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It's not really relevant to the overall point and I know it's fuzzy estimates anyways but there's a mixup in stocks and flows. linked Quora source says:

>L6 is staff engineer. Only about 15% of Google engineers are at this level or higher

And the post:

>People who make it to Staff engineer at Google per year: 1,875

I'm not sure about google but at Amazon there's definitely not that many people making it to principal/staff every year.

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No way that 1,875 people are promoted to L6 every year.

I have no idea how he gets from "15% of google engineers are at this level or higher" to 1875 people, and then on to that many being promoted.

I might believe that 1875 is the total number of engineers at L6 or above across the company. Seems slightly low, but not impossible. But I guarantee nowhere near that many are getting promoted every year.

Also, making L6 is in no way guaranteed. It takes years.

yeah, the number seems to be overblown.

Also if you compare with how many sports players there're vs >=L6 engineers you'll get a better comparison

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