Silicon Valley Big L5: Survivors of Winter

"Groove! Sending emails to employees at night! Our company has laid off employees! ”

At 7 o'clock in the morning, Xiaoshi, who was awakened in advance by the WeChat bombardment of his colleagues, rushed from his bedroom to the study barefoot and began to check the company's mailbox.

In the next half hour, he first confirmed that he was not fired, then searched the company's internal system for the names of his good friends and cooperative group members, and then asked his friends in the same company in WeChat.

Although it survived, it still had a big impact.

Just a week ago, even if other big factories have begun mass layoffs, Xiaoshi firmly believes that this will not happen to Google.

After all, the last major layoffs at the garage-based tech giant dates back to the 2008 financial crisis. At that time, they laid off 300 employees, or 2% of the total headcount. At the same time, it has been recognized and sought after by the capital market, as evidenced by the 50-fold increase in the share price in nineteen years.

Early employees have long achieved financial freedom, and since graduation, he has been with Google for nearly seven years, and Koishi, a senior engineer at L5, has always been confident in his employer. He is even reluctant to sell the company's shares when buying a house, because it is what he sees as a "stable investment".

Soon, Xiaoshi's friends all returned to WeChat. Everyone confirms safety. But they all quickly reached a consensus, "The next days are going to be over."

In the past few years, "gou" has been the word that should not be associated with these L5s. Because L5 is the first golden period of a Silicon Valley programmer's career, you can lie flat, change groups, change jobs, or continue to stay in large companies to climb ladders.

However, with the excessive prosperity coming to an abrupt end, talking about career planning has become too luxurious. But "holding on" is not a long-term solution, it is a degradation of the hierarchy of needs under realistic conditions: that is, self-actualization temporarily gives way to the need for survival.

01 Stable

L (Level) is the rank system that Google uses for its engineers, and the official name of L5 is "Senior Software Engineer".

In Silicon Valley, each large factory has its own rank system, the framework and logic are very different, and there is a correspondence between each other that everyone in the industry knows.

For example, Google's starting level is L3, its L5 corresponds to senior E5 and junior E6 in Meta, and it corresponds to junior L6 in Amazon. In this article, I will use L5 to summarize the engineers in this range.

The difference in rank correspondence between China and the United States is even greater. The more popular saying is that Google's L5 can correspond to the Ali P8.

(The picture shows the corresponding map of the ranks of several large North American factories.) Source: level.fyi)

Engineers at this level typically have 5-7 years of experience, are around 30 years old, and earn between $300,000 and $400,000 a year. The technology has gradually matured, and the organizational structure capability has also taken shape.

(The chart shows the average salary of a Google L3-L5 engineer.) Source: level.fyi)

When the market is booming, L5 is hot: you can bring a team at the top, and you can code at the bottom. Job-hopping raises salary, lying flat without stress.

They are also the sweet potato in the eyes of headhunters and HR. Almost every L5 mailbox and LinkedIn is filled with private messages from companies and headhunters because they are "more executive, but have leadership potential, and are very useful." At the same time, they also have some professional pain points and a desire to rise."

Before reaching L5, few people think of jumping jobs, almost brainlessly climbing up. One of the important reasons is that this road is really not difficult to follow. The company will have a detailed training manual to tell you what the requirements are for each level. Of the five programmers I interviewed, all agreed that the L4 to L5 span is much smaller than the L5 to L6 span.

Xiaoshi recalled his state when he first joined: he felt that the work was so easy, holding a large glass of lemonade every day, and typing code on the screen expressionlessly, without any challenges.

After reaching L5, not only execution, but also planning, the time to write code began to decrease, and the time for meetings increased. You need to face more open questions, define the scope (scope) and effort (required resources) of the project, and even start exploring some projects yourself.

"When I was in L3, I still thought that I was no different from L5, and I could write if you wrote it. But in fact, L5 does a lot of 'walking' work. ”

In addition to the stability of the upward path, the working life of L5 (5-7 years) almost coincides with the green card backlog time in the United States. This means that most L5s have no status restrictions, they can quit naked, they can start a business, or jump jobs to start a startup that does not support work visas, or even if they are laid off, they do not have to bear the pressure of leaving the country if they can't find a job within a few months.

