Totally agree.

In my 25 years in tech, there were no meritocracies. I came from a simple working class upbringing and experienced upward mobility into the white collar class.

I differentiated myself by always finding ways to solve problems, that others weren’t willing to do. People expected things to be done a certain way, I expected nothing and did everything myself my own way.

I never had mentorship that taught me “how to play the game”. People saw me as a threat, some would copy my work and take credit for it. I don’t have the mentality to fight with people over a game, so I let people win, to my detriment.

I never had hunger for title or compensation, so it was never offered to me unless I voiced my desire to exit.

My friends who played the game are sitting on a fortune, where they have more material possessions, but their kids are struggling and they are struggling, to find peace and happiness, because they are “owned” by the game. They have no substance in their life and compare themselves to others who play the game. A endless cycle of jealously.

I sit here with peace and very high life satisfaction, understanding I have skills that help people, that fulfill a purpose, that comes with healthy integration with my unbreakable values.

Learning to think independently while ignoring superficial reward signals with focus on self concordant goals is the recipe to life satisfaction.

+1. Worth saying this is also not at all a software engineering thing, it’s a large organization thing. I found I could easily discuss career leveling with non-technical government employees. In fact they have much more context than my friends in software engineering that never worked for large companies.

The worst part about this is that the level is largely made up. Its a social construct.

for example a "senior engineer" at a FAANG has more "value" than lead engineer at a no-name startup.

However the skill gap between a lead engineer of a team of 6 vs a "senior engineer" at FAANG is massive.

a "Senior Engineer" (ie [e|l]5/6 at a faang) makes almost no product decisions. There is a team that makes the GUI, product, marketing, infra, and then a bunch of sub teams that look after the specific part that you are currently dealing with.

Your startup person has to make all those decisions them selves and communicate/delegate it

Being an 6/7 feels like being a teenager with a coddling parent by comparison.

But! the point is this, that name, is all just an illusion. There are plenty of E6s at FAANG that are mediocre, there are plenty of E3s that are leaders.

You must make your own worth. Sure you might be working at a no-name company, but that doesn't mean you can't be _good_. The thing that makes you _good_ at the non-coding skills: People, Architecture, communications.

> Take the bits you want (money, skills)

That’s exactly what the author did, and it’s why the leveling piece matters so much.

At big tech companies levels very directly control comp, and less directly control the scope of problems you’re trusted with.

You absolutely can tackle large, high-impact problems as a more junior IC, but it usually means pushing a lot harder to hold onto ownership. Otherwise it’s REAL easy for a more senior IC to step in and quietly take it over.

I said "F-this" 20 years ago, moved to the middle of nowhere, paid cash for my property and live on next to nothing. Best decision ever.

Very much so. Author here. I wanted to do so much more than the box they allocated me in. Once I knew they were not going to let me grow from my box, then I left. Not the level I was worried about, but it's a language most people can understand

I am at the stage of life where I appreciate this wisdom and desire the practice of it, but lack the will power to not get caught up “trying to win the game”. Once a while I get anxious about leveling and compensation, overwhelmed by comparison with peers. For people who had the similar struggles but managed to overcome, what worked for you?

Career is a made-up game, but man, being homeless and hungry sure does suck, eh?

Exactly, that’s why I feel pity for the people who destroy their lives to get paid extra 5% and having a pizza party with good boy remarks, and of course making someone else wealthier too. It’s not a flex to sleep in a tent at work, while neglecting your health, family, friends, maybe kids, this “grind” culture is pushed by corporations for obvious reasons.

I could care less about your prestige. Most people care about the money that comes higher up the ladder and more importantly for me, the autonomy.

Yes I’m well aware that a “senior developer” in enterprise dev probably makes less than a new grad at BigTech.

>Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase.

not sure what you are getting at. Football is a made up game. People who play it well earn fame and fortune. yeah, don't beat yourself up for not being able to play it well, but don't pretend there is nothing there.

The purpose of a system is what it does. If the org truly cared about under-leveled employees, it would get fixed rapidly.

But they don’t.

I’ve seen enough people glossed over repeatedly and then when enough people leave and the org is in a less leveraged position, then the promos are no longer an issue. Such BS.

It took me a long time to realize this.

The amount of bits that we want is directly connected to where we are in the game.

There are extremes like "Ryan works his ass off for puny $50k/year" but generally you get what you give.

At first I though it was a metaphorical hippy way of writing about this industry, which would have been par for the course, but it looks like the author really did mean it, he really does think in the ladder and "levelling" bs. All the best to him when it comes to climbing that ladder.

