The Software Engineering Ladder Explained

different companies have different leveling scales some start at l3 and go all the way to l8 some start at 59 and go all the way to 70. even if the numbers differ the responsibilities that each level company to company are the same and what's needed for promotion to level up is similar too our wonderful sponsor for today's video also allows you to level up your website that is thank you squarespace we'll get to them in a bit because many companies follow google's leveling standard that's also what we'll be using as reference and just a note we're going to be discussing the career leveling paths for individual contributors i'll talk about the management route in a different video let's get into it l2 if you're an intern this is your level and many companies apprenticeships are also this level meaning you're coming from a non-traditional background or transitioning from a non-tech role to a software engineering role and in six months to a year you'll be a full-time l3 at this level your expectations are basically the exact same as in l3s but for a shorter period of time usually internships last anywhere from three months to six months so the company is evaluating you as a new l3 working on a specific feature for a specific time frame but more than technical skills your soft skills are really important here are you someone the company wants to hire back full time are you curious and eager to learn do you take feedback well are you a good teammate an internship is basically a prolonged practical interview i wouldn't say the company is looking for signals that you're competent rather they're looking for red flags are you rude do you randomly just skip work do you argue and given feedback just be a sponge and absorb everything say yes more than you say no just be a good human being and you'll be good to go l3 if you've just graduated college or boot camp you've worked in industry for less than a year or you have no technical industry experience this is your level software engineer one you're a junior engineer and you have feature level impact this means you're responsible for a tiny chunk of a project let's say your team is building an authentication server there are a lot of moving parts but you've been specifically tasked with writing up the encryption logic and remember an intern might have worked on the encryption logic if it was self-contained and well scoped for three months work see how an l2 is basically an l3 for a shorter period of time now your mentor or senior engineer has specked out the work architecturally and mentioned some resources you might want to check out he or she might have even broken down the various things you'll have to do to write the encryption module these tasks might live in a sauna or jira or some other project management tool the tech lead has estimated how much time this work should take and hands off all the information to you you're now responsible for coding up the entire feature you're expected to write clean well-tested code you'll make prs and accept feedback and suggestions you might not know how to write the best industry standard code but you're eager to learn and take feedback well over the course of one to two years you'll get better and better at coding the team will trust you as someone who can go out and build entire features they'll hold your hand less and less now depending on the size of the company maybe you'll have to think of more than just your feature you'll have to think about the architecture and monitoring and how what your writing fits in with what your team or the rest of the company is building usually the bigger the company the more the handholding and resources available to you the smaller the company like a startup and the more you'll have to be scrappy and just figure it out but that's the fun of it that's why you join to learn and grow in this role you're mainly writing code companies expect you to move to the next level in about two years l4 if you're anywhere from 1.5 to 5 years in industry you might be an l4 software engineer too you're not a senior engineer yet but you're also not as junior anymore the company trusts that you can code well so they've given you more responsibility now you're one step above the feature you have project level impact rather than responsible for coding up a feature you're leading the entire project you're in charge of making sure the authentication server is complete well tested and delivered on time this might mean you're overseeing the l3 working on the encryption logic and the l2 working on the database layer and the other l3 working on the api contract the success of the entire project is on you are there monitors are there dashboards how will you determine the launch of success did you do a bug bash did you update the documentation did you talk to the support team you're like the tech lead for a specific project in this role you're still writing code but you're also reading and reviewing other people's 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purchase of a website or domain l5 after anywhere from three to seven years in industry you might be an l5 senior software engineer this is usually a terminal role which means you can stay at this level for the rest of your career if you want there's no expectation to keep leveling up unless you want to you now have team level impact for example let's say the authentication server is owned by the payments infrastructure team but the team has other projects too like the ledger and the transaction fee engine and many more as a senior software engineer you're like the tech lead of the entire team not just a project you think about how the architecture specific projects work together do they make sense do they fit in with what the rest of the organization or the company are building you're also a technical expert which means you're sent to work on the team's highest priority items you make sure the team as a whole achieves technical excellence and growth and you're a subject matter expert you're the person people hit up to understand a