Highest TC over 4 years out, factoring growth?
There's an extensive "FAANG is the best" for comp here, but I find that hard to believe that is still true (was maybe 10 years ago) for high-trajectory/fast growing engineers. e.g. At my prior company, there were multiple people able to grow from a Google L4 equivalent (per levels.fyi) to L7 in under 2 years (doubling their salary) - that's basically impossible at say Google due to a) it being very hard to find high impact work (there's more people than problems..), b) slow growth rates that make it hard to leverage yourself and rapidly delegate work to more junior engineers and c) being very conservative with promotions. My gut is that hypergrowth-growth, pre-IPO companies (generally, but not necessary unicorns) are where this number maxes out. Where I'm not sure is what companies today are the optimal for maximizing growth. Anyone have thoughts?
Well I don't think it makes sense that someone can become L7 from L4 in 2 years in terms of technical capability.
Generally not; it's more of an issue when L4 was a heavy down-level because of a lack of company experience (rather than raw technical chops). You'll see this more with PhDs or start-up founders.
It simply means L7 in your prior company is entry level in G.
Which company is that?
Just give you a data point, when I was in Google, someone was senior manager at IBM, and he is offered L5 only.
If Snapchat becomes profitable and continues to innovate, stock price could have nice growth in the next 4 years. RSU packages are top of market generally. Refreshers can be also be very nice for top performers. I’m not sure where it ranks in terms of leveling progression at the senior level, but I’ve heard a lot of complaints about promo process.
Probably Lyft, they had some massive misleveling problems apparently, promoting kids way above the appropriate pay grade too quickly. They were trying to figure out how to resolve this without tanking multiple orgs.
OP: if you believe in markets, and if you set aside the differences in prestige, then your insta-L7 friends are actually making the same as FANG L5 (or whatever the equivalent would be for equally skilled people) - AFTER you adjust the numbers for risk/illiquidity and take the expected value. People who came out on the good side of the risk upside/downside and are now liquid only seem like counterexamples because we don't hear about the people with zillions of shares of failed or diluted startups. (Again, if you believe in markets.)
In other words: yes, we FANGers are aware we can get a lot of riskier paper money elsewhere.
Google usually gives L5 to other company's senior manager. Not all L7 equals. L7 in your company may well equals to L4 or L5 in Google.
/endthread
No, it's L7, using levels.fyi bands ($600k TC)