4 ms·

I have never worked in the valley, so the answer to this question might be obvious to the people working there. What happens to all the experienced engineers?

• cortesoft 7y ago
  Many people stay at lower levels for years. The experience is necessary, but not sufficient, for those higher levels.
• brians 7y ago
  They leave the valley, remember it as their time at a startup, and work decades at a non-tech firm.
• huehehue 7y ago
  It's so variable that I don't think there's even a good answer for this. My current company does the engineer -> management track, so there can absolutely be an abundance of management jobs. You can also work as an Junior/SEII/Senior for 5+ years without being promoted at all. Keep in mind all of these titles are arbitrary/subjective.
• i0exception 7y ago
  Most companies in the valley have a terminal level (a level at which you're not expected to progress to the next one) that's close to level 3 in the chart here. In my experience, a lot of people don't progress beyond that. For the ones that do, the number of years of experience plays a smaller role than the quality of the experience itself.
• novok 7y ago
  A lot of Sr. engineers have way more than 5 yrs of experience. Or they go into management.
• patrickyeon 7y ago
  That took me by surprise too. One hypothesis could be that so many companies that levels.fyi tracks have grown so quickly that they've chosen to stuff themselves full of relatively junior SWEs. I think there are lots of reasons people in strategy positions would choose to do this, whether I agree with them or not. But re-read the description of "Software Engineer (II)" closely: > Typically 2-5+ years of experience. [...] At many companies, this is considered a 'career-level', as in you can spend the rest of your career operating at this level without being pushed out for not being promoted. So, it doesn't suggest it caps out at 5 years, and this could be where people who do "good, but not outstanding" work end up. Also the next level says "Role shifts more towards design rather than implementation depending on size and expectations at company.", so maybe the big break isn't "seniority and how good you are at your job" but rather "can you, and do you want to, work at the next level of design abstraction?"
• thatsenough 7y ago
  I started working at FANG recently, after spending 15 years in a different field. The very first thing I noticed was how young the average employee is. It was a little startling. I've heard different theories: * Today's big tech companies are still relatively young, so the workforce is young. * The companies have grown exponentially in recent years, and they've hired many new grads to meet hiring targets. This would also shift the average employee age lower. * The people who joined these companies 15-20 years ago would likely be very well-off financially by now, so they don't need to keep working. They've retired early, created start ups, left the Bay Area, etc. I think there's likely some truth to these claims. But Silicon Valley also has a reputation for ageism, so who knows.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • dehrmann 7y ago
    Looking at this (hopefully someone can find longer-term data), the number of CS graduates was in decline until 2009. https://i1.wp.com/danwang.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/bachelors.png?w=992&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/danwang.co/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/bach...
    • thatsenough 7y ago
      There was a peak in the mid-80s, and another around 2005. CS enrollments reached a max around 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble. But when the bubble burst in 2000-2001, enrollments plummeted in 2002, 2003 and 2004, leading to the local minimum in graduates in 2009. https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/CSCapacity/images/BSDegrees-1975-2014.png https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/CSCapacity/images/BS...
      • kokey 7y ago
        I'm getting a bit of a dot-com feeling around these compensation figures, especially seeing the sign up bonuses and how tangible stocks are considered as normal compensation now. The FAANGs remind me a bit of Microsoft, Cisco and Intel before their y2k peaks.
• bitpow 7y ago
  They become managers.
• jedberg 7y ago
  Many go to management. You realize as you get older that the whole “you can progress up the salary chart as an IC just as well as management” is a total crock. If you want to afford a nice house in a good neighborhood with good schools in the Bay Area, you’ve got to go into management.
  • nixgeek 7y ago
    I kinda disagree, Oracle/HP (personal experience) and Google/IBM (extremely good friends) both have career tracks for IC which go up to ‘Distinguished Engineer’ level, and where compensation can be equivalent to a VP on the management track. What you might be trying to say is there are more available positions at VP than DE, so your chances of making it are better? Or that being promoted to VP is easier than to DE? I think having seen how the sausage is made, would agree with both of those.
    • peripitea 7y ago
      Yes, that's exactly what he's saying -- the "just as well" part is key. Sure, there's an IC track that goes up to the SVP level at many companies, but it's statistically much harder to climb pretty much everywhere.
      • enitihas 7y ago
        I think most companies do not even have IC roles analogous to SVP. Google has two Senior fellows, and those are two guys who are far too famous and responsible for too much of the Google backbone infrastructure.
        • peripitea 7y ago
          Yeah you're probably right that VP, rather than SVP, is the more common cutoff.
    • jedberg 7y ago
      > both have career tracks for IC which go up to ‘Distinguished Engineer’ level, and where compensation can be equivalent to a VP on the management track. Sure, it exists. How many DEs do you know of, vs. VPs? How do you get a DE job? Usually you are the most well known person in your field. How you do you get a VP job? You have to be a pretty good manager. At Google, there are 100s of VPs. There are maybe 10 DEs, if that many. That's the BS. It's like saying "there is totally a path to getting really rich as an actor!". Sure, there is a path, but not a lot of people make it. And even the ones that do usually get there by also doing the management path (producer) at the same time. The lie is in the claim it's just as easy to climb the DE ladder as it is the VP ladder. It's not. Not even close.
• twblalock 7y ago
  There are a lot more people working in software now than there were 20 years ago. Even if everyone over 40 who started in the industry was still there, they would be totally outnumbered by young people. Ageism is real, but so is the growth of the engineering profession, and so is early retirement (which is definitely possible at the salaries senior people make, especially if you consider they bought houses in Silicon Valley for a lot less than they sell for now).
• kqr 7y ago
  > Does that mean over half of engineers are relatively new to the industry? Jackpot! All it takes for this to happen is that the number of software engineers in the world grows by 10--20% every year. (Because this means it doubles every 5 years, which means half the workforce has less than or equal to five years of experience. I recall reading somewhere that the actual growth of the workforce is even greater than that -- somewhere around 25%!
  • digaozao 7y ago
    There is a vídeo by uncle Bob stating this. Around minute 13 https://youtu.be/QHnLmvDxGTY https://youtu.be/QHnLmvDxGTY
• rdslw 7y ago
  what struct me actually is this: > Typically 2-5+ years of experience. (...) Possibly lead a small team or project. Ability to mentor engineers (...) WHAT? I don't know a profession with high knowledge requirements where after 2 years you can and are expected as a job req to manage a team. This speaks to me two things: a. a lot of staff is young and unexperienced b. rotation in segment <5 is big
  • samsonradu 7y ago
    There is another thread from yesterday, somewhat related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964946 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964946
  • zeroonetwothree 7y ago
    It’s not “manage” but “lead”. Which basically means the technical aspects. Certainly I’ve seen lots of great leadership from people with 2-5 years experience.
• jypepin 7y ago
  What I've personally seen is that the smaller the company the more experienced people you'll have, because they need more independent people and have less time/resources to mentor juniors. So the proportion for a large majority of startups is not similar to what this document shows, which is centered to bigger (1000+ engineers) companies.
• dub 7y ago
  Often times experienced engineers eventually move to much smaller companies that aren't as likely to appear on levels.fyi They might get tired of the politics at their company, or they just want to try something new, or founding/joining a smaller company might be the easiest way for them to continue to get promoted