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Comment by titanomachy | Hacker News Reader

He mentioned he has 20+ years of experience, so I think he is in fact comparing to VP-level roles. Most people I’ve met at faang who are over 40 are in fact seniorstaff+ or director+, so it’s not as insane as it seems on first blush, although I think to reach his numbers you’d have to factor in stock appreciation as well.

I also think far more people leave faang altogether than reach VP level.

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I think you’re right, I see that his resume links to Distinguished Engineer roles at Google / Amazon. Which … I don’t know. At my FAANG-adjacent company, there have only ever been _low_ single-digit number of ICs at that level. We’re talking 0.1-0.3% of all engineers. And they had insane track records.

And FWIW I think that there’s at least an order of magnitude more “happy L5s” older than 40 at FAANGs than senior staff+

> I think that there’s at least an order of magnitude more “happy L5s” older than 40 at FAANGs

This doesn't match my experience. Can you say which FAANGs?

I think in a healthy company it should be true, but my org at Google (~50 engineers) had one 40+ L5. He told me he was frustrated after repeatedly being passed for L6 promo, and he retired at 45.

The L7+ people (my managers and directors, as well as the org staff+ engineers) were all over 40.

I didn't interact much with principal/distinguished engineers, but I think even L7 is pushing 7 figures nowadays.

Ha! I was thinking of Google specifically. I imagine it varies significantly then. Maybe 40+ L5 is not an OOM more common than 7, but L5 + L6 I think safely is. Agreed on L7 pay, very doable.

Yeah I knew a decent number of people happily parked at L6 for sure.

I don't the claims he's held anything like Distinguished Engineer roles at Google or Amazon: https://matt.sh/files/a-resume/resume.html.

Click the links for “Available” and “Employment” at the bottom — they link to what I assume are the roles he’s looking for

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