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Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoThis is the framework: https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/ https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/ - Why do they have 4 SWE levels? - Why is there no Senior SWE level? - Why is there no Junior SWE level? It seems like IC1 = Intern, IC2 = Junior, IC3 = Developer, IC4 = Senior. No idea why they're not named closer to that. Also, do people think that these role descriptions are actually helpful? I find them extremely vague and generally unhelpful in determining if I'm performing at a particular level.
- desdiv 5y agoFrom that page, I'm seeing 7 SWE levels from the sidebar: - IC1 Software Engineer - IC2 Software Engineer - IC3 Software Engineer - IC4 Software Engineer - IC5 Staff Software Engineer - IC6 Principal Software Engineer - IC7 Sr. Principal Software Engineer (This is on a desktop browser. Maybe you're only seeing 4 levels because you're on a mobile browser and the rest is cut off. Or maybe you indeed saw 4 levels and the site has been updated since your post.)
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoBy SWE I meant literally "Software Engineer", as in IC1-4 Software Engineer compared to Staff, Principal, etc.
- desdiv 5y agoI see what you mean now. Sorry for the misunderstanding. It's possible that they "bumped up" the intern and junior titles all into "Software Engineer" as a form of title inflation.
- wrs 5y agoIt’s very common to have just numbers for the first few SWE levels. It is a bit unusual not to have “Senior” for 4, but then again it is pretty self-evident from the number.
- Roritharr 5y agoWhat's the best way to figure out where you are on that scale as an outsider?
- qbasic_forever 5y agoIC3 or 4 looks like most senior engineers--i.e. you are now a force multiplier for your team. You are giving help, mentorship, advice, expertise, etc. more than you are needing it yourself. You're helping with important interview and hiring decisions.
- titanomachy 5y agohttp://levels.fyi http://levels.fyi
- oaiey 5y agoI think they skip naming them because junior is a bit insulting and senior is pointless when you have three more seniority level above it. Also people are very fluent in this range. They develop in this range quickly. A very young person can reach seniority quite fast.
- rhizome 5y ago"Junior" is only insulting when the company doesn't promote from within. Which is most online companies, sure, but that's no reason not to buck the conventions.
- oaiey 5y agoOh definitely. Being a junior rank also has privileges etc. There are also other conventions we - as a society - try to break away from. So discussion and alternatives to conventions is something completely fine.
- chris11 5y agoLevels aren't standardized in industry, but they are inside a company. They impact pay bands and other things. IC1 sounds like it's for new grads. Junior doesn't seem to be a popular title in the bay area. One or two are probably Senior levels. I find it useful for how they change. Work complexity grows, timelines go from some tasks to multi-year projects, and you are expected to work more outside your team and mentor engineers. It doesn't really give you a path to get promoted though.
- sdfdsfdsfdfd 5y agoIC1 = new grad/little experience IC2 = mid-tier (usually 2-5 yoe) IC3 = senior (usually minimum of 5 yoe (this maps to L5 at google)) IC4 = senior/tech lead ... levels.fyi is also helpful for comparing with other companies.
- dannyw 5y agohelpful but I certainly hope levels are based on individual skills and not just years of experience!
- tuckfrump666 5y agoCome up with some BS and then show the world how awesome your BS is.
- yellow_lead 5y agoTried to read a few sentences of their framework but it reads like any other.
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- Traubenfuchs 5y agoSome HR person or HR consultant had to justify their existence with this...
- qbasic_forever 5y agoWelcome to the publicly traded company club.
- systemvoltage 5y agoInstant turn-off: Decorative cute emojis in a serious document.
- slashdot2008 5y agoit would be nice if it were a PDF I could download and save for later. is there any way to turn a series of pages in to a PDF? like a recursive wget and then pipe through pandoc?
- seanhunter 5y agoLots of ways to do this, but one way is install poppler-utils so you get pdfunite, make sure your filenames for the pages lexicographically sort in the order you want the pages to end up[1], then do pdfunite page*.pdf output.pdf I have had decent results using pdftk as well to do pdf surgery so that's another option. In this case, if you do a recursive wget I think it should "just work" because the files are named in a friendly way. So, putting it all together: wget -r 'https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/overview.html' cd dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework ls ic*software*.html | sed 's/.html$//' | while read f ; do pandoc --pdf-engine=wkhtmltopdf $f.html -o $f.pdf done pdfunite ic*.pdf output.pdf [1] ie the ordering of the output of "ls" is the order you want the pages in the output pdf
- liketochill 5y agoNot sure why you are downvoted, I save everything I want to refer to again as pdf because stuff on the web disappears. I can search all the pdf I have offline with Qiqqa or mendeley. Used to use google desktop for pdf search.
