16 ms·

Tech company career ladders

345 points by tim_sw 9y ago

fyfy18 9y ago
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.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  Because working as an SWE in bigtech can pay 2-3x as much? Including signing a FB new grad can make up to ~$225k in their first year. There aren’t many industries where this is possible with a bachelors or less.
  - mrep 9y ago
    Also, most SWE in big tech aren't working crazy hours like investment banking.
    - akhilcacharya 9y ago
      They really aren't. I have friends at bulge bracket banks that easily worked 12 hours a day and sometimes weekends. At Amazon I was hard pressed to find anybody work more than 10 in the office on crunch weeks.
  - Arcten 9y ago
    Not that it detracts from your point, but the best offers I've seen for FB new grad are 115k salary, 270k/4 RSUs, and 100k signing, giving ~280k first year.
    - akhilcacharya 9y ago
      I mentioned $225k because that's the baseline from what I understand. Rockstars can get $100k signing and more RSUs. I'm very sad I'll never get that...
- ummonk 9y ago
  Software big 5 have much better pay and much better work-life balance than accounting big 5.
- lclarkmichalek 9y ago
  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.
  - ryanobjc 9y ago
    Exactly this. Also you get paid real cash money. And really proper healthcare. Which is handy if you want to have kids. I often see criticisms of bigtech as overpaying... or perhaps it is everyone else who is underpaying? Quit making the argument you should be underpaid! Not to mention that at the big companies (FAANG) you get to work with some really awesome smart people. And work on hard problems that matter with products people actually use. In the best case small startups are awesome. But there are many mediocre cases out there. Crazy crazy stuff. Every small startup I’ve been part of has had huge drama. Including extortion, sociopaths, bad senior hires, funding gone weird, and sheer embezzlement/misspending.
    - pm 9y ago
      ...extortion, sociopaths, bad senior hires, funding gone weird, and sheer embezzlement/misspending. I've been contracting at a startup for a year, and seen all this happen during my tenure. We've managed to strip most of the deadwood now, but I'm unsure whether it was done in time. It'll be a pity if the company folds, because they have some quite cool tech. Everytime I see something like this, I'm glad I chose the life of a contractor.
  - sgift 9y ago
    > 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.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Yeah, well... it sucks. You do it for the money. (If you’re really lucky and you’re on one of the good teams you get to enjoy your work and the money. But most don’t get that.)
- audleman 9y ago
  I worked in startups for 10 years, now I'm at my first big corporate gig. I'd say that it's not as bad as it sounds, as dramatic stories tend to find their way up the HN ranking. Working for big corp you have to pay the "corporate tax", which is this sort of inhuman set of corporate rules. As a free human being it feels really weird and offputting. What's really weird is the people who have been here for their entire careers and don't see that it's weird. Somebody described it like growing up in a dysfunctional family; it feels normal to you. Anyhow, you can also keep your humanity and look at the rules as a minor annoyance that doesn't have to get you down. You can also think about it as part of getting a much larger paycheck. Some of my co-workers are ready to throw that away to work on their passion, but I quite like it.
49bc 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
mlazos 9y ago
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.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  It shard to trust someone whose thesis is that the thing they know intimately is inferior to the thing they are unfamiliar with. The seaweed is always greener...
- keithnz 9y ago
  I've always enjoyed working at small companies. I've worked at larger companies which have the "level" concept of employees, it's kindda funny to me now :) In my experience at smaller companies you get treated better, you are a more significant factor to the overall success of the company and there is very little corporate crap which often has silly requirements that get justified by a mystical word of being "professional", which often actually seems to achieve the opposite of treating adults as bunch of kids that need to be managed and controlled :) Though I know it also can go very bad for people in small companies that have mini dictators in charge.
  - xtracto 9y ago
    >Though I know it also can go very bad for people in small companies that have mini dictators in charge. By definition every company has a dictador. They might be "benevolent" and willing to delegate their power to some degree, but at the end of the day, they have the final say.
- hashset 9y ago
  not to mention that the difference in money can be life-changing. it is not uncommon to see a 2-3x total comp. multiple as a "level 3" at the referenced companies compared to a small one.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
pascalxus 9y ago
Sometime s coming in at a lower level will help you stay longer at that company.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
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.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  In my current company for 2 years I was reporting to a director who didn't care at all. No promotions, no raises, nothing. Then a new manager came in between me and the director and suddenly promotion, raises and more interesting work. Having an unsupportive manager is almost for sure career death and a strong reason for leaving.
- Afforess 9y ago
  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.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's a pretty complex system. It may be easier to find a supportive manager :-)
  - commandlinefan 9y ago
    "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you"
  - dasil003 9y ago
    This seems brilliantly Machiavellian, but impossible to screen for.
xrd 9y ago
So true. Definitely.
thinkingkong 9y ago
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.
mlady 9y ago
<redacted>
- itronitron 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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 9y ago
        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.
wheresmyusern 9y ago
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 9y ago
  >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.
