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Comment by harles | Hacker News Reader

Well, those are the expectations. Low ratings don’t mean being managed out in typical years, but that’s not where we find ourselves. I don’t think the system is perfect, but it is fair. An L5 that missed their expectations is laid off the same as an L9 - there’s no thought of “but they would’ve hit expectations as an L7” just as an L5 doesn’t get credit for being a high performing L3.

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Yeah, from what I can surmise, I wouldn't be surprised if an L9 was earning salary equivalent to a top pro athlete (easily 7 figures). You better be writing some historic, market bending shit to get paid like that. Figure 10 years of a $2M salary, you've paid for everything money can buy, in cash, up to the private jet level.

> Figure 10 years of a $2M salary, you've paid for everything money can buy, in cash, up to the private jet level.

God, no. You're not even close to the limits of what money can buy. You may not even have enough money to be able to buy a private jet; it depends on the jet. You certainly haven't earned enough money that it would make any sense for you to buy a jet.

His point stands regardless

Yeah definitely no private jet. Maybe a little Cessna.

Assume that's $1m/year after taxes. With 3 kids in college and a nice house and a nice vacation a year, you're surely still comfortable but you're not buying a plane.

That's not really how it works. L6+ is considered a "terminal" level. As long as you aren't underperforming it's perfectly fine to stay at that level indefinitely. It's not an "up or out" position like L5 and down.

They keep raising it every time I hear about it…it used to be L4, now people say it’s L5/senior. And you’re saying it’s L6? I can’t keep up with this :/

I don't know where jedberg pulled that from, but I seriously doubt that the L6-equivalent is the terminal level at any FAANG. At Google it definitely used to be L5, but apparently was dropped to L4 a few years ago

> It's not an "up or out" position like L5 and down.

As an outsider to this all FAANG thing that feels wrong to me, it has always felt so.

What happens, or at least what I think happens because of this strategy, is that lots of institutional knowledge gets lots pretty fast and in an irremediable way, because many of those L4s and L5s that ended up not making it to L6, and so got the boot, knew of some parts of the "system" that no-one else did.

Unless a FAANG company only relies on L6s and higher to get a hold over that institutional knowledge over the long term, which I pretty much doubt it can happen.

I don’t think L4 / L5 get booted that often, when was the last time FAANGS had mass layoffs ?

the more realistic scenario is attrition, going to another place for L+1 comp

As the median tenure at silly high wage places like Google is one year I am pretty sure most that quit are "managed out" with an implied threat of being fired.

At Google, this is wrong.

L4 is terminal. There is no requirement to ever be promoted to L5 (though there is some language about continued expansion of skills at L4). Most engineers will never make L6 in their entire career at Google and nobody is concerned about people chilling at lower levels.

If it were my company doing layoffs, I’d hold on tight to the best and most senior engineers and lay off the entry level ones if I had to. Knowing what you have to do and why is much more important than the details of how you get there

It's a case by case basis and thinking you can apply a general rule across the organisation is completely misguided. I don't want to rehash the same arguments so just read the rest of the comments.

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