Great content as always! Would love to see a video focused on moving beyond L5 (->L6, L7), since there's much less information out there on how to make that push beyond the typical senior "career level".
Great video! Quick feedback, I think there is a little bit of echo in the room you're recording on, fixing that can improve by a lot the audio quality! I see that you have had an impressive career at Microsoft and Meta, it would be pretty cool if you could make a video on key points that made you stand out and be able to grow to where you are now.
Thanks Jose! I'll work on the echo. And I think it's a great idea to summarize some key things I learned that enabled me to grow. I'll think about how to best do that in a future video!
Hi Kun! I have been watching your channel and I'm a big fan! I have a channel of my own, feel free to take a look and let me know if you'd want to collaborate at all!
Hey Jordan! You have a lot of great content over there! I love it. I'm definitely happy to explore opportunities for collaboration. Would you like to make a connection on linkedin? www.linkedin.com/in/kunchen/
Great video! I'd like some feedback on how should I get started? I am currently in 2nd year of college and somewhat familiar with java (data structures and algorithms) and currently learning web development independently (HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JS etc.). I still didn't pick my electives in college. Any guidance on how I should proceed from here? Please specify details. I'd really appreciate it!
I am in 3rd semester if that helps. No experience in the field. I'd want a decent internship in my college years. I am willing to put in the work for it!
Hi there! You are pretty early in your journey here and I’d say it should be more about establishing a solid foundation of knowledge and experience at this stage. Given you are learning a bit about frontend development, building your own product ideas (for example websites, apps that you thought would be fun) can be a good exercise. Or, work on open source projects can be a good option as well. The key is to find an activity you really enjoy doing non stop, that would enable you to put in hundreds if not thousands of hours learning and practicing. Those hours of practice will become an unbeatable advantage that sets you apart. With the strong foundation set, you will also need to spend a bit of time on interview prep, to help land good internships and later on the full time job. You can learn from lots of resources online that will get you better prepared for technical interviews. Once you got a tech industry job, come back to my channel and my videos will be more helpful at that stage to guide you on how you can accelerate the development of your career! Good luck!
Thanks! It was a funny story - when I made the first couple of videos on my channel, I used a good mic but sound was terrible as you heard. It was a few videos later when I finally found that I hadn’t even plugged the mic in properly! :D My latest videos should be much better now!
@@kunchenxyz Sometimes I am not quite sure how to map levels. What I hear is that (59,60) L3 (61,62) L4 (63,64) L5 (65 66) L6, what about 67 and above, still the same? (67,68) L7 (69, 70) L8 or 67 L7 68 L8 69 L9 70 L10?
@@kunchenxyz levels fyi says 65 and above are principal, 68 and up are partner. Looks like there are 3 partner levels. How accurate is levels fyi on 67 and up?
Hi Kun! Thanks again for more great insight. Is the reason why you recommend asking for L5 promotion progression when you're given news on L4 promotion due to you already demonstrating the ability to perform at an L4?
Yes exactly. Promotion is a lagging indicator. By the time you get your L4 promotion, you should have already been operating as L4 for a while and your L4 skills are already proven. That means it's time to start acquiring L5 skills, which can take time.
It depends on your goal. Getting a masters gives you the option to pursue the academic career. In terms of getting into tech companies, your degree alone won't make a big difference, but you could accumulate a lot of project experience during your masters if you don't have much of it yet.
@@kunchenxyz Im a Senior Engineer at a company just below FAANG tier. I get the sense that it's better to allocate my time towards the climb within my company and others then?
Also, on a side note, I had a question: It is often discussed in software engineering circles that your career becomes slow after the age of 40 in software engineering domain? How do you suggest one should deal with it ?
I'm not sure age itself is a significant causal factor to slower career progression - at least I haven't seen clear studies/data points that prove it. Obviously, engineers at age 40 have typically already made some progression in their career, and it's generally more difficult to get promotions at higher levels (principal to distinguished engineer) vs newer levels (SDE I to SDE II), which might have contributed to the perception you mentioned. Many people also chose to go into people management when that path becomes available, which is also a contributing factor that makes it look like that very senior engineers are rare. But based on my observations, there's no magic number or hard ceilings here. Regardless of age, it's up to each individual whether/how they'd like to manage their personal growth. It's worth noting though - life is multi-dimensional. Career progression should not be the only way one measures their success. That mindset can create blind spots that cause people to ignore other important aspects of their life and result in irreversible regrets. I generally suggest people think about how they'd like to measure the success of their life as a whole, and make sure they are making progress towards that.
Hi Kun, thanks for all your videos. I want to ask - what do you think is a reasonable time and confidence level of proving you are already at L+1 before going up for promotion? I know companies do this differently, but would you say that an L3 needs to be working as L4 for at least 6 months on a project of sizeable complexity, independently, and not need further growth into L4 before going up for promotion? In my opinion, people are always continuously learning and it's not always practical to wait for 100% skill acquisition and demonstration before trying to move up.