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    I have a slightly different advice: > unless they focus on some very narrow interests of mine. I think OP's problem is that "other people" are not an interest of his. If it was, he'd never run out of things to talk about with these other people. I also think that's a main reason people find those who can't keep up a conversation disturbing. They sense that you're not interested in them, and that makes you potentially dangerous.
crabasa 9y ago
>> 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 9y ago
  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.
kevan 9y ago
If anyone's wondering SDE2/L5 at Amazon is the first 'career' role on the engineering ladder.
- zwkrt 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      Correct. All corporate roles are L4 or above at Amazon, even outside tech.
  - sudosteph 9y ago
    I can corroborate. Career level just means you won't get fired if you stop advancing. There are plenty of people who still pursue L6 though out of pride though. It's extremely difficult for an experienced SDE to get hired on at L6 level too, so most have to work up to it.
  - s2g 9y ago
    It's a dumb policy, but it's true. I was on a team with no one above SDE-I. That was bad.
tejasmanohar 9y ago
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.
- paxys 9y ago
  In my experience a degree is worthless as soon as you are hired. From then on you will only be judged based on performance. I don't even know what degrees (if any) most of my coworkers have. Of course there can always be problems with skills or performance due to not having a relevant degree.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Not having a degree can also create issues with certain visas. But I think with many years of experience this requirement can be replaced. But that's not "right after you get hired"
- timv 9y ago
  > Has anyone seen career growth stall directly because they lack a degree Like @paxys (sibling comment), I've not seen it be a problem once you're in, but it does affect the ease with which you get job offers, and those can be a big part of career growth. Sometimes you land a great job, in a great company, with a great manager and you work your way up, with the right opportunities at the right times with the right rewards. But most people find that they run into a blocker somewhere along the way. Maybe the company isn't growing fast enough to create relevant oppportunities. Maybe you get a manager who sees you as irreplaceable and doesn't want you to move up. Maybe something stuffs up and the blame falls on you and your promotions get stalled for a while. And in all those cases (and more) it helps to have a ticket out of there. Even with 5 to 10 years of experience, some % of hiring managers / recruiters will look at where you got your degree (and in what discipline) and take that into account when deciding whether to interview you. And fewer interviews leads to fewer offers, leads to fewer choices, leads to less control over your career path. The lack of a degree is not a total blocker - once you get into that first role and prove yourself you've got good chances - but it will have some impact and could make it harder to meet your goals.
tomerico 9y ago
For those looking to compare levels between the mentioned companies, I found http://levels.fyi http://levels.fyi useful
- tejasmanohar 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      I never got a $100k bonus as a T5. I was at Superb when I left too.
  - Zaheer 9y ago
    There's also crowdsourced data via a Google Form they have at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1IS4w_6To5oMUtksPShuk1nuc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1I...
  - jpatokal 9y ago
    I'm not qualified to comment on the comparisons, but there's a glaring mistake on the first page: software engineers at Google are "SWE", not "SDE". Given that this is the most common job code in the company, this doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its accuracy. And yes, for Google/FB/MS these are common knowledge and HR will set offers accordingly. Interesting to see that eg. Netflix and Palantir apparently don't have any software engineer levels though.
  - 9y ago
sudeepj 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    > 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 9y ago
      Inviolable rule of management: you get the behavior you reward.
- peterkelly 9y ago
  That sounds horrific
- corporateslaver 9y ago
  This is true. Huge success leads to a raise and massive expectations, which can be extremely stressful.
peterburkimsher 9y ago
"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.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  You don't have a country to call home?
  - peterburkimsher 9y ago
    "Home" is a place I can settle, start a family, go back to and live in. I grew up near Geneva. My parents bought a house in France because it was cheaper. My dad crossed the border every day to work at CERN and take me to international school. I can't be Swiss, because my parents weren't resident. I can't be French, because I wasn't born there. The nearest French hospital is 2 hours away through the mountains and CERN paid for Swiss health insurance. I'm British by descent because my parents are from there. Future children born outside the UK cannot be British from me, because I wasn't born in the UK. If I stayed in Geneva and met a wife there in the same situation (very common with UN kids), and kept living with my parents, future children would be stateless. My girlfriend is Taiwanese. If she and I had children, they would be Taiwanese from her, and would have to go to the military and learn how to kill foreigners. There's a conflict of interest - I don't want children to kill me. She had a great time in Australia on Working Holiday and wanted to go to New Zealand too, but couldn't get one of the 600 visas even though we stayed up all night and applied as soon as applications opened at 6 am. For her to move to the UK requires her to meet income requirements of £18,600 per year, which she doesn't earn with her CAD job, and it would take 5 years. New Zealand offers PR after 2 years, and New Zealand PR is enough for children to get citizenship. (some countries e.g. Canada give citizenship at birth to everyone, but then it's possible for parents to lose their visa and be separated from kids - I want PR before I marry).
hugs 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
manish_gill 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
deleted 9y ago
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commandlinefan 9y ago
> 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.
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biztos 9y ago
> 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.
markbnj 9y ago
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.

