Career paths for software engineers at large tech companies
Tactics for getting promoted to Levels 5, 6, and 7, and advice on when to make your move into management. Former Amazon VP, Ethan Evans, reveals what he saw work during a successful Big Tech career
Across tech, the average tenure of software engineers seems to be rising, not least in Big Tech where it has increased rapidly. With today’s chilly job market having a dampening effect on the number of engineers switching jobs, it’s possible that staying in a role for years will become pretty normal for many in our industry.
So, if you can see yourself at your current workplace for the longer term, it’s sensible to consider the career path options available, and how to get promoted to the next level.
To shed light on these topics and others, I sought out someone who has managed large engineering orgs at a massive company. Ethan Evans is precisely such a person; he was a Vice President of Engineering at Amazon, and has overseen the growth and promotions of more than 1,000 engineers(!) over the course of his career.
Now recently retired from the online retail giant, Ethan can candidly discuss how large companies operate, and which tactics and strategies really work and help colleagues to enjoy thriving careers in big workplaces.
These days, Ethan teaches engineers and engineering managers how to get promoted faster, and runs live courses. He’s also built a 24/7 personalized “AI career coach”, and shares career growth advice in his weekly newsletter, Level Up. His class on fast career growth currently has a 25% discount for the US Thanksgiving holiday, from today through 2 Dec — you can check it out here.
In this issue, we cover:
Good performance as a mid-level engineer. Execute independently and try not to complain too much.
How to get a slam-dunk promotion to Senior. Have big ideas that are also correct, solve problems leadership didn’t know existed, see around corners, and more.
Tactics to get promoted to Senior. Agree a plan with your manager and be realistic about how long it takes.
Getting promoted to Principal Engineer. Standout technical expertise, tackling ambiguous & large-scale problems, and paying attention to the business, are all key.
Should you be a manager? As you grow more senior, there may be opportunities to become a manager. But is it the best path for you?
When to switch to management. Switching early (at L5) or later (L7+) is rare, and is most common at senior level (L6).
Different management levels. How being a manager at L5, L6, and L7 levels differ.
Throughout this article, we use Amazon’s career levels (bolded in the bulletpoint list below) which are a bit different from most places (listed alongside for comparison). Find out more about levels and how they compare at Levels.fyi
L5: mid-level engineer. This is L4 at places like Google, Meta, and Uber
L6: senior. At many companies, this is the L5 level
L7: principal. After the senior level at places like Google is the Staff Engineer level (L6), then the Senior Staff level (L7) and then Principal level (usually L8).
Find out more about being a software engineer at the online retail giant in our deepdive Inside Amazon’s engineering culture.
With that, it’s over to Ethan:
What do the career path choices for a mid-level engineer with between 2 and 6 years’ experience look like from the point of view of a Vice President managing hundreds of engineers? In my career as an Amazon VP, I oversaw the growth and promotion of over 1,000 engineers, and saw some grow to senior engineers, and then even on to the Principal or Staff levels. Some people switch to management quickly, while others do this deeper into their careers.
The “correct” path for you is subjective and depends on your goals and environment. What I will do in this article is give some insights into these paths from a higher perspective, and reveal the choices which leaders make about colleagues and promotions. My goal is to help you choose the right path and navigate it successfully.
First, some information about the shorthand used at Amazon and Google; this can be applied to other companies on the website, levels.fyi. A mid-level engineer (SDE-2), is level 5, or L5, at those companies. The first level for managers is also L5. Senior engineers (SDE-3s) are L6, as are more experienced small group managers. Principal or Staff Engineers are L7, as are Senior Managers (managers of managers, with 25 to 80 people in their teams).
It’s easier and shorter to type “L5”, etc., so I’ll use these terms while going through the “three paths” available to a mid-level engineer (L5) who wants to progress. These are:
Grow as an IC, first to L6, then perhaps to L7 and beyond
Switch to management early, as an L5
Become a senior engineer (L6), then switch to management
1. Good performance as a mid-level engineer. (L5 at Amazon)
When thinking about career paths, we have to begin with what “very good” performance looks like. Until you are seen as a very good L5 engineer, you won’t be thought of as Senior Engineer or manager material. So, from the perspective of the VP level, what makes someone stand out as a good L5 who might be ready for more?
First, independent execution. A good L5 can take a reasonable design and just build it. They can figure out some missing details on their own, and don’t need daily or even weekly guidance. They know their craft and can get the work done, while knowing when to raise problems and ask for help.
Limited complaining. Leaders might tolerate a high-maintenance engineer for a while, but will never consider a habitual complainer as a candidate for progression. It’s fine to push back on ideas, to ask questions, and to disagree. However, when a decision is made, leaders need people who just go do it – even when they think there’s a better way. Similarly, all jobs have unpleasant sides; for many engineers, this is the Ops part of DevOps: fixing bugs, migrating services, and being oncall. Leaders are going to be reluctant to promote those who only want the “good” work of new design and development. Why? Because all the work needs to be done!
Before you can move up to L6 or management, it’s necessary to be seen as a valuable, effective member of your team. After all, why would anyone promote someone who doesn’t contribute meaningfully and is hard to work with?
If you’ve been told you can be difficult, but you nonetheless believe your talent gives you a pass on changing your approach – well, it doesn’t. Remember, your Director or VP has hundreds of engineers on their team and also has a quota for “unregretted attrition”. Placing difficult colleagues in that quota works just fine if they are pains to work with. Note from Gergely: we cover more on Amazon’s unregretted attrition target and its infamous “PIP culture” in Inside Amazon’s engineering culture.
2. Traits for a slam-dunk promotion to Senior (L6 at Amazon)
Once you are a solid L5, what are the key factors that make a VP see you as an L6 in waiting?