- zaptheimpaler 5y agoCheck out https://archivebox.io/ https://archivebox.io/ for a great self hosted solution. Its one of the best such programs I've found. You can hack together some scripts to do the basics yourself, but archiving arbitrary pages is pretty difficult to get right.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoPrint to PDF, most browsers support it natively if your OS doesn't already.
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- rancar2 5y agoDoes anyone at Dropbox past or present want to weigh in on the usefulness of this framework and its application with more context? The original post falls a bit short knowing where and how this is being applied inside the org.
- nickm12 5y agoI'm a former Dropbox employee, current Amazon employee. I find these frameworks very useful, especially as I've gotten more senior and been involved in hiring, performance reviews, and promotion assessments. Without this kind of framework, it's really up to individual whims about whether someone is performing well. And yes, these frameworks aren't perfect, but the act of creating and maintaining them is healthy for the organization to understand what it values.
- jedberg 5y agoCuriously they don't have a level 7 for Security and Machine Learning.
- mromanuk 5y ago“Allow me to introduce you to this awesome bureaucracy we created and designed by committee, all expressed as a PR approved by top execs.”
- nine_zeros 5y agoRofl. The more time I spend in this industry, the more I have come to accept that it is filled with roles without any meaningful output. People in these roles end up creating bureaucracy (but only for others) as a way to justify their job.
- trilinearnz 5y agoI also got the feeling there was some role justification going on here, with the level of detail employed (and what seems at first glance to be relatively arbitrary levels of skill differentiation). It reminded me a little of the SFIA Framework in that regard.
- astrange 5y agoThis is a pretty normal framework they must've inherited from somewhere else. It's almost exactly the same as at least two other companies.
- dannyw 5y agoNormal doesn't mean sensible though. Having worked at a company that does this, there are high performing IC2s that I'd trade for IC4s (to use comparable "levels" here); so I'm not sure what this does other than declarative justification (across tech).
- kockic 5y agoThis is kind of the main problem. You should't have employees at IC2 if they are IC4 worthy. They will just try to find another job, instead of waiting 5 years before reaching a level of someone who is performing same or worse.
- trilinearnz 5y agoWhilst I applaud this effort in transparency, I can't help feeling like there is a lot of weirdly specific prescriptive expectations and jargon in place here, with questionable practicality. I wonder if a looser, more broadly-defined set of definitions might work better, recognising that people can add value in different ways.
- echelon 5y agoThis is extremely close to the leveling rubric we use at the tech company I work at. The level names and language are slightly different, but it's the same matrices of scope and impact, and more or less the same qualifications. I assume at this point there's so much cross-pollination going on between tech companies that many companies resemble one another operationally. This must be a new local maxima that everybody is trending towards.
- ardit33 5y agoIt is nothing new. It is similar since way back to MSFT times in the 90s and then google changed things a bit in the early 2000s. Heck, I worked at a stogy financial company way back in 2003, (Fidelity), and had similar grades for engineering (4 grades), then Director, or VP for the highest level. The Dropbox post would have been much more interesting if it had salary ranges attached to it. Otherwise it is just kinda fluff.
- mturmon 5y agoMy own institution, a government lab, uses the same naming system (IC1 through IC6) with management also done similarly to what is shown here (M3-M6 at least, not sure about M7). And ICs are slotted into certain disciplines just as here (e.g., for us, Mechanical vs. Optical engineers). And also with the same matrices. The framework is just the same, with the same griping about the language being slippery among those who use it ;-). It was converted into the number/matrix setup from the earlier system with Senior, etc., some years ago.
- draw_down 5y agoYou’re right about the cross pollination, but I’m curious what metric you think is being maximized locally. I’d be willing to agree with “degree to which company is just doing whatever Google does” or more simply “concentration of tech industry bug-people”
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- jmgao 5y agoIf anyone at Dropbox is reading this, https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/ https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/ and https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/overview.html https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/overview.html have the same content, but the page title is different. (My guess is that all of the pages should be labeled as Dropbox Engineering Career Framework?)
