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Comment by mromanuk | Hacker News Reader

“Allow me to introduce you to this awesome bureaucracy we created and designed by committee, all expressed as a PR approved by top execs.”

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Rofl. The more time I spend in this industry, the more I have come to accept that it is filled with roles without any meaningful output.

People in these roles end up creating bureaucracy (but only for others) as a way to justify their job.

I also got the feeling there was some role justification going on here, with the level of detail employed (and what seems at first glance to be relatively arbitrary levels of skill differentiation). It reminded me a little of the SFIA Framework in that regard.

This is a pretty normal framework they must've inherited from somewhere else. It's almost exactly the same as at least two other companies.

Normal doesn't mean sensible though. Having worked at a company that does this, there are high performing IC2s that I'd trade for IC4s (to use comparable "levels" here); so I'm not sure what this does other than declarative justification (across tech).

This is kind of the main problem. You should't have employees at IC2 if they are IC4 worthy. They will just try to find another job, instead of waiting 5 years before reaching a level of someone who is performing same or worse.

Well, it's just a pay band. The explanations are post-hoc, because you can't get promoted by following them or anything. You are supposed to live up to them at performance review time, and how that works is different at different companies.

You are really going to like the book "bulshit jobs"

What jobs should I look for to avoid this stuff?

You'd bet the person who wrote this will use this it in their performance review as a part of the "leadership" aspect. Might be promoted as well.

It's very typical to have a blog-driven performance review.

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