Even startup employees benefit from a visible promotion path. Remember, they had hundreds of employees. Not just a couple people in a small office somewhere.
Most likely, the levels corresponded to pay bands and helped determine where people fit into the seniority hierarchy (such as determining who receives sensitive daily information updates)
At the Fast stage, the only viable promotion path is ship work that impacts the business or close deals that bring in revenue. The promotion levels game is something you play in larger organizations to engineer a rat race for people because it turns out they really like that. But no, a startup does not benefit from hierarchy quite the opposite in fact. That crap is all overhead it’s necessary as you grow but actually detrimental to your success.
Yes, you need like Engineer and Senior Engineer and then when you have some rock stars who actually move the business forward they are your principles and/or future directors.
To try to build this all up ahead of time, show me where it's ever worked? When Google was that size they were playing with having no managers at all.
>> * Fast hired engineers, engineering managers, product managers, and executives directly from Big Tech. Many of the software engineers joined from Meta, Google, Uber, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and other well-known companies. Many joining had competing offers both from Big Tech and other high-growth startups.