>Career is a made up game.

And yet we know techies love games and structured process. It is a clever way to make them do what you want to. Techies could have so much more power in the job market and yet they give it all up sadly.

right. also the whole job is bs to begin with. i don't know why this article is remotely interesting. it's a google job. that just tells me "i have skills but i don't know how to use them to make money"

See? That's his first problem--he bought into all that corpo bs that is placed there to steal your attention and keep you in their box. If they had liked the guy and he was truly talented, he would have gazzelled right up the org chart. I guess smart people think they're smart about everything?

Hard disagree.

At Google, in most orgs, manager can influence the chance of success significantly:

- Making sure their team works on what the org leads find "impactful"

- Facilitating cross team collaborations, which will lead to good peer reviews for your report

- Helping your report write the promo packet

- Presenting the promo case effectively during the calibration meeting and being prepared to advocate for the report and respond to criticism from other managers at the meeting

- etc.

There are many managers that do very few if any of these things, and it shows.

Yes, there are quotas, but nonetheless the manager plays a big role in whether their report makes the cut.

There is no harm in saying that you are quitting because you do not feel valued / rewarded enough. Hopefully it will effect change in the manager. Of course it's best to keep it polite and not burn any bridges in the process.

Honestly, I’ve worked at everything from small to medium lifestyle companies, startups, Big Enterprise, BigTech, and now Í am a staff consultant at a third party AWS consulting firm across 10 jobs.

In all of those jobs, I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless.

At the jobs where I was responsible for strategy, one of my conditions for employment was I would be reporting directly to a director or CTO.

Author here. My manager and I discussed lengths about the capabilities they do, and it is just like this. It's not his fault at all. It's a game at the end of the day, and it's your choice whether or not you want to keep on playing

All of this is true, though it's definitely worth noting that some managers are better than others at advocating for the promotion of their top performers.

Getting a manger who is too passive, or too checked-out, or just plain doesn't like you, can literally set you back in your career advancement by years.

If only there were some sort of way employees could get together and like... I don't know, use their labo- I mean, work energy as lever- I mean, to convince management to recognize their uni- I mean, get their boss to pay them more.

So exactly what kind of interviews do you suggest that a company do at scale to hire people who will make $300K+ a year? Just talk them?

All L4s are going to have supervision at Google, whether they “need” it or not. And most managers and tech leads aren’t going to just sit around twiddling their thumbs when no one “needs” supervision. Because most of them are bad at their jobs (I can count the number of good managers I’ve seen in 20 years on one hand).

I would go further and say that the entire system is designed to not promote people. It is there as a barrier to promotion and upward potential. The upward moves are saved completely for the in-crowd people. I'm sure at places like Google it is brutally difficult to move up the ladder at all.

Author here. I like statement. I think the biggest thing here is "not meeting this mark isn't a value statement"

I had a lote of doubt about my own ability because I never got promoted. Was I not doing enough, am I not making impact. But you should never measure yourself by this. I left for more opportunities and more impact. I actually only knew my own value after rounds of external interviewing

It's also important to understand the makeup of the existing team, and headcount the team has.

If the team is already full of lvl5's/6's, there's not going to be enough senior eng work for a new one, particularly when headcount is being reduced.

The problems of lack of independence are rarely the kind of thing you decide in a big leveling meeting though: Someone working in near the project has to be providing the feedback regarding the employee needing more supervision. If that's the reason someone fails to uplevel, the manager and the dev lead are failing you, or outright saying something different for your packet than they say to your face.

Author here. I do agree to an extent. But getting datpoints from the other people in the company at those higher positions is important. Asking what can you do to improve and what you can do to make better impact. For my situation, many people did agree that they agreed that I should be up leveled. Some people did say I could work on different projects but they have seen people get up leveled for way less. Some of it is luck as well.

It's also a horrible swe job market out there. Haha

But the biggest is to never feel like it's a disfavor. You are worth it and there is always room to grow, I just didn't know how else to grow at the company anymore

Yeah. I really feel for this guy. I'm at a bigco too and at my yoe, I would really like to be officially "senior".

But if I'm being honest with myself I have a bit of growing to do before I am there. The limiting factor is definitely me. I am improving every year but my peers are excellent.

I'm not "senior", but I'm enjoying my work, I'm making more than I ever have, and I'm improving as an IC.