Even if there are a couple of layers between you and your VP, good executives know their top engineers. I was rarely involved in selecting L5s for potential promotion once I became a VP, but was almost always part of the approval process and was in the room when promotions were discussed, as part of efforts to keep the bar consistent across my whole organization.
Here are the features of a slam-dunk promotion case from L5 to L6:
Big ideas that are also right. Proposing unexpected ideas that work and are valuable to the team’s mission. We expect L6’s to design, contribute to the architecture, and invent things. Showing you can do more than just building what you’re told is the next big step.
An antipattern: endless pet projects that are exciting for the engineer, like learning a new language or tool, but which don’t actually contribute to their team’s needs.
Significant independent initiative (the “L6 scope” project). Leaders want to see you can handle a bigger challenge, solo. Can you work with product management, collaborate with them on a design that meets the product goals, and then implement that large design over the course of months of consistent work? Exactly what each company and leader looks for will vary, but usually it’s something like designing, building, and launching a new service with interesting complexity. It can also mean thoroughly refactoring an older, complex service that’s outdated and hard to maintain, but still vital.
Speed tip: it’s often easier to get the chance to take on an ugly refactoring than it is to find some completely new need. It may be quicker to move up by showing your seniority and helpfulness here, than to wait to innovate something “new.”
Solving problems the leadership didn’t know existed. A winning recipe for impressing leadership is almost always to spot and address a big problem we didn’t know we had. It shows judgment, initiative, and a desire to help. These are all things we want more of, so they’re rewarded.
Seeing around corners: highlighting and solving looming problems currently out of sight to your manager, pointing things out before they become problems, and volunteering to prevent them, is also highly prized.
Become the “go-to” person: It stands out to develop unique technical expertise, and be someone whom others on the team refer to; particularly if that includes a higher-level team member. Nothing says “ready for L6” better than a few L6s saying they turn to you on certain matters.
Mentoring and developing others. Teams have constant turnover and new hires, and managers can’t mentor new engineers ourselves for lack of time. So, we value those who teach and share skills.
Antipattern: “Don’t bother me, I’m a coder!” Like avoiding oncall and other work, people who are unhelpful by claiming they only focus on development, won’t move up.
Able to influence – or lead – others. Often an extension of mentorship; being able to win over others to your ideas, or to direct the efforts of entry-level team members to get something done, is a sign of maturity. Every senior person is expected to be able to organize, direct, and manage complex work beyond their own personal tasks. While managers may do the hiring, firing, performance reviews, etc., it’s necessary for senior ICs to be able to get others to work with them on bigger goals.
Antipattern: being personally difficult to work with is the opposite of bringing people together.
Operational excellence. Being the person who doesn’t just take their turn with oncall, but who instead dives in, finds root causes, and builds tools that make the system more reliable. Some engineers avoid operational work, so we value and respect those who willingly do it thoroughly.
Crisis management. Being the engineer who jumps on the call when there is a weekend outage, or who volunteers to go onsite with an angry customer. Such engineers show they understand the needs of the business, and that we can count on them when needed most.
Antipattern: absent, blames others, complains.
You don’t need to do all of these things to become an L6; but the more you do, the better.
3. Tactics to get promoted to Senior
Given the list of things you can do to be seen as ready for L6, how should you go about it?
Agree a plan with your manager. Ideally, discuss it with your manager and agree a course of action. While in theory your manager should be thinking about your development, a wise engineer never leaves this to chance. By talking to your manager, you make your growth goal clear and get the specifics of what they expect. Note that if they have concerns about your current performance as an L5, you are going to need to fix those first.
Do the work while building a positive relationship. Many engineers dislike hearing that relationships matter because they believe standards should be objective and that “opinions” shouldn’t matter. Yet, so much depends on “soft judgments”: from who gets the chance to take on new work, to whether or not a project is really big enough to be L6 work. Remember that your manager probably began as an engineer, too. They are just as good as you at arguing why a project is easy and trivial, or complex.
Some engineers also hear “sucking up” when I mention relationships, but this is not what I mean. A better way to look at it is simply as being pleasant and helpful. Remember, you are probably not the only L5 on the team; a manager is more likely to help those who are helpful and friendly, in the same way as you might help someone you like instead of a person who’s difficult and annoying.
Be grounded about how long it takes. Once you and your manager agree a plan, realize that promotion will probably take 1 to 2 years from when you are a solid L5. There are many ways to show you can do well, and while you don’t need to do everything on the list above, you are very unlikely to complete enough of them in less than a year.
How to get promoted faster
Some people struggle to accept any kind of timeframe. In their minds, the instant they show mastery of some skills, then promotion should follow. But speaking as a leader, it’s not that simple. While you may believe you have shown mastery, from the outside it is often hard to tell if someone is actually good, or just got lucky on the first try. We want to avoid mistakes, so prefer to see a few things delivered in order to be sure that it is skill, not good fortune.
That said, the way to move as fast as possible is to talk to your manager, have a clear plan, and then start cranking through it. You cannot know when a new person will be hired for you to mentor, or when a big outage will happen. You will progress fastest by being flexible about which elements you demonstrate and by jumping on opportunities as they arise. It’s fine to decline a project if the timing is bad, but then don’t be surprised if your promotion takes longer than the person who grabbed it.
4. Getting promoted to Principal or Staff Engineer (from L6 to L7)
Now we’ve covered L5 to L6, let’s discuss L6 to L7. The same basics apply: first, be seen as a good, reliable L6 who is solid at that level. Then, share your goal with your manager, get a plan, etc. Below are the key elements of a slam-dunk promotion to Principal / Staff (L7):
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