- murderfs 5y agoI'm vaguely amused that IC4 and above don't have to "practice the Dropbox Diversity Commitments on a regular basis".
- quickthrower2 5y agoUse Go AND Rust in the same project.
- kaidon 5y agoNot like this... not like this!
- creshal 5y agoMeanwhile interns and junior developers apparently have to handle the bulk of hiring and job interview work. No wonder people complain about the quality of job interviews.
- usaar333 5y agoWasn't true at all in my days at Dropbox. Seniors not only were interviewing; they were building the interview process.
- effingwewt 5y agoThat seems so weird and makes sense at the same time. As in, why would they force juniors into that, and now I understand why some interviews make no freaking sense whatsoever, or the offer is way outside the scope of the position interviewed for.
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- xyst 5y agoWhy are companies adopting this “IC#” nomenclature? What does “IC” even stand for? I guess it’s a Google or MS thing, or perhaps a modification of US government pay grades (GS-1, GS-2, …)
- zodiac 5y agoIC = individual contributor (as opposed to manager, etc)
- TeMPOraL 5y agoHow does that work with the industry standard increasingly being that levels Senior and higher are really management in disguise (with all the responsibility, little of the authority)?
- astrange 5y agoICs have to produce technical work themselves even if they also have reports. Managers are presumed to spend so much time managing they no longer can/should do that. Senior Engineer probably wouldn't have reports though - that just means you know enough to not make mistakes. Staff and up would run projects and have at least unofficial reports.
- mathattack 5y agoIndividual Contributor. (No direct reports)
- astrange 5y agoIndividual Contributor aka not a manager.
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- davidhunter 5y agoIs there an alternative to heavy bureaucracy like this once a company reaches a certain size? What other mechanisms exist for combatting nepotism, feeling too abstracted from the mission etc in a larger company? Does a company like SpaceX with lots of people working towards big clear goals and where comp isn’t in the set of top reasons for choosing to work there use a levelling framework like this? I work in a company of 10 where we all have strong drive towards the company goals. I’m worried that we will lose this as we grow but I can’t see any clear alternatives. I wonder whether you could build a company that operates like a loosely-coupled network of smaller teams with internal accounting so that teams are compensated based on some kind of internal team valuation (similar to how startup valuations are set by the ‘market’). Probably a terrible idea!
- qbasic_forever 5y agoThe military--a completely flat structure of promotion based primarily on tenure and time-served, not necessarily ability or award/recognition. Before you blow it off as worthless there is some potential merit to it as it cuts out nepotism, cronyism, and other kinds of corruption that push unqualified people up the ranks.
- void_mint 5y ago> and other kinds of corruption that push unqualified people up the ranks. If the metric used for promotion is time served, in what way is that stopping unqualified people from being pushed up the ranks?
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The military--a completely flat structure of promotion based primarily on tenure and time-served, not necessarily ability or award/recognition. That's...not how the military works at all. I suppose it might appear approximately that way if you look only at the officer corps and, within that corps, only at survivors of the up-or-out policy. But, while their are minimum time bounds, subjective assessment of fitness (i.e., demonstrated ability) is the main key to selection for promotion.
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- cperciva 5y agoThis would be far more interesting if it included the salary range for each level. If you're going to be transparent, why not be transparent?
- whymauri 5y agohttps://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Dropbox,Google,Facebook,Microsoft&track=Software%20Engineer https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Dropbox,Google,Facebook,Micr...
- adamredwoods 5y agoWhy are QA Engineers not defined as software engineers?
- draw_down 5y agoIt’s a different job, of course.
- phonebucket 5y agoMy personal experience of almost all such frameworks is that their very existence drives competition for promotions. In turn, that can lead to (unspoken) resentment of one’s peers. But once such frameworks are introduced, they are difficult to get rid of. Consequently, I see the introduction of these frameworks as a committal culture step which should not be taken lightly.
- heisenbit 5y agoDoes this truly help to attract and retain talent?
- pm90 5y agoProbably not, but I appreciate their transparency and the discussion it’s prompting.
- aetherspawn 5y agoSpeaking frankly, I have been through the different roles and levels and I don't see the point of it all. There's really only 3 non-exec roles in a software company, only 2 of them cut code, and one is just a placeholder for the junior devs. Want to know how to keep people? Give them a little pay rise every 6 months and let them own a part of the product instead of having a no-responsibility JIRA burn and churn roster.