345 points by tim_sw 9y ago

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.

akhilcacharya 9y ago
Because working as an SWE in bigtech can pay 2-3x as much? Including signing a FB new grad can make up to ~$225k in their first year. There aren’t many industries where this is possible with a bachelors or less.
- mrep 9y ago
  Also, most SWE in big tech aren't working crazy hours like investment banking.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    They really aren't. I have friends at bulge bracket banks that easily worked 12 hours a day and sometimes weekends. At Amazon I was hard pressed to find anybody work more than 10 in the office on crunch weeks.
- Arcten 9y ago
  Not that it detracts from your point, but the best offers I've seen for FB new grad are 115k salary, 270k/4 RSUs, and 100k signing, giving ~280k first year.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    I mentioned $225k because that's the baseline from what I understand. Rockstars can get $100k signing and more RSUs. I'm very sad I'll never get that...
ummonk 9y ago
Software big 5 have much better pay and much better work-life balance than accounting big 5.
lclarkmichalek 9y ago
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.
- ryanobjc 9y ago
  Exactly this. Also you get paid real cash money. And really proper healthcare. Which is handy if you want to have kids. I often see criticisms of bigtech as overpaying... or perhaps it is everyone else who is underpaying? Quit making the argument you should be underpaid! Not to mention that at the big companies (FAANG) you get to work with some really awesome smart people. And work on hard problems that matter with products people actually use. In the best case small startups are awesome. But there are many mediocre cases out there. Crazy crazy stuff. Every small startup I’ve been part of has had huge drama. Including extortion, sociopaths, bad senior hires, funding gone weird, and sheer embezzlement/misspending.
  - pm 9y ago
    ...extortion, sociopaths, bad senior hires, funding gone weird, and sheer embezzlement/misspending. I've been contracting at a startup for a year, and seen all this happen during my tenure. We've managed to strip most of the deadwood now, but I'm unsure whether it was done in time. It'll be a pity if the company folds, because they have some quite cool tech. Everytime I see something like this, I'm glad I chose the life of a contractor.
- sgift 9y ago
  > 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.
draw_down 9y ago
Yeah, well... it sucks. You do it for the money. (If you’re really lucky and you’re on one of the good teams you get to enjoy your work and the money. But most don’t get that.)
audleman 9y ago
I worked in startups for 10 years, now I'm at my first big corporate gig. I'd say that it's not as bad as it sounds, as dramatic stories tend to find their way up the HN ranking. Working for big corp you have to pay the "corporate tax", which is this sort of inhuman set of corporate rules. As a free human being it feels really weird and offputting. What's really weird is the people who have been here for their entire careers and don't see that it's weird. Somebody described it like growing up in a dysfunctional family; it feels normal to you. Anyhow, you can also keep your humanity and look at the rules as a minor annoyance that doesn't have to get you down. You can also think about it as part of getting a much larger paycheck. Some of my co-workers are ready to throw that away to work on their passion, but I quite like it.

