It’s odd to me that someone who reached E9 at Meta seems so unaware of the capriciousness and political aspect of promotions at high levels. These are coveted and extremely rare roles that many talented and ambitious people are earnestly working towards and most will never achieve just by the numbers. I see nothing wrong with ambition but to measure your career by level is a reductive perspective that can undermine the specific accomplishments and relationships you have built.

This obsession with levels is something I see with many junior engineers who have gone through school chasing shibboleths of success. Stanford, MIT, always chasing the well-defined carrot. But often failing to understand there’s a pretty low ceiling to success on the well trod path. Real value comes from solving novel and ambiguous problems without anyone telling you how to do it. You have to realize those levels are meant to capture something about how the most effective technical leaders operate, it’s not a roadmap or a checklist for you to cargo cult. The things that matter are the quality of the work you do and the perception thereof by those in power. “Levels” are just secondary HR structure to manage the masses of employees in large corporations, and if you think too much about them you’re taking your eyes off the ball.