I can't quite tell from OPs account if he really is the one being wronged in this situation. But I also think places like Google are not for everyone. At least from this post, I think they'll be happy with the new opportunity.

Have you worked at BigCo before? This was 1:1 my experience at a large company and within months they were asking for a +1 leveled boomerang.

You can't take denied promos at face value, honestly.

There's no such thing as a "hands-on leading developer" on a "large-scale refactor" at Google, it'd be like saying you were the hands-on leading mechanic on building the 787 dreamliner.

FWIW, I agree that less ink on a resume is usually a higher signal, and I also find that indicators for “ownership”, social trust, autonomy, and proxies thereof are more valuable than number go up narratives.

But sometimes people feel like they must play this game to get past the pre-interview loop screen; I’ve interviewed plenty of people with number go up narratives who’ve done exceptionally well. It’s challenging to make hard and fast rules!

You look for impact, not how much it took time. There are people that work a lot, but have no real outcomes. Also this particular type of resume is popular because google has promoted this style

> psychology-breaking torture machine designed to eat youthful enthusiasm and ambition and spit out the dried up shell once the juice has dwindled to an arbitrary low yield.

And it shows through in the product. YouTube’s website is one of the 7 Wonders of UX Feces and they are climbing the ranks at a steady rate.

The difference is that the guy has moderate success, while don’t become the machine is a starving student who bought into Andrew Tate instagram kool-aid bullshit. Money is a hell of a drug once you’ve tasted it.

I am also a renegade it seems. I just couldn’t institutionalize myself like that.

> That bubble is not the world

Hence the author's "In the software engineering world".

Nothing in author's write-up led me to think he doesn't understand that.

https://foreignlegion.info/ranks/

I must say, life is a lot easier as a software engineer outside of Big Tech. It seems like a bit of a pressure cooker to me.

There's a third way. Think about maximizing salary to effort ratio instead of total salary. It might be the case that lower position has better ratio. Quiet quitting where people do bare minimum not to get fired is essentially this theory put into practice. You want to avoid a situation where you're rich but too stressed out to do anything with that money.

I think this pattern of "under promotion" is probably common is all highly competitive industries with large wealth corps. Think: Investment banking ("high finance"), oil & gas, big tech, law firms, consulting, etc. When I think about the sheer number of insanely talented people trying to get in, it conjures the World War Z image of zombies trying to get over the walls. With some perspective in my industry, I constantly remind myself: There are many, many more people outside my office that can do my job -- probably better than me. I need to constantly remind my employer why I am good. (Yes, it is exhausting.)

My new job title says "senior". It means nothing within the company except a 5% pay bracket or something, but I don't have to tell the next company that. I understand this is the mechanism by which titles result in money.

I can’t wrap my mind around those goals, because (IMHO) the number one thing that would improve viewership is entirety outside of YouTube’s hand: content quality. So the author can only ever move needles that are thrice removed (i.e.: improving backend tools -> creators have more time -> creators create better content) or are statistical coincidences (we made the buttons round -> viewership went up 0.2%).

Set up jellyfin and tube archivist - I can't stand buffering

> First, searching for videos sucks. Yes, the first few results can be useful, then more and more crap shows up.

Heh, my solution to this is to use DuckDuckGo's Video search tab.

I’m a YouTube premium subscriber. Just yesterday I found myself opening a private window to watch a video with ads, rather than letting the algorithm know I was watching the video on my account. Even if I remove the video from my watch history, YouTube can’t help itself. You make a great point on stale content and the overall enshittification is becoming intolerable.

Author here. I do want to mention that I don't exactly know the situation my manager was in, but he definitely did not make me feel dispensible personally. He and I had long conversations about life and work and our own lives and how the company will continue.

Some manager may seem this way, but my manager (and the other direct managers I had I YouTube) felt the most human and caring people I have met. They had goals to meet, but I also felt they really cared for me (and their other reports). So I really thank them for that.

You do live in a different, underprivileged world. Many Google engineers have never not heard back from a job app.

I will never understand people who refuse to work at a big company yet complain about money of all things. For reference my last job at Google paid $450k+. It seems like it would behoove you to enter the other world.

I've been at three FAANGs now and my experience has been that nobody really cares about your level for day-to-day work. The only times it has ever come up for me is when a) I was part of assembling a new team and we needed a mix of juniors and seniors or b) when some dangerous action like deploying during a holiday code freeze needed approval from an L9+ by policy, so you had to go find that person and justify it to them.

Now, your compensation is based entirely on your level, which obviously makes it matter a great deal, but my experience hasn't been that there are mind games around it.

