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The parent also says "what did this person do to redefine the industry this cycle?". How often are you expecting a person to redefine the industry?
by parthdesai 4y ago
The parent also says "what did this person do to redefine the industry this cycle?". How often are you expecting a person to redefine the industry?
- Viliam1234 4y agoI try to imagine the standups these people have: "Which industry have you redefined yesterday? Which industry are you redefining today? Do you have any blockers?"
- rvbissell 4y agoI assumed that was hyperbole.
- dmix 4y agoWell it dilutes a conversation when someone implies a senior Google employee is surely to be expected to be at the tier of disrupting entire markets in order to get and keep their job. If that is what really defines an L9 job at Google I think we'd all have been praising the typical L9 Google employees on HN long ago. And we'd all be justified in being angry Google decided to fire such a person. Or maybe Google should pay their salary indefinitely because they were capable of disrupting a market at some point in their career? Or maybe yes, such a person needs to work at Google type company so all of us can benefit from the optimal situation from which to maximize their talent, even though such a company would let them go. Otherwise we'd all lose out on such a person being capable of contributing to the world if Google lays them off. What else could they do then without a company who doesn't appreciate keeping them on?
- makeitdouble 4y agoI’m not sure what exactly is a L9 at Google, but this looks a lot like research positions in many huge companies. For instance there was researchers on voice recognition at Yahoo! way before the voice assistants became a product, and if I could imagine one of them bring up a well working model 6 months before the competition, and have a voice assistant hit the market. It would disrupt an entire market. But they’re not alone of course, and I don’t know how many other researchers are on the payroll trying to breakthrough other fields. All of them have a “disrupt the entire market” expectation I think, and of course their employer is also expected to give them enough time and leeway to make progress. They probably bring small improvement on existing things, and the number of papers published every year could be another measure as a temporizing strategy. But their actual stated goal is probably very ambitious and they’d be failing at it for a very long time.
- hn_go_brrrrr 4y agoVint Cerf
- aix1 4y agoNot really sure what you're trying to say, but Vint Cerf is a VP (i.e. L10).
- Arainach 4y agoResearch is a career path, not a level. As levels go up, each new level is a new job. In the SWE track: L3 is a new graduate L4 is mid level (an engineer who you can generally trust to complete the tasks they're assigned) L5 is Senior (who owns/shapes the direction of the team) L6 is Staff (who has to see upcoming problems and shape efforts across the organization) L7 shapes a product L8 shapes a division L9 shapes an industry The expectations are sky high, but so are the comp. If you want to get millions, you'd better do something worth millions.
- tete 4y agoHuh. So L7-L9 are L3s that are good at marketing and slap the Google badge on everything they do? Well, I guess that explains both why they fire them and why golang.org became go.dev.
- lopiar_zen 4y agoFrom your ranking, L9 seems to not depend on the company anymore, looks more research. You cannot expect to shape/redefine industry every year, that's absurd. By this model every math/physics/chemistry research teacher should be fired every year. And to be honest I don't think google has these expectations. Most probably he was was fired for different reasons, not performance
- Arainach 4y agoResearch is theoretical. These roles are very much practical. These are the kind of people who drive partnerships across companies, lead important industry standards, and come up with ideas for entire new markets and products. This is not a job everyone wants or is capable of doing. There are a very limited number of such positions, and those who want them must justify the position's existence.
- amzn-throw 4y agoI can't speak for Google, and Amazon doesn't have an L9, so our Distinguished Engineers are L10. But a decent bunch of them are the types of folks to have wikipedia pages: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Roskind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Roskind * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray (not anymore I guess) The ones that don't probably would if it was public about how much of a significant contribution they've made to some foundational AWS services everyone knows. I think they don't mind.
- manusachi 4y agoDo they "redefine the industry" every cycle?
- CydeWeys 4y agoThat's basically in the job description for the highest levels though. They're expected to literally lead the industry in their field. If they're merely now a solid and productive programmer/uber tech lead then they don't remotely merit such a high position. Since demotion doesn't exist for various reasons, the only solution is separation.
- ryanburk 4y agoa lifetime ago back at Microsoft, Peter Spiro described these folks job expectation as "walk on water". if you wanted to exceed expectations, you had to "leave no wake"...
- packetslave 4y agoThe very best engineer I've ever worked with at any company (Anna B.) just got promoted to Distinguished last year. She accomplished one or two industry-leading things before that :-)
- wilg 4y agoLeading the industry clearly isn't good enough. They are expected to regularly redefine the industry.
- dehrmann 4y agoGranted, it was hyperbolic, but at L9, often. This isn't just an extremely competent engineer, it's an industry leader.