- aeternum 5y ago>Give them a little pay rise every 6 months and let them own a part of the product instead of having a no-responsibility JIRA burn and churn roster. This works for most people, but some are hyper-focused on comp and will ask every few weeks about why they're not leveling up and making more.
- z3ncyberpunk 5y agoA raise every few weeks, the entitlement..
- RussianCow 5y agoEvery few weeks?! You almost certainly don't want this person. Even if you provide that, engineers who are this comp-driven will inevitably switch jobs if they get an offer that's remotely better, so you're unlikely to retain them for very long in any case.
- blowski 5y agoThose techniques assume that everybody’s motivations are the same, and that’s not true. Some people don’t want ownership. Others are already satisfied by their pay. My answer to that question would be three parts: 1. Make sure that you agree on what success looks like, at the micro and macro levels. 2. Discuss what that person needs to achieve success for both of you - mentoring, training, tooling, access, time, money, whatever. 3. Frequently make sure they actually have what they need. When people are regularly missing out on what you call success, you’ll probably get rid of them. When they’re missing out on what they call success, they’ll get rid of you by leaving. Don’t assume you’ve understood what they think success looks like until you’ve really discussed it with them individually.
- lunatuna 5y agoIs this a ploy to have me open a new tab per link? Does dropbox get some type of remuneration if I get to 10 tabs?
- my_usernam3 5y agoDoes anyone else have an existential crises every time they are shown the corporate ladder structure? Also this looks pretty on par with the companies I've worked for.
- aeternum 5y agoFor some reason putting everything in first person makes it even more condescending.
- dang 5y agoWe changed the URL from https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/sharing-our-engineering-career-framework-with-the-world https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/sharing-our-engineering-..., which points to this.
- nthngtshr 5y agoI've never worked at a big company and my immediate reaction is that I don't like this. It feels like most HN commentators share this kind of sentiment. I'm genuinely wondering what people on the other side of this debate think about this. If you like having systems like this in your organization, what is it that you like about it? I feel like in my case it would totally discourage me from actually trying to make the company do better and instead would make me focus too much on trying to please people who rate me on these criteria. But I guess maybe that happens in a large organization anyways. And I guess in that case it's nice to have at least some (albeit not perfect) set of rules. Is that kind of the idea for having these?
- blowski 5y agoBig companies have to put these kinds of frameworks in place to ensure they’re treating everyone equally. Otherwise you end up with the absurd situations of two different people being rewarded differently despite performing the same job equally well merely because they have a different manager. The downside is everyone becomes a cog in the machine, with nobody being treated like an individual with their own strengths, weaknesses, needs, fears, and aspirations.
- jonathankoren 5y ago> The downside is everyone becomes a cog in the machine, with nobody being treated like an individual with their own strengths, weaknesses, needs, fears, and aspirations. Being treated as a fungible human resource is as much a corporate culture issue, as it is a management issue. The creation of explicit levels and expectations is immaterial here. I’d argue the lack of levels, removes rewards and further dehumanizes individuals by literally treating them all the same.
- systemvoltage 5y agoThe language here is so imprecise that if someone had intentions to treat someone unequally, they’ll do that anyways whether they have a framework in place or not. This is just a bunch of corporate malarkey, let’s be brutally nakedly honest here. The fact is that this is just a more SV version of corporate bullshit with emojis - same exact thing you find in an old corporation like GE or IBM, just dressed up differently.
- rdm_blackhole 5y agoIC7 => I transcend organizational boundaries by taking a holistic view of the company’s goals and taking responsibility across EPD, not just within my immediate scope of ownership. I laughed when I read this description. The religious undertone tells me everything that I need to know about the company. Almost cult like? Just my impression.
- anamazingday 5y ago"religious undertone" uhh > holistic (adj.) from holism ... 1926... from Greek holos "whole" (from PIE root *sol- "whole, well-kept") + -ism. https://www.etymonline.com/word/holism https://www.etymonline.com/word/holism HN comments are reaching new levels of bad, there's literally nothing fishy about that professional goal and it's what you should be aiming for as a principal dev.