L5 have ushered in the most secure period of their careers: maturity, stable identity, good income, and a promising future.

The company and L5 also go both ways: this group of people is easy to use, affordable and has potential. Before the arrival of the cold winter at the end of 22, in order to grab this group of people, major factories repeatedly updated the upper limit of the salary they opened. Along with insane salaries are prices, Silicon Valley confidence, and housing prices.

This is clearly not normal. Like a speeding train, all the passengers watch ahead about to derail, but they can't stop at all.

02 Select

L5 is the stage most chosen by programmers in a large factory. Some people want to jump outside with technology and experience, some people want to stay in the big factory and continue to climb up, and some people want to lie flat, change to a relaxed group, and spend more time enjoying life.

Before the arrival of winter, either way, it is a good choice.

Job-hoppers usually get a big raise, usually around 50%. If you jump to small and medium-sized factories, you will have greater scope and freedom;

Ladder climbers will have a clear upward path, they can exchange for groups that they are more interested in and more likely to have output, and do projects with higher visibility; Or stay in the current group, which is very good in itself, and continue to move forward with the strong support of the boss;

The flat-lying faction can even directly express to the boss that they have no ambition to rise, and just want to stay at this level, as long as there is a stable output.

Xiao Zhao is one of the job-hoppers.

Before jumping ship, he had worked in a large factory for seven years, and he also changed some groups halfway, but found that the problems he encountered could not be solved, so he jumped to a medium factory with about 1,000 engineers.

The reasons for his job change are very representative:

The first is because the salary at that time was very low, completely below the average of the level. If you don't change jobs, your salary won't go up.

The second is because he doesn't really want to continue to screw in the big factory. Because of the characteristics of the organizational structure of large factories, even if it reaches L6/L7, it is still just tightening the screws, and in essence it will still be limited by various politics and rules.

Xiao Zhao has also tried to do something that interests him in the group.

"I used to do an early prototype in-house and it worked really well. I showed it to my manager, and he was very excited. But this matter will not be solved later. ”

This situation is actually very common in large factories. It's easy for big manufacturers to confuse these young programmers and make them think that resources are limitless. But it's not. When they do things, they find that they have only a limited amount of mobilization.

An L5 is completely incapable of mobilizing resources within a company.

It's not enough to push a project just because you've technically made "cool things," you also need to follow a "lengthy" process: first present the idea and submit it to your boss for review. Convince him that this is not only technically achievable, but also commercially and user-worthy. Instead of just showing that this thing is cool.

But no one knows how long this process will take. Because it depends not only on the boss, but also on how many resources the project itself needs to consume and the priorities of the entire team.

Xiao Zhao felt that what limited his personal ability to do was no longer the limit.

This feeling makes people feel very humiliated: they can do it, but they can't.

Under the normal market, Xiao Zhao's choice is very mainstream, which is an attempt by many Chinese programmers to leapfrog to the next stage of their careers. And it turns out that the success rate of such attempts is not low.

But that's not the case.

Xiao Zhao is very glad that he completed the job change before the wave of layoffs. "If this were the case, I wouldn't have jumped."

03 Passive

Xiaoshi, who escaped the layoffs, decided to "hold on". Although he has no plans to change jobs himself, there are two completely different mentalities of choosing to stay in his current position and being forced to stay in his current position because he has no choice.

His career plan has always been to stay in the big factory and climb the ladder first. The reason is that "I want to see what the most powerful INFRA (architecture) in the world looks like" and "I want to accumulate more experience in large manufacturers." This experience refers to a higher level, for example, giving you a resource how you can use it well, a systematic process of how to deliver. ”

Even before the wave of layoffs, the climb to L6 was very difficult: the scope (project scope) increased, began to involve politics, and dealt more with the relationship between groups than technology. In this process, luck is just as important, if not more important. You have to be in a good team, do a high-visibility project, and make sure that the project is not cut in the middle, can go live smoothly, and your boss recognizes and supports you.

But before, at least there were many such opportunities. Because big factories are willing to burn money to try to open new groups and do new projects. Google, for example, has been relying on the money earned by search engines to feed many other groups that have been losing money.

