so you really can’t feel persecuted by this when you most likely work half as much as me while being rewarded for it while folks like me struggle to tread water and are considered mentally deficient.
> Refactors are rarely as simple as moving a few file names or symbols around, at least where I work. While we do have some automation to help (and not break existing consumers), it’s significantly more involved in an SOA architecture for tier1 services. These sorts of big refactors also generally come with data model changes, performance profiling etc. This tool seems fantastic for parts of that, but not all of it.
Yes, I'd refer to that as a migration, which absolutely is a lot of effort, but a tool like this isn't going to be particularly helpful with a migration precisely because the majority of the effort with such a migration will be like...doing all the data stuff and traffic stuff. Changing the code is a minimal part. A refactor is often not a thing that even registers at a smaller company, because its on the scale of a few files. But "Large Scale Changes" are a thing when you end up having millions of lines of code (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrC6ROeV4GI), and tools like this one are useful for those kinds of changes. But a single LSC won't get you promoted.
> Just as a friendly aside, your tone seems strangely defensive (though this may just be my fault reading this tired at 3AM)
Not at all. I was however, pointing out that "this was really just a way to brag about where they work. Seems oddly common among people that work at that company." was certainly unnecessary, and perhaps unkind.
Unnecessary? I sure don’t see people from my company point it out constantly. The superiority complex seems to be a Google only phenomenon in my experience. I guess that’s caused by constant external validation - perhaps it’s people like you that are “unkind” by flaunting your wealth and status while the rest of us have literally nothing.
The market has determined people like me are worth half of you or less. Please be cognizant of this.
Food for thought: there are people on this board that make an order of magnitude less, simply due to location lottery. Half of FAANG level is still far from nothing.
To be clear, I also work at a FAANG, doing very similar work but am consistently condescended to by these folks, literally everywhere from real life to online. The fact that I'm basically only worth 50% of them just adds insult to injury.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been at more than a few companies and this lines up. Managing a refactor or migration that’s long term and creates significant impact across an org chart or product area is definitely in the purview of promotion to senior or staff, whatever it’s called.