>Am I that much of an outlier that I need to get with the program?

No! You’re right where you need to be (just not where you want). Many of us have had a ridiculously difficult year.

You’re not alone.

> this job search is the hardest I have faced in over 30 years. Just talking to a human is almost impossible.

My advice: Don't apply on platforms that are filled with spam. I think the best choice I've made for work is posting on Hacker News that I'm looking for work rather than bothering with job sites like LinkedIn. Both times I've done this, this last time even after being laid off, I had a new position within the month. I've never even gotten replies on any other platform: not on LinkedIn, not on Indeed, not on Upwork... but commenting on Hacker News has gotten me a job in relatively short order, every time.

My personal hypothesis is that employers look here to find interesting people... or at least that's how I'd go about it. Both companies I've joined from HN have been filled with obviously autistic people.

Reality is that different resources have different impacts on an eng. org. Some individuals are eng. orgs onto themselves and can own a whole stack (breadth). Some are very specialized in areas that require deep expertise or experience (depth). Some are good engineers, but lack both breadth and depth of knowledge. Leveling let's you delineate comp bands accordingly.

The levels are a real thing, but "navigating the NDA minefield" is not, it's just something Googler's say to make themselves feel more special

Author here. I do feel incredibly luck in my position. This is a very specific perspective that I have, and I'm sorry that I may have seemed too entitled in this post. My whole goal was to point out to value yourself and don't let the company define you.

Leveling: it is kinda dystopian, but it's easier to define a ladder because it is something someone can work towards (like a skill tree). There are pros and cons, easily definable but dehumanizing. But it's something common in a lot of mid to large size tech companies.

I did leave this year, and that was after two and a half years of trying. It's a lot of trail and error. I did 7 in person interviews. Each session was 2-4 interviews each. And other than the first 3, I felt really confident in each one. But none but the last one I actually got a callback from. And countless other interviews before that that were online or not in-person. It's rough out there.

And NDA at YouTube is something that I was just super careful of. Google lawyers were something I didn't want to deal with later on and I heard some horror stories from other people that left before.

It may not be what is mainstream but this is what happened to me and I thought it might be informational and helpful for people who feel stuck or not as valued. I hope people feel valued at work, at the least.

I hope your search gets better this year! And merry Christmas!

> I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L).

This inevitably happens in any large organization. People just have positions like "Department Head" or "Chief Something-Something" instead of numbers.

If anything, engineering/research organizations are unusual because in "traditional" organizations your growth is basically linked to the number of people you direct. In technical orgs, you can be an individual contributor and be at a higher level than many managers.

Author here. I debated this, but the state of Google and YouTube together and certain things internally led me to just look for external opportunities.

Probably would've been less stressful. Lol.

To be fair, if you're a higher level you're more likely to be tasked with problems that have a wider scope, as opposed to having to actively seek them out and balance them against day to day work.

i would like to push back a bit on this and say, it is worth working hard, but i would argue a lot of programmers get hindered by the illusion that programming is important, or even delivering results. unfortunately in software this is exacerbated by the very real world-wide impact that programming actually does have, but: it will always be subjugated by the most important job...

the most important job, that has ever existed, and that will ever exist, is politics. moving up the career ladder you have to start thinking in terms of people, or maybe even in terms of mammals and mammalian group dynamics, cos thats who youre "programming" now, not computers. and most programmers aren't cut out for that, just as most regular people aren't cut out for programming. its hard to say why, but thats the on-the-ground data i see again and again.

i also would like to push back on the "personal projects" mindset - the sentiment often being "just live in your own little world" (not saying it is here, but this is what it often implies.) if youre going to admit defeat and retreat, be honest about what youre doing. dont dress it up as a 'win'. ceding financial/social/political agency is never a victory, but sometimes a neccesity. quitting a mag7 like google is objectively a step down whichever way you slice it. you can count on two hands the number of companies that have the level of resouces that google does - it might be worth to swallow ones pride and slog it out.

I went through a loop at Meta that was probably 10-11 rounds. I would have done 100. The compensation is truly life changing and the engineering problems were world-class.

I'm sure OP is correct that this is a signal for a bad org - but from the outside looking in you'll do anything.