At the same time, the transfer of employees within the company is also very convenient, no algorithm interview is required, as long as you say hello to the leader of the other group, and the other group has a quota, you can transfer directly.

But now things are getting tough. Whenever there are new projects, there will be several groups to grab the projects, and in the past, these projects were not wanted.

The internal transgroup channel is also almost closed. The buyer's market of "chatting several groups before making a choice" no longer exists.

It no longer matters whether you can be promoted smoothly in the current group. Or even if you know it's important, you can't do anything about it. Surviving first became the most important thing.

(The chart shows the number of recent layoffs at some companies.) Source: LayoffsTracker)

Even if you don't like the work you do, even if you have a hunch that what you are doing now will not be recognized by the market at all, even if you have had enough of the life of turning screws every day, everyone does not dare to act rashly.

Koishi says that since this year, his LinkedIn private messages have become less and less. It is impossible to jump jobs, and it is impossible to lie flat. Everyone knows in their hearts that although the big factories have laid off a lot of people, startups can only be more unstable; While working hard doesn't guarantee you won't be laid off, you can at least make yourself less flustered.

The price-performance ratio of L5s is also decreasing. An HR at a large factory known for "crazy people with high salaries" told me, "In a market like this, or when the team is still relatively small, L6 will be more sought-after." Because it is a generalist, there are some management managers who can also work. ”

I don't know how long this passive situation will last. Some seniors who have experienced 08 years say that this is just the beginning.

04 Survivors

In recent years, on social networks, the living environment of Silicon Valley has often been criticized for being too homogeneous and labeled. Even if it is two people who do not know, as long as you report your age, the company you are in, and the zip code of the area where your house is located, the other party can almost judge your living situation.

L5 is a very mundane label among them, in the middle of the pyramid, the base is huge. In Silicon Valley, a brick can knock down a piece.

Originally, everyone behind this label had different ideas, but the environment magically turned their ideas into convergence: to spend this time safely, on the basis of meeting the needs of survival, and to realize the need for self-worth in stitches.

After being promoted, Koishi, who remained in this group, steadily output code, documents, and meetings every day, and when he had free time, he would also go to see the documents of other groups. Like ChatGPT, which has been popular recently, he will go to the company's free learning resources.

After jumping ship, Xiao Zhao is very satisfied with his current life. His scope has become much bigger and has greater ownership. "Now I can say that if I leave today, then the project in hand will definitely not go online." The logic in the middle factory is different from the logic in the big factory. Not to take a dead salary, but the proportion of stocks will be much higher. Xiao Zhao feels that he should not be laid off in the short term, so he will focus on doing his job well for now and wait for the company's stock to rise sharply.

What they are most thankful for is that the impact of this technological winter on them is only a temporary suspension in their career development, and it has not spread to their lives.

Looking backwards, there are a large number of fresh graduates who can't get interviews/torn offers at all because of recruitment stops/layoffs;

Looking forward, there are children to raise, and there is a high probability of carrying high leverage on the body, and the pressure increases sharply after losing a job.

And both situations will hurt them somewhat, but not fatally: if they are laid off, they simply take a break, and it is completely acceptable to accept an offer with a salary cut without high leverage; Because of the stability of the identity, there is no need to leave the country immediately, so it is facing a situation that changes the life plan.

At the same time, many L5s have already experienced similar layoffs: such as projects being cut, groups being canceled, and being forced to find new groups internally.

When Xiaoshi was in L3, he experienced the sudden disappearance of the group, and a group of people were trapped in a separate building and went to other groups for interviews every day. The person who matches the right group moves out of that building. As there are fewer and fewer people in the room, the rest of the people are more and more psychological.

Xiaoshi feels that for individuals, the pressure to face now is actually similar to the situation at that time, or even better.

Such things are common in large factories, and there are even websites that record the epitaph of Google's cut project. Therefore, when everyone first encountered it, there was a big shock, and then they got used to it. Anyway, the individual can't control it, it's better to leave it to fate.

(The picture shows some of the Google projects that were cut.) Source: Killed by Google)

So far, Silicon Valley has carried the attention of all parties. If you just look at those amazing data, it is easy to make up a bloody drama.

However, the center of the eye of the storm was unusually calm. Especially the largest group of people. When they look back years later, they may just think that it was an ordinary day.