[sangnoir]

> But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5.

That is true, but gives no indication of how many Director candidates they have to go through as Google has "a lot* of L5s. I would expect the C-Suite to get the high-touch approach, as they probably screen less than a dozen interviewees for CxO.

Let's ballpark this (simplified). Say there's a 1:3 manager to L5 ratio, and 1:5 director to manager ratio. We'd roughly expect 1 director to be hired for every 15 L5s. If Google hires 1500 L5s a year, then it would hire 100 corresponding directors. If it averages 20 applicants per post, that's about 2000 screens per year. Would that justify getting specialized recruiters? I don't know

Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly

[BoorishBears]

> I don't know

Allow me to inform you it is. Your ratios are unrealistic even for estimating unless you really think there's 1 L6 for every 3 L5s at Google. Also we're talking about around an L8 for director:

Yet it still holds for those numbers that yes, if you can afford to reach out to them, you can afford technical staff to be in the loop. Because it's not just about the company, it's about respecting the engineer's time. Not that many people are qualified enough to be getting calls to be hired in as directors, it's not a small feat even if it's 100 hires a year. You don't want them having experiences like this if only for the image it gives off to other potential hires..

> Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly

Used to use about a decade ago? And I believe the moment you said "1:3 manager to L5 ratio" your interviewer would give you a subtle but questioning look and expect you to revise that.

[sangnoir]

You may have misread my comment - I said 1 director[1] to every 15 L5s.

> And I believe the moment you said "1:3 manager to L5 ratio" your interviewer would give you a subtle but questioning look and expect you to revise that.

I deliberately chose a high number to show that the number of Director interviews is still large after steelmanning your PoV (at the lower boundary of director-to-L5 ratio): I don't imagine many teams have 3+ L5s on them.

Also, in the spirit of learning, could you perhaps plugin numbers that you think are more reasonable (L5 per team, and number of teams a director is responsible for)?

1. I'm calling the L5's skip-level manager a Director - I'm assuming that