- Terretta 5y agotranscendent comment Synonyms: metaphysical, otherworldly, paranormal, preternatural, supernatural, transcendental, unearthly
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- jonathankoren 5y agoThis is getting a lot of hate here, but having a well defined career track is useful. So many people want to know what they need to do to advance in their career, yet for some reason think all they need to do is be good at closing tickets. Well, that’s not job at the upper levels. Yes, you do need an opportunity to demonstrate the skills, but it’s surprising how many people in my experience don’t understand that the job changes. “Oh! But we have a flat organization”, you (cough Netflix cough) say. No you don’t. You have a shadow hierarchy. It’s there. The rubrics still exist. The “politics” and hurt feelings still exist. It’s just that the reasons are kept hidden, perhaps to make promotions more arbitrary and capricious. Does having an actual career make promotions and performance reviews objective? Of course not. Does it make promotions and performance reviews more aligned across the company? Yeah it does. This is as much a tool for management, as it is for ICs.
- iamgopal 5y agoHow about out of league ( on either side ) actors ? Is quantisation helpful ?
- dikei 5y ago>> This framework is not a promotion checklist for your role I hope this is true. There were too many times where things started out as a general guideline but gradually turned into a rigid checklist where one must tick all the boxes to get a promotion/raise.
- pm90 5y agoEven though they mention that explicitly there will be managers who will interpret it as a checklist.
- ramesh31 5y agoHow We Legally Justify Paying People Less Than They're Worth.
- jayp1418 5y agoDropbox still doesn't have proper Linux client.
- RPeres 5y agoThere are a lot of comments being against frameworks like this, as a manager, after having a quick glance, it's a pretty decent one compared to other things I have seen. It's important to note a couple of things, before we even look at the framework itself. Different people want different things. A lot of people want to code and to be left alone. A lot of other people don't. They want to feel they are progressing towards something. Good frameworks usually state: we consider you as a senior if you are doing X & Y consistently. This helps people aligning their actions/work with a level. The group of people that usually don't care about this things, might start doing so, when their title (e.g. "Software Engineer") lacks the "senior" keyword and they are applying for a senior role elsewhere. This might seem nitpicking, but you would be surprised how many people don't even pass the first screening because they don't have the "senior" prefix. In bigger companies monetary compensation is assigned according to the person's level. In smaller companies, not so much. Everyone has the same title, and people can have significantly different salaries. A good career framework makes it very clear to everyone that if you want to earn between X and Y you need to be at a particular level. As for the framework itself, I am big fan of giving examples. Say for instance on IC3: "I’m able to navigate ambiguity and remain resilient through ups and downs". I would love if they assigned a somewhat real example: "I am able to complete tasks, even when the acceptance criteria is not 100% clear.". They did well with the separation of the different functions: QA, Software Eng, Security Eng & Reliability Eng. A lot of places bundle some of these together and leave people scratching their head.
- johbjo 5y agoIt's not intended to be read as instructions on how to be promoted. It is directed as much to managers and higher levels so they understand the boundaries and expectations. One basic idea; a) recognition of level based on observed impact, as opposed to b) promotion to power as reward for effort/loyalty. With a), management is not a "final destination" of engineering careers. Old/sloppy organizations seem to devolve into b). The instructions here seem to be written with this in mind, and directed to everyone in the org.
- tylerrobinson 5y agoAt what point do we hit “peak emoji”? This document isn't describing summer jobs at the local park. It’s adults’ livelihoods. I can’t imagine referring to section trophy subsection rainbow in a serious discussion about my family’s source of income.
- nickm12 5y agoEmojis and memes are a big part of Dropbox culture.
- mmacvicarprett 5y agoNice page, quite generic. My experience is that in practice such frameworks do not help much.
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- c4wrd 5y agoOne thing that I think many are missing in their understanding, is that this gives Junior to Mid-level engineers a path forward and direction to improve. Often it's the case an engineer will ask their manager "How can I improve or get to the next level?" and having reference documentation for how to impact an organization at a larger level is extremely handy. It also helps engineers relate their efforts to the bigger picture and help them formulate a vision for why we have a competency hierarchy and how to view it in terms of career frame-working. At my company we also have a very similar engineering career framework, but the goal isn't to push everyone into boxes, but rather to help engineers understand what it means to have a large impact on an organization. This usually translates to more cross-team responsibilities and deliverables over longer periods of time.
- stunt 5y agoHonest trailer: “Dropbox HR team created an Engineering Career Framework, while they barely done any engineering work themselves”