It really doesn't make much sense. The article was actually insightful on this point, or at least this matches my experience:

> it suggests they operate on a consensus-based model that stifles autonomy

The one place where I experienced a lot of rounds of interviews (at least 8 interviews, I think) was at the Wikimedia Foundation. It's an organization that is very explicitly built on consensus-based decision making. There were many great things about working there and at first it was very different from typical corporate culture. In some ways it was stifling, at least for someone who isn't a savvy politician. By the time I left in 2021, they had fully adopted the same kind of leveling system as discussed here, with all of the same political and structural constraints on advancement.

I did 13 interviews in 2 days at Microsoft Research (in 1998). I did not get the job.

I see that as a manifestation of Buridan's Ass --- when they're very indecisive about it, they will naturally try to measure more.

In a world where clacking keyboard gets you 500k salary.

Re. (1): It can really depend on what they did before and during school. While in school, one could have real internships, real personal projects, open-source contributions, working for the university, contract gigs, etc.

Personal anecdata: I was solo building software projects in highschool that earned income (real product, creating real value, some of which were acquired) and worked on the school district websites. During college I contracted with startups part time while also building projects of my own.

Author here. I worked at internships and smaller contracts in HS and college. But I've been coding since the start of highschool with coding competitions and jobs that helped my neighbors and my grandparents. Even in retrospect, even though they were small or not as full time as what I did now, I would still count them as learning career experience

And I have been hired somewhere else. I was really close just to quit early and go to contract work. But I got really lucky with an offer a few months ago. If someone's feels like they want to quit, definitely investigate the amount of work it will take to be self employed. It's a lot, but understanding your own skills and being able to market that is a great ability to learn!

Re 2), this reminds me of those situations where people are given the opportunity to resign rather than being fired. They get to save face on their next job interview, but it does the next hiring company a disservice. It might be something that comes up later in the hiring process, but nothing that would be identifiable at the start of that process

Google submits your title and salary info to theworknumber, I would advise against this (and lying in general).

Yes, you're out earning most SWEs, certainly almost all in Europe. Congrats. I'd be optimizing for a lack of stress and working on interesting things, but also my personal life to bring progression and accomplishment.

Find a smaller company that has managers that came from a tech background that are still hands-on-keyboard.

They have both the time and experience to help mentor.

> If you're a white or Asian dude, everyone assumes you're good at coding, just by default. You could have graduated yesterday with a degree in law, and people assume you can code

Close tab

Author here. You're telling me! :)

IIRC HN typically removes the "How" from article titles like these, presumably to avoid clickbait titles.

You manage to live a life where if you don't like something, you can just avoid it?

13 interviews suggests he was interviewing for multiple roles within the same company; in which case it's not that shocking. In many places every team runs their own interviews.

Even more so for such a great engineer that in the words of his colleagues is "indispensable for the company".

If you're such a rockstar you can probably get shortened loops in good companies through referrals

Do you also pay 500k?

I thought same and wonder what other platform one can migrate to and have the same kind of audience reach.

Yea I was also looking for this info. But his Linkedin says he is still at Google. So is this some weird cliffhanger now?

Author here. I did! :)

But I was really about to quit with a job lined up. I gave myself to the end of 2025 to get a new job. I had savings enough to hold me off, but it was one of those things where I was ready to even do freelance or contract. Putting more time in searching and portfolios. I'd rather get more time making code that was publicly available on GitHub to show my prowness than just talking about it to people.

And I had an incredible support system from my partner. I wouldn't feel comfortable taking this leap without her. :)

You’re thinking about the “Professional Engineer” title or some variant thereof.

You’ll be happy to hear that anyone can call themselves an engineer, even in Oregon, as a Federal Court correctly decided in a first amendment case brought by Mats Järlström.

https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...

You’re welcome.

Strange hill.

Police is a protected title but anyone can be a thought police. One can be a spin doctor without any academic acumen. Notice how when qualified, the words take on a broader and sometimes illustrative meaning than when used in isolation. Context matters.

Now do every other common term in software engineering.

Thank you for saying this. I found it to be heavily assisted by LLM too and commented as well. I ended up receiving too many downvotes though.

Some version of this comment shows up in just about every HN comment thread on a blog post. It must be LLM-generated.

It does look LLM-assisted, but I'm fairly sure the experiences shared are genuine.

If paragraph breaks are a sign of LLM slop now, then I’m in trouble. The ones in my blog posts are rarely longer than 2 sentences and they are all handcrafted.

I have a hard time staying focused when reading long paragraphs and that includes rereading my own while I write them.

Unfortunately you missed the cherry-on-the-top AI generated image of an engineer and her manager mourning the end together.

Author here. At the new job and yes, context switching has helped me a lot! Lol