specific part of the code base you have depth of knowledge in addition to understanding the breadth of the technical systems you also have some insight into the business side you interface with product managers to determine what the team works on and how the team can best support company level okrs in a technical capacity in this role you're writing much less code now you're reading and reviewing a lot of code and spending time in meetings you're also coaching junior engineers and spearheading initiatives like tech deck cleanup broad refactors and cultural programs the promotion path is much more hazy now you've already proved technical competence so to get promoted you have to somehow increase the company's bottom line this comes from a combination of luck timing and performance l6 after anywhere from seven to ten years in industry you might be an l6 staff software engineer you now have org level impact and what i mean by this is the authentication server might be owned by the payments infrastructure team but payments infrastructure is just one of many teams in the financial products org you might also have payments and subscriptions you're like the technical expert of the entire org as a staff software engineer you're thinking more than just features projects and teams you're thinking about the future of the entire org what tool should the org invest in what tech that cleanup would make the org more efficient how are the teams intertwined technically is there friction what are the improvements you're thinking about new product lines and huge technical initiatives things like rewriting your testing framework or your graphql structure or rethinking your entire api schema and just like an l5 is working on a team's top most priorities and l6 is dispatched to the org's highest pressing items and you're working on non-technical initiatives like rethinking the interview experience or spitting up a new blog or speaking at conferences you're a technical leader you're responsible for how the org is represented to the rest of the company in this role you're writing almost no code you're reading and reviewing code and you're in a lot of meetings but more than that you're spending a lot of time thinking and turning out tech specs you're also coaching engineers and thinking about how to get those around you promoted again the promotion path is even hazier now a lot of emphasis is placed on mentorship along with business dollar impact l7 after anywhere from 8 to 13 years in industry you might be an l7 senior staff software engineer lots of s's you now have company level impact you're one of the highest technical people at a company for all it's worth you're basically an executive the c-suite and the vp of engineering lean on you for your technical expertise you're thinking of technical direction at a company level you spend your time across orgs maybe three months in financial products then three months in shopper and then three months in the merchant work you help the company come up with okrs and think of entire systems not just a table or a database but the entire aws postgres infrastructure you think about other databases and caches and latency you think about the entire company architecture you can usually count the number of l7s that accompany on one maybe two hands in this role you no longer write code you're in a lot of meetings and much like in l6 you're reading and reviewing a lot of code sometimes you might be leading your own team to complete a project that you're interested in you might be in charge of the special projects initiatives that accompany at this level you have a lot of freedom to do as you please as long as you're helping the company in some way no one will stop you getting promoted is extremely difficult you basically have to build out an entire product line that becomes successful or you have to know the right people or you just have to stay at a company for an absurdly long time l8 and beyond there's not much to say here titles don't even matter anymore you're probably a principal software engineer or a technical fellow you can usually count the l8s at a company on one hand these are like the earliest engineers at google think jeff dean or sanjay gamawad you're a legend you don't just have company level impact you have industry level impact you create new technical areas you innovate and people listen newest organizations write articles about you when apple comes out with some crazy machine learning model your name is front and center and when you leave because of unfriendly remote policies everyone notices you're probably a keynote speaker at a prestigious conference you're getting paid more than you would ever imagine and you're having so much fun you say you want to do something and the company goes out of its way to make it happen you're irreplaceable you've realized promotions are virtually meaningless you've accomplished more than 99.99 of software engineers ever will and if you do get promoted the company will invent new levels just for you you work because you want to not because you have to you're having so much fun i'm just in l4 and i have a long way to go but hopefully this guide demystifies the leveling process used at tech companies and gives you a solid understanding of what to expect every step of the way it's a marathon not a sprint focus on learning and growing and the promotions will naturally follow i wish you nothing but the best that's all i have until next time cheers [Music]

Channel: Namanh Kapur

Views: 120,018

Keywords: software engineer, remote, startup, programming, software engineering, new grad software engineer, fintech, computer science, big tech, day in the life of a software engineer, nicholas t, pirate king, joma, mayuko, frying pan, software developer, faang, bolt, recruiting, internships, python, code, interviews, levels, career, ladder, intern, staff software engineer, senior software engineer, software engineering levels explained, software engineer salary, software engineer day in life, fullstack

Id: mea5HZHekpw

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022