Levels / Pay grades are quite well defined at most companies. Nearly every company maintains a career leveling guide with specific criteria that should be looke

Levels / Pay grades are quite well defined at most companies. Nearly every company maintains a career leveling guide with specific criteria that should be looked for at a level. The difficulty is in evaluation of that criteria. People get mis-leveled all the time. Additionally there's pay grades can be very wide and most levels have significant overlap. Why? Although someone may have been brought in at level X based on interview, they may be performing at X-1 due to other circumstances (personal situation, rest-and-vest, etc). This goes the other way too. Most companies will promote quickly if a candidate was under-leveled coming in and is performing at the next level.