> The point is this: you will be very dissatisfied with your career if you expect a promotion every 2 years. Very simple math would say you’re setting yourself up for decades of disappointment.
This kind of self meta-analysis can be amusing to think about sometimes, but I think more often than not it's actually harmful to your own sense of progress or worth. In my opinion the two sides of this coin that are hard to reconcile are: "You shouldn't limit your own ability" and "It's important to be realistic". Comparing yourself to those around you is human nature, but here you're asking us to compare ourselves to what we imagine is the peak of ourselves in order to stay realistic. I guarantee you that the people around you who are actually making forward progress haven't given a single thought to whether or not they've "peaked".
Don't confuse arbitrary career ranking (which varies org to org) with earning potential. I have a relatively low effort remote job with fantastic compensation in a very large company. The responsibility is low, the opportunities to move about are many and often appear. I get job offers all the time and think: Yeah, it's more money, but will it be better conditions? This is the longest I've ever worked at a company (over half decade) and I am always waiting until just after getting my cost of living increase and bonus, before reconsidering.
The thing I'm most curious about from this article is how/why the author was demoted from E9 to E7. A demotion in itself is pretty unusual, but being bumped down 2 levels seems super weird.
E: ok watched an interview the author gave and the answer was very boring. He requested a demotion because he moved from management back to IC.
I think about this plateauing question quite a bit. I'm 44 and around the E6 level. I think it is very challenging for me to progress much further up the ladder. I'm not confident I have the skillset required and trying to develop those (leadership and strategic) skills feels very hard to me. But I don't find that at all disappointing since I'm fairly confident I can continue to progress sideways. Maybe it's naive or arrogant but I think I could probably get close to a similar level again in a different field and eventually that'll be what I try to do.
The same is happening to me. I live in Europe and I'm a staff engineer with almost 40 y/o but I have to be honest and I think I'm not going to be able to grow on the corporate track. Whatever comes next will come from other sources, maybe consulting, maybe teaching, but I don't see an option moving forward, and I'm kind of fine with it.
Measuring oneself as an engineer by the title of the salary band you're in is a disservice.
I remember at Bell Labs they had one title: MTS (Member of Technical Staff). You were an engineer, and that was that. (disclaimer: there were a handful of DMTSes (Distinguished Member of Technical Staff)).
No one said, "I'm an E7" or "I'm a Staff Engineer II". Those statements strike me as distasteful. And begs the question if we're being suckered by Human Resource's gamification of work.
I worked at a company, Pivotal Labs, where everyone's title was "Pivot". It made for an egalitarian workplace. That changed after the acquisition, and we got titles. My proudest moment? Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-hours work I did with Dimtriy to expand our offering to include IPv6.
At my current startup, there are no titles, and I'm grateful for that.
I think this is the first time I disagree with everything said. A properly motivated man can be whatever they want. Astronaut is absolutely within reach, along with anything else, with the exception of POTUS if you weren't born on US soil. Do not conflate your lack of 110% motivation to a cause/goal/solution as lies.
I have often felt a little out of place when I hear how focused on career growth some people are. I was excited to advance the first few years of my career, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I just didn’t have the desire or need to keep trying to climb the career ladder. Once I started making good money working on problems I enjoyed with the level of respect and autonomy I desired, I stopped even thinking about trying to “advance my career”. I would rather do a good job at my current position, and not try to fight for a higher level job I might not even like. What’s the point?
I consider myself lucky that I got to witness this blog post peter out in real life with a parental figure of mine, and thus internalize what sort of career track I’d like to have/work toward.
For me? I’d like to be a CIO someday - and believe I can get there, albeit for a smaller firm where outcomes are more important than politics, which rules out basically all of the Fortune 500. I’m fine if I don’t reach that point, though, as everything outside of work is ultimately more important - relationships, hobbies, enjoying this fleeting existence. Work is a means to an end, and so my skills are means to the end of a better career. I don’t think in terms of salary bands or titles, I look at my career in terms of skills and opportunities.
The traditional career is dead, is my (meandering) point. This article gives some sorely needed wake-up calls that we need to think bigger and more holistically than mere promotion cycles if we want to find our personal success.
It’s odd to me that someone who reached E9 at Meta seems so unaware of the capriciousness and political aspect of promotions at high levels. These are coveted and extremely rare roles that many talented and ambitious people are earnestly working towards and most will never achieve just by the numbers. I see nothing wrong with ambition but to measure your career by level is a reductive perspective that can undermine the specific accomplishments and relationships you have built.
This obsession with levels is something I see with many junior engineers who have gone through school chasing shibboleths of success. Stanford, MIT, always chasing the well-defined carrot. But often failing to understand there’s a pretty low ceiling to success on the well trod path. Real value comes from solving novel and ambiguous problems without anyone telling you how to do it. You have to realize those levels are meant to capture something about how the most effective technical leaders operate, it’s not a roadmap or a checklist for you to cargo cult. The things that matter are the quality of the work you do and the perception thereof by those in power. “Levels” are just secondary HR structure to manage the masses of employees in large corporations, and if you think too much about them you’re taking your eyes off the ball.
15 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] threadOriginal title: "Waxing Asymptotic in Career Velocity"
Recommended Reading: [0]
[0] https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/10/15/pathe...
E: ok watched an interview the author gave and the answer was very boring. He requested a demotion because he moved from management back to IC.
I remember at Bell Labs they had one title: MTS (Member of Technical Staff). You were an engineer, and that was that. (disclaimer: there were a handful of DMTSes (Distinguished Member of Technical Staff)).
No one said, "I'm an E7" or "I'm a Staff Engineer II". Those statements strike me as distasteful. And begs the question if we're being suckered by Human Resource's gamification of work.
I worked at a company, Pivotal Labs, where everyone's title was "Pivot". It made for an egalitarian workplace. That changed after the acquisition, and we got titles. My proudest moment? Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-hours work I did with Dimtriy to expand our offering to include IPv6.
At my current startup, there are no titles, and I'm grateful for that.
For me? I’d like to be a CIO someday - and believe I can get there, albeit for a smaller firm where outcomes are more important than politics, which rules out basically all of the Fortune 500. I’m fine if I don’t reach that point, though, as everything outside of work is ultimately more important - relationships, hobbies, enjoying this fleeting existence. Work is a means to an end, and so my skills are means to the end of a better career. I don’t think in terms of salary bands or titles, I look at my career in terms of skills and opportunities.
The traditional career is dead, is my (meandering) point. This article gives some sorely needed wake-up calls that we need to think bigger and more holistically than mere promotion cycles if we want to find our personal success.
This obsession with levels is something I see with many junior engineers who have gone through school chasing shibboleths of success. Stanford, MIT, always chasing the well-defined carrot. But often failing to understand there’s a pretty low ceiling to success on the well trod path. Real value comes from solving novel and ambiguous problems without anyone telling you how to do it. You have to realize those levels are meant to capture something about how the most effective technical leaders operate, it’s not a roadmap or a checklist for you to cargo cult. The things that matter are the quality of the work you do and the perception thereof by those in power. “Levels” are just secondary HR structure to manage the masses of employees in large corporations, and if you think too much about them you’re taking your eyes off the ball.