49bc 9y ago

> 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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.

mlazos 9y ago

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.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
It shard to trust someone whose thesis is that the thing they know intimately is inferior to the thing they are unfamiliar with. The seaweed is always greener...
keithnz 9y ago
I've always enjoyed working at small companies. I've worked at larger companies which have the "level" concept of employees, it's kindda funny to me now :) In my experience at smaller companies you get treated better, you are a more significant factor to the overall success of the company and there is very little corporate crap which often has silly requirements that get justified by a mystical word of being "professional", which often actually seems to achieve the opposite of treating adults as bunch of kids that need to be managed and controlled :) Though I know it also can go very bad for people in small companies that have mini dictators in charge.
- xtracto 9y ago
  >Though I know it also can go very bad for people in small companies that have mini dictators in charge. By definition every company has a dictador. They might be "benevolent" and willing to delegate their power to some degree, but at the end of the day, they have the final say.
hashset 9y ago
not to mention that the difference in money can be life-changing. it is not uncommon to see a 2-3x total comp. multiple as a "level 3" at the referenced companies compared to a small one.
maxxxxx 9y ago

pascalxus 9y ago

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

sillysaurus3 9y ago

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.

maxxxxx 9y ago
In my current company for 2 years I was reporting to a director who didn't care at all. No promotions, no raises, nothing. Then a new manager came in between me and the director and suddenly promotion, raises and more interesting work. Having an unsupportive manager is almost for sure career death and a strong reason for leaving.
Afforess 9y ago
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.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  That's a pretty complex system. It may be easier to find a supportive manager :-)
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you"
- dasil003 9y ago
  This seems brilliantly Machiavellian, but impossible to screen for.

xrd 9y ago

So true. Definitely.

thinkingkong 9y ago

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.

mlady 9y ago

itronitron 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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.

wheresmyusern 9y ago

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 9y ago
>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.
- BurningFrog 9y ago
  I have a slightly different advice: > unless they focus on some very narrow interests of mine. I think OP's problem is that "other people" are not an interest of his. If it was, he'd never run out of things to talk about with these other people. I also think that's a main reason people find those who can't keep up a conversation disturbing. They sense that you're not interested in them, and that makes you potentially dangerous.

crabasa 9y ago

>> 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 9y ago
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.

kevan 9y ago

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

zwkrt 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    Correct. All corporate roles are L4 or above at Amazon, even outside tech.
- sudosteph 9y ago
  I can corroborate. Career level just means you won't get fired if you stop advancing. There are plenty of people who still pursue L6 though out of pride though. It's extremely difficult for an experienced SDE to get hired on at L6 level too, so most have to work up to it.
- s2g 9y ago
  It's a dumb policy, but it's true. I was on a team with no one above SDE-I. That was bad.

tejasmanohar 9y ago

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.

