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What's not unusual to see is that people that have been around longer are more likely to occupy the higher levels despite not really having any specific technic

by YZF 5y ago

What's not unusual to see is that people that have been around longer are more likely to occupy the higher levels despite not really having any specific technical competence advantage over some peer. In your example the ML person that lead some original effort when the company was smaller, and was "senior" in that context, would now be "staff" when a new team is formed, and it's possible that the "senior" in the new team is actually better in every way than the other senior. Naturally when it's time for said "staff" to look for a new job they'd be looking at staff level positions. I've seen this in so many places that I'm willing to bet it's true everywhere. Now one can simply argue that by being around longer and understanding how the org works the more tenured senior is the right person for the staff role but IMO this leads to stagnation and sometimes a complete reversal of the entire levels system where you find people fairly high up in the organization that are not doing a good job. Peter's principle at play. The role/tenure also tends to feedback into whatever performance evaluation system that's in use. The other big problem in our industry is that the impact of decisions isn't known/felt until a really long time after they're made. Often by the time there's a problem it's somebody else's problem and the appearance of competence != competence. There are lots of other subtle ways where people game the system, e.g. changing schedules. I've seen so many tech projects where the project was delivered on time and on budget, except it wasn't. Then you have the people that are punching way above their weight but the output isn't always very visible or measurable. The bottom line of sorts is that this is super tough. Peer reviews help but most systems can have pretty large error bars in gauging either the business or organizational impact of individuals IMO. Sometimes the system gets it right but sometimes it gets it very wrong. Anyways, I guess it's the game we all play, and partly with experience we learn to play it better.

lhorie 5y ago
Well, if we're going to talk about edge cases, I also see the opposite: people who are allegedly at EM or staff levels coming in for phone screen interviews and only getting a recommendation to move forward at senior level. One thing that became apparent to me is that despite companies having rubrics for levels, the actual levels vary a lot, certainly between companies but even between teams as well. Perhaps it speaks to the idea of "getting promoted until your ceiling of competence" that standardization of levels across organizations is a concern that typically only gets tackled at around ~L8+ in the tech career ladder. Or, of course, as you alluded, maybe the problem is simply that hard by its very nature.

by YZF 5y ago

lhorie 5y ago

Well, if we're going to talk about edge cases, I also see the opposite: people who are allegedly at EM or staff levels coming in for phone screen interviews and only getting a recommendation to move forward at senior level. One thing that became apparent to me is that despite companies having rubrics for levels, the actual levels vary a lot, certainly between companies but even between teams as well. Perhaps it speaks to the idea of "getting promoted until your ceiling of competence" that standardization of levels across organizations is a concern that typically only gets tackled at around ~L8+ in the tech career ladder. Or, of course, as you alluded, maybe the problem is simply that hard by its very nature.