Thanks! And totally - learning is a continuous process. Let me try to answer the question from the angle of a manager - when you think about promoting people on your team, the main question you'd need to answer is - how much confidence do I have that this person can consistently meet the expectations after being promoted to the next level. How much time it takes depends on how strong the signals are. Generally speaking, for L3 to L4, you'd want to see 3-6 months of L4 level performance to be confident enough because that's typically how long it would take for the person to go through multiple projects at L4 level complexity. You don't want to make the promotion based on a one-off. You want to see some consistency. For L4 to L5, you'd want 6-12 months of consistent L5 level performance, because again that's typically how long it would take to solve multiple L5-complexity problems. In reality, sometimes you get very solid signals from two projects in a row and you can promote them confidently after that; in other cases, you might get solid signals on one project, and then mixed signals on the next, which makes it necessary to observe the person's ability to learn and adapt with one more project in order to confirm the confidence. Similarly, L5 to L6 can require 12-24 months of signals depending on how strong/consistent they are. L7 and above can have a huge variance because at this point the promotions are typically tied to concrete business success which can be influenced by many external factors. Does that answer your question? Let me know if I can be more helpful!
And what about the interview process? I feel like it's easy to just kinda drop the ball. Will I get more leniency in interviews if i hypothetically did all this super high level complicated amazing proven work at my current company?
That depends on your level. If you are a junior engineer, what tends to matter the most during interviews is your coding and system design skills. On top of that, having a good track record of successful projects can help justify higher levels.
@@kunchenxyz What if a hypothetical L6/L7/L8 from say, Facebook, applied to Google. How much error can that person get away with depending on their track record and successful projects? Can you straight up bomb 1 of the algo questions and still make it?
Great content as always! Would love to see a video focused on moving beyond L5 (->L6, L7), since there's much less information out there on how to make that push beyond the typical senior "career level".
Thanks for the ideas! Will definitely plan to have future videos talking about paths beyond L5.
Great video!
Quick feedback, I think there is a little bit of echo in the room you're recording on, fixing that can improve by a lot the audio quality!
I see that you have had an impressive career at Microsoft and Meta, it would be pretty cool if you could make a video on key points that made you stand out and be able to grow to where you are now.
Thanks Jose! I'll work on the echo. And I think it's a great idea to summarize some key things I learned that enabled me to grow. I'll think about how to best do that in a future video!
Completely agree! A discussion of what kind of projects/initiatives made you stand out each time would really help.
Hi Kun! Your content is super high quality and extremely valuable. I'm looking forward to seeing more videos from you.
Thanks for the kind words! That's encouraging to hear.
Hi Kun! I have been watching your channel and I'm a big fan! I have a channel of my own, feel free to take a look and let me know if you'd want to collaborate at all!
Hey Jordan! You have a lot of great content over there! I love it. I'm definitely happy to explore opportunities for collaboration. Would you like to make a connection on linkedin? www.linkedin.com/in/kunchen/
Thus it began.
@@ChrisCox-wv7oo Indeed
Great video!
I'd like some feedback on how should I get started?
I am currently in 2nd year of college and somewhat familiar with java (data structures and algorithms) and currently learning web development independently (HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JS etc.). I still didn't pick my electives in college.
Any guidance on how I should proceed from here? Please specify details.
I'd really appreciate it!
I am in 3rd semester if that helps. No experience in the field. I'd want a decent internship in my college years. I am willing to put in the work for it!
Hi there! You are pretty early in your journey here and I’d say it should be more about establishing a solid foundation of knowledge and experience at this stage.
Given you are learning a bit about frontend development, building your own product ideas (for example websites, apps that you thought would be fun) can be a good exercise. Or, work on open source projects can be a good option as well. The key is to find an activity you really enjoy doing non stop, that would enable you to put in hundreds if not thousands of hours learning and practicing. Those hours of practice will become an unbeatable advantage that sets you apart.
With the strong foundation set, you will also need to spend a bit of time on interview prep, to help land good internships and later on the full time job. You can learn from lots of resources online that will get you better prepared for technical interviews.
Once you got a tech industry job, come back to my channel and my videos will be more helpful at that stage to guide you on how you can accelerate the development of your career!
Good luck!
@@kunchenxyz Thanks for the reply. I really appreciate it. I'll complete my web development course and make a few projects and then reach out!
Love the video
Your sound is definitely echoing too much in the hollow room.
Please bring the mic closer to you or just do a voiceover
Thanks! It was a funny story - when I made the first couple of videos on my channel, I used a good mic but sound was terrible as you heard. It was a few videos later when I finally found that I hadn’t even plugged the mic in properly! :D My latest videos should be much better now!
Microsoft L8? People say that Microsoft levels are 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66, etc.
Right, I was using the more “standard” scale since the 59-70 system is unique to Microsoft which many people aren’t familiar with.
@@kunchenxyz Sometimes I am not quite sure how to map levels. What I hear is that (59,60) L3 (61,62) L4 (63,64) L5 (65 66) L6, what about 67 and above, still the same? (67,68) L7 (69, 70) L8 or 67 L7 68 L8 69 L9 70 L10?
@@kunchenxyz levels fyi says 65 and above are principal, 68 and up are partner. Looks like there are 3 partner levels. How accurate is levels fyi on 67 and up?
Hi Kun! Thanks again for more great insight.
Is the reason why you recommend asking for L5 promotion progression when you're given news on L4 promotion due to you already demonstrating the ability to perform at an L4?
Yes exactly. Promotion is a lagging indicator. By the time you get your L4 promotion, you should have already been operating as L4 for a while and your L4 skills are already proven. That means it's time to start acquiring L5 skills, which can take time.
Yeah, some very good points in this video.
By the way, is that Excalidraw I see 👀👀?
Hehe yes. That's my favorite tool for illustrations.
@@kunchenxyz Figured. Yeah I love using it
Is it worth getting a Master's Degree?
Does it help at all?
I feel like i cant get into an Ivy :(
It depends on your goal. Getting a masters gives you the option to pursue the academic career. In terms of getting into tech companies, your degree alone won't make a big difference, but you could accumulate a lot of project experience during your masters if you don't have much of it yet.
@@kunchenxyz Im a Senior Engineer at a company just below FAANG tier.
I get the sense that it's better to allocate my time towards the climb within my company and others then?
Also, on a side note, I had a question: It is often discussed in software engineering circles that your career becomes slow after the age of 40 in software engineering domain? How do you suggest one should deal with it ?
I'm not sure age itself is a significant causal factor to slower career progression - at least I haven't seen clear studies/data points that prove it.
Obviously, engineers at age 40 have typically already made some progression in their career, and it's generally more difficult to get promotions at higher levels (principal to distinguished engineer) vs newer levels (SDE I to SDE II), which might have contributed to the perception you mentioned.
Many people also chose to go into people management when that path becomes available, which is also a contributing factor that makes it look like that very senior engineers are rare.
But based on my observations, there's no magic number or hard ceilings here. Regardless of age, it's up to each individual whether/how they'd like to manage their personal growth.
It's worth noting though - life is multi-dimensional. Career progression should not be the only way one measures their success. That mindset can create blind spots that cause people to ignore other important aspects of their life and result in irreversible regrets. I generally suggest people think about how they'd like to measure the success of their life as a whole, and make sure they are making progress towards that.
@@kunchenxyz Completely agree! Looking forward to further insights from you.
Hi Kun, thanks for all your videos. I want to ask - what do you think is a reasonable time and confidence level of proving you are already at L+1 before going up for promotion? I know companies do this differently, but would you say that an L3 needs to be working as L4 for at least 6 months on a project of sizeable complexity, independently, and not need further growth into L4 before going up for promotion? In my opinion, people are always continuously learning and it's not always practical to wait for 100% skill acquisition and demonstration before trying to move up.
Thanks! And totally - learning is a continuous process. Let me try to answer the question from the angle of a manager - when you think about promoting people on your team, the main question you'd need to answer is - how much confidence do I have that this person can consistently meet the expectations after being promoted to the next level. How much time it takes depends on how strong the signals are.
Generally speaking, for L3 to L4, you'd want to see 3-6 months of L4 level performance to be confident enough because that's typically how long it would take for the person to go through multiple projects at L4 level complexity. You don't want to make the promotion based on a one-off. You want to see some consistency.
For L4 to L5, you'd want 6-12 months of consistent L5 level performance, because again that's typically how long it would take to solve multiple L5-complexity problems. In reality, sometimes you get very solid signals from two projects in a row and you can promote them confidently after that; in other cases, you might get solid signals on one project, and then mixed signals on the next, which makes it necessary to observe the person's ability to learn and adapt with one more project in order to confirm the confidence.
Similarly, L5 to L6 can require 12-24 months of signals depending on how strong/consistent they are. L7 and above can have a huge variance because at this point the promotions are typically tied to concrete business success which can be influenced by many external factors.
Does that answer your question? Let me know if I can be more helpful!
@@kunchenxyz That does answer my question and is very applicable to my life - I appreciate the detail!
And what about the interview process?
I feel like it's easy to just kinda drop the ball.
Will I get more leniency in interviews if i hypothetically did all this super high level complicated amazing proven work at my current company?
That depends on your level. If you are a junior engineer, what tends to matter the most during interviews is your coding and system design skills. On top of that, having a good track record of successful projects can help justify higher levels.
@@kunchenxyz What if a hypothetical L6/L7/L8 from say, Facebook, applied to Google. How much error can that person get away with depending on their track record and successful projects? Can you straight up bomb 1 of the algo questions and still make it?