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If your not incompetent, its pretty much guaranteed you will reach sr in 5-8 years. It's the levels after sr that are the hard part.

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L4 to L5 is no cakewalk. you have to be rock solid in the core SWE disciplines and have excellent communication, organization skills, and very good leadership skills too. looking at the stats, promoted as a % of total for L4 to L5 just makes it into the double digits and only a little over a quarter of all SWEs are L5.

the SWE ladder requires/expects for an L3 to get to L4 by makes no such requirement to ever get to L5.

That is why you don't play the promo game and get promoted via interviews at other companies. When you reach staff, that is usually when you have to practically start playing promo games. Not everywhere is google with their slow promo processes.

Also career and personal skill wise, it's good to see how other companies work. Pay is in many ways determined by your negotiation skills, and that is empowered by creating better BATNAs via interview skill.

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