It's not really relevant to the overall point and I know it's fuzzy estimates anyways but there's a mixup in stocks and flows. linked Quora source says:
>L6 is staff engineer. Only about 15% of Google engineers are at this level or higher
And the post:
>People who make it to Staff engineer at Google per year: 1,875
I'm not sure about google but at Amazon there's definitely not that many people making it to principal/staff every year.
No way that 1,875 people are promoted to L6 every year.
I have no idea how he gets from "15% of google engineers are at this level or higher" to 1875 people, and then on to that many being promoted.
I might believe that 1875 is the total number of engineers at L6 or above across the company. Seems slightly low, but not impossible. But I guarantee nowhere near that many are getting promoted every year.
Also, making L6 is in no way guaranteed. It takes years.
>L6 is staff engineer. Only about 15% of Google engineers are at this level or higher
And the post:
>People who make it to Staff engineer at Google per year: 1,875
I'm not sure about google but at Amazon there's definitely not that many people making it to principal/staff every year.