paxys 9y ago
In my experience a degree is worthless as soon as you are hired. From then on you will only be judged based on performance. I don't even know what degrees (if any) most of my coworkers have. Of course there can always be problems with skills or performance due to not having a relevant degree.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Not having a degree can also create issues with certain visas. But I think with many years of experience this requirement can be replaced. But that's not "right after you get hired"
timv 9y ago
> Has anyone seen career growth stall directly because they lack a degree Like @paxys (sibling comment), I've not seen it be a problem once you're in, but it does affect the ease with which you get job offers, and those can be a big part of career growth. Sometimes you land a great job, in a great company, with a great manager and you work your way up, with the right opportunities at the right times with the right rewards. But most people find that they run into a blocker somewhere along the way. Maybe the company isn't growing fast enough to create relevant oppportunities. Maybe you get a manager who sees you as irreplaceable and doesn't want you to move up. Maybe something stuffs up and the blame falls on you and your promotions get stalled for a while. And in all those cases (and more) it helps to have a ticket out of there. Even with 5 to 10 years of experience, some % of hiring managers / recruiters will look at where you got your degree (and in what discipline) and take that into account when deciding whether to interview you. And fewer interviews leads to fewer offers, leads to fewer choices, leads to less control over your career path. The lack of a degree is not a total blocker - once you get into that first role and prove yourself you've got good chances - but it will have some impact and could make it harder to meet your goals.

tomerico 9y ago

For those looking to compare levels between the mentioned companies, I found http://levels.fyi http://levels.fyi useful

tejasmanohar 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    I never got a $100k bonus as a T5. I was at Superb when I left too.
- Zaheer 9y ago
  There's also crowdsourced data via a Google Form they have at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1IS4w_6To5oMUtksPShuk1nuc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IclsJmHUMWjZCECMKi1I...
- jpatokal 9y ago
  I'm not qualified to comment on the comparisons, but there's a glaring mistake on the first page: software engineers at Google are "SWE", not "SDE". Given that this is the most common job code in the company, this doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its accuracy. And yes, for Google/FB/MS these are common knowledge and HR will set offers accordingly. Interesting to see that eg. Netflix and Palantir apparently don't have any software engineer levels though.
- 9y ago

sudeepj 9y ago

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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  > 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 9y ago
    Inviolable rule of management: you get the behavior you reward.
peterkelly 9y ago
That sounds horrific
corporateslaver 9y ago
This is true. Huge success leads to a raise and massive expectations, which can be extremely stressful.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

"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.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
You don't have a country to call home?
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  "Home" is a place I can settle, start a family, go back to and live in. I grew up near Geneva. My parents bought a house in France because it was cheaper. My dad crossed the border every day to work at CERN and take me to international school. I can't be Swiss, because my parents weren't resident. I can't be French, because I wasn't born there. The nearest French hospital is 2 hours away through the mountains and CERN paid for Swiss health insurance. I'm British by descent because my parents are from there. Future children born outside the UK cannot be British from me, because I wasn't born in the UK. If I stayed in Geneva and met a wife there in the same situation (very common with UN kids), and kept living with my parents, future children would be stateless. My girlfriend is Taiwanese. If she and I had children, they would be Taiwanese from her, and would have to go to the military and learn how to kill foreigners. There's a conflict of interest - I don't want children to kill me. She had a great time in Australia on Working Holiday and wanted to go to New Zealand too, but couldn't get one of the 600 visas even though we stayed up all night and applied as soon as applications opened at 6 am. For her to move to the UK requires her to meet income requirements of £18,600 per year, which she doesn't earn with her CAD job, and it would take 5 years. New Zealand offers PR after 2 years, and New Zealand PR is enough for children to get citizenship. (some countries e.g. Canada give citizenship at birth to everyone, but then it's possible for parents to lose their visa and be separated from kids - I want PR before I marry).

hugs 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

manish_gill 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

deleted 9y ago

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commandlinefan 9y ago

> 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.

deleted 9y ago

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biztos 9y ago

> 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.

markbnj 9y ago

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.