I have seen this from the manager side at these kinds of companies, explaining to your manager that you are quitting because your level does not match your work is a waste of energy. Their hands are usually tied.

Promotion decisions are made by committees which are 1-2 levels above your manager, your manager presents the candidates. They round up a pot of multiple teams which are discussed at once and there are usually hard quotas (like 5%) of promotions to give out to this pot of employees. These hard quotas make it impossible to "do the right thing" because even if a lot of people deserve the promotion, only x% can get it. The composition of the pot of people can easily cause the problem which is described in the blog post, for example if you have a high number of juniors or a high number of employees who joined at the same time or employees with incorrect levelling from the start. If 20%+ deserve a promotion then it simply turns into a game of luck.

As a manager you try as hard as possible to get these promotions but the system of these big companies is just too rigid. Its like a pit fight instead of objectively looking at output. I have seen a lot of people leave for the same reason but I haven't seen a single change to the system in 5+ years.

Next we could talk about layoff mechanics, its equally disturbing.

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raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Honestly, I’ve worked at everything from small to medium lifestyle companies, startups, Big Enterprise, BigTech, and now Í am a staff consultant at a third party AWS consulting firm across 10 jobs.

In all of those jobs, I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless.

At the jobs where I was responsible for strategy, one of my conditions for employment was I would be reporting directly to a director or CTO.

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zhach 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Author here. My manager and I discussed lengths about the capabilities they do, and it is just like this. It's not his fault at all. It's a game at the end of the day, and it's your choice whether or not you want to keep on playing

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alpb 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Having been at G and also getting denied promo several times consecutively, it's almost always a manager's fault. They're either not bringing the committee feedback to you properly or not representing your work well in that room. Either way it's a sign that they're unable to do better, and you're better off not reporting to the long term.

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blobbers 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you think retrospectively your manager may not have been as supportive of you as you had thought?

You missed promo 3 times, and when you left he didn't try to counter you. Is it possible s/he might have been blocking you?

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ryandrake 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think counter offers in general are pretty rare, especially in a bad job market. Like unicorn rare. In almost 30 years I’ve never left a company where it was even mentioned during the resignation. The company just says “Well, bye.” Like the Tombstone meme.

	▲	compiler-guy 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Counteroffers for lower-level engineers are fairly rare. These companies believe that L4s are sufficiently common that another one will come along. It’s unfortunate especially when an L4 is seriously outperforming their level. But that’s a big company for you.
	▲	enraged_camel 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Counter offers aren't rare, but they require good timing and finesse to be effective as leverage. You can't simply shove it in your manager's face and use it to demand a raise. You may first need to maneuver into a place where you play a crucial role in a project, for example. Obviously not everyone can do that. Then again, not everyone can get offers whenever they need also, especially since doing so requires a large network and regular interviews. Most people have neither.

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atherton94027 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah it honestly feels like the problem here – it's a common pattern where someone tries several times at a promo, then transfers to another team and gets promoted immediately.

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venturecruelty an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

If only there were some sort of way employees could get together and like... I don't know, use their labo- I mean, work energy as lever- I mean, to convince management to recognize their uni- I mean, get their boss to pay them more.