I am an L5-equivalent (not FAANG, not Msft) and I have only one L6 in my team. I work closely with this person and they are having a lot of positive impact and I am also learning a lot from them. However, I have noticed that they are delegating a lot of work and then also taking at least half of the cred for it. From the outside, it looks like this person is doing extreme amount of work because they have their name attached to everything, but behind the scenes they are delegating work to someone like me with tasks as vague as "solve this ambiguous thing X", and then I spend a lot of hard work navigating and coming up with new ideas on how to solve X. Sometimes I don't even solve X but propose a completely different route, or I come up with my own ideas and might or might not get some feedback from the L6, but all of this hard work is then attached to them as well, and I don't get any visibility on how much of the work is coming from me. Now, what I am wondering; am I being played here or is this just the way L6s operates and this is perfectly fine? If not, any advice on what I can do? I don't want to burn bridges with this person since they are still helping me grow a lot. TC: 170k GBP YoE: 8
you are being played..the senior engineers ive worked with havent stolen my credit..only L5s have
When you say you’re L5 is that Amzn L5 or Google L5?
I would rate myself as a low Google L5 and the other person is a typical Google/Meta L6 (cross team and org level impact, sets direction and vision, big influence on culture at team level etc).
Yes you are played
I was an L6 sde at Amazon. My name was put on a lot of projects, even ones where I contributed 0 lines of code, but I put together the technical design, delegated to a team, and was ultimately accountable for the success of the projects. I was very clear about who actually wrote the code, but as my old mentor said: you get credit because you're accountable for it. So yeah, I did my best to ensure high level of engineering excellence and worked with the L5s and L4s to make sure everything fit perfectly - that is a whole other skill set which is unknown until you have to do it.
This is perfectly fine with me. The thing that is concerning to me is that from the outside, it seems as if we are contributing equally to the code and navigating technical ambiguties when in fact I am doing close to 100% of this. I don't want to belittle the importance of setting direction and also being accountable but these are things that this person already get all of the credit for, so I feel like I'm in a situation where the credit is shared for my work but the credit is not shared when the tables are flipped.
If you are writing all the code, git history is proof. So you have the proof to show what you have done. From what I can tell, L6 are expected to delegate. It's part of their work requirements. They get the harder details done like technical design, partner team buy-in, time commitment from others, coordinating integration and timelines. Basically, if any of these people are not delivering, their head is on the line. A good way to judge would be, Are they letting you do demos Talk or head smaller meetings about the project to others without their presence. Do they mention you in presentations they do. Make sure your manager is aware of your work. Talk about it a little bit in your 1-1 to judge how much they understand your impact is.
Document everything you do in confluence and bring it up at your year end review justifying why you deserve a raise and eventually a promotion. This L6 may be referenced. Talk to them. Tell them you are going to reference this as contributions you've done. They may be asked about your quality of work either way. Keeping these relationships cordial is viral for career growth
L6 is supposed to delegate. Make sure your manager clearly knows the work you’re doing.
That's the way L6+ operates. Just make sure that he gives a credit to you as well as the one who worked on the project.
You are not played, you are being paid is what l6+ will say
Lmao you want the mentorship but don't want to share any credit for the work