Comment by novok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by novok | Hacker News Reader

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I've worked at FANGMULA for many years, I'm an immigrant, I've recently become a hiring manager and hired people on my team weeks ago, I've done hundreds of interviews within my bigtech company, I barely finished my computer science degree from a mid-tier university (so I'm not that exceptional) and on top of that I've done the research with how promo systems work at these companies. I know what the current comp packages are for jr engineers too. When I do say jr eng, I do mean the L4 level, not the straight out of college no work experience L3 level. L5 is the terminal sr engineer level.

This friend that I'm giving an example of is real, and I feel like he has the potential to get into FANGMULA with my mentorship and then get promoted within that time frame. It's definitely all real and the post was kind of my own internal speech to get him to come over.

Go look at https://levels.fyi , and look at the jumps in comp between bands. Yes some companies may pay +/- %10 more, but it is what it is. Also the market has gone up, yet again, so even levels is a bit behind.

People thinking what I'm saying is BS is just a bunch of cope. You don't have to be a super genius with the grit of god to get into these companies.

I don't care about levels.fyi. I work at one of the companies you've mentioned. You're lying if you're saying that getting 50% increase is the norm or that the average promotion time is 2 years.

Perhaps, for example, an E3 at Meta can go to E4 in 2 years, but an E3 isn't making 300K total comp at Meta in California to begin with, nor would they go to 500K after promotion.

If you're a hiring manager then I don't need to explain to you that a 50% increase even with the highest ratings isn't some normal thing that happens.

Maybe you've seen it happen, I believe you. My point is that it's not the norm and you should stop saying it like it is.

L4 is around $300k, L5 is around $500k 500/300 = 1.6. At many of these companies, if you haven't gotten to the next step in about 2 years until L5, you start becoming a target and managed out, and I know multiple former coworkers who have been promoted from L4 -> L5 within a year or two, especially if you have a mentor or actively research on how to get yourself get promoted vs. just being passive about it.

Again, your own levels.fyi link does not support these numbers as being the norm. I do not deny that it can happen. I'm saying that you're misleading people by presenting them as some sort of normal thing.

Google L4 > L5 (270 -> 360)

Meta E4 > E5 (275 -> 390)

Microsoft SDE II -> Principal SDE (182 -> 308K; I intentionally skipped a level just to show the ridiculousness).

Amazon SDE II -> SDE III (240K -> 330K)

Apple ICT3 -> ITC4 (222K -> 333K)

And these are midlevel to senior and these are from the site you linked. If you do junior to midlevel your numbers, on average, make even less sense.

You are right, my friend, the guy that is replying your comments is taking the lower bound of the L4 and comparing with the upper bound of L5. Lol. How it works , at least at Google (and is worst at Amazon), is when you get promoted from Ln to Ln+1 , your salary increases just it surpasses the lower bound of the level you were promoted to. I know for a fact of people at Google, L4 that negotiated better TC than what my L5 has. So, but if my L5 jumps ship to Facebook, then he will be easily get a 30% increase, at least.

Even if I 100% believe your example, an example alone doesn't prove the point you're trying to make.

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