It’s a pretty comprehensive framework and I think it’s great. It would have been better if it also has a table of salary range for each level in different regions so that companies aren’t misinterpreting these job levels or, at worse, misuse the guide to manipulate their employees.

There are companies which make their employees senior or tech lead but pay $50k and use the same framework as expectation. It cannot be based entirely only on job titles because they are “free” to issue. You can easily mint new titles out of thin air. To back these job levels or titles with real value, their corresponding pays need to be relatable.

If we could print money without backing it with something scarce like gold, guess what will happen? Haven’t we seen some companies where there are so many senior, lead or even principal engineers but yet they getting paid lower than a mid engineer at another company? Job level/title inflation.

On the other hand, at companies that don’t inflate their job levels, they could still be underpaying their “seniors” and “leads” with junior or mid level pay while expecting them to operate along with the guide.