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The biggest simplification that I disagree with in this post is that impact rises monotonically. It's true that long-tenured engineers (if they're good) can do

The biggest simplification that I disagree with in this post is that impact rises monotonically. It's true that long-tenured engineers (if they're good) can do amazing things. Things that other engineers don't have the implicit knowledge or political capital to do. The problem is that once that project is over, it's not guaranteed that the next project will be as impactful. So ... do you pay them for their impact? And promote them? Knowing you're guaranteed nothing the next quarter? Or do you put up barriers to promotion? "Sustained performance" or "multiple successful projects?" I'd love to see an approach to IC comp that's variable. Land a huge project; get a bonus. Everything past Senior Engineer is temporary; if you want to be paid like Senior Staff or Principal, do the work in that year. I suspect orgs could justify being more generous with bonuses because it's not recurring. It's at odds to a lot of the way engineers look at comp, but it would align money with what individual businesses need in a more interesting way than the current "plan on your RSUs going up by 50% next year" comp plans at FAANG.

bobsomers 5y ago
> It's true that long-tenured engineers (if they're good) can do amazing things. Things that other engineers don't have the implicit knowledge or political capital to do. The problem is that once that project is over, it's not guaranteed that the next project will be as impactful. You hinted at this by mentioning political capital, but in my experience as engineers gain experience at the company their impact largely grows in ways that aren't obviously visible. It's not like they are churning out work or managing teams that have ever increasing product impact, it's that their job responsibilities expand to include things like: - Convincing potential hires they should join the company. - Speaking frankly to leaders when newer employees don't feel comfortable doing it. - Seeing large cross-cutting issues that require time and experience at the company to identify. - Mentoring newer employees so they get up to speed and become productive quickly. - Arbiters of information and documentation that tends to never get written down. "Person X can help you learn about Y, Team Z is responsible for that, etc." These kinds of activities are critical to highly efficient companies, but rarely ever acknowledged as impact. At least I've rarely ever seen these kinds of things show up in regular performance reviews, and yet it's painfully obvious when these activities are missing.

bobsomers 5y ago

> It's true that long-tenured engineers (if they're good) can do amazing things. Things that other engineers don't have the implicit knowledge or political capital to do. The problem is that once that project is over, it's not guaranteed that the next project will be as impactful. You hinted at this by mentioning political capital, but in my experience as engineers gain experience at the company their impact largely grows in ways that aren't obviously visible. It's not like they are churning out work or managing teams that have ever increasing product impact, it's that their job responsibilities expand to include things like: - Convincing potential hires they should join the company. - Speaking frankly to leaders when newer employees don't feel comfortable doing it. - Seeing large cross-cutting issues that require time and experience at the company to identify. - Mentoring newer employees so they get up to speed and become productive quickly. - Arbiters of information and documentation that tends to never get written down. "Person X can help you learn about Y, Team Z is responsible for that, etc." These kinds of activities are critical to highly efficient companies, but rarely ever acknowledged as impact. At least I've rarely ever seen these kinds of things show up in regular performance reviews, and yet it's painfully obvious when these activities are missing.