This is why people change companies every two years. It's easier to get a promotion by studying for interviews on leetcode than by spending the extra time prom

This is why people change companies every two years. It's easier to get a promotion by studying for interviews on leetcode than by spending the extra time promo gaming in one's career. "Facebook will give me a sr software engineer position after 5 hours of interviews, here is that offer letter" is a very strong position. Market dynamics are a lot faster than internal promo dynamics at bigco. Once you reach sr although, you usually have to go through the promo game from what I can see. Most companies do not hire staff engineers unless your already staff engineer somewhere else at another bigco. This is why people tend to become manager after this point, because you see its more effort to become a staff engineer than it is to become a 'sr manager', which is about equivalent to a staff engineer. People also become a manager for the learning experience. Understanding 'the other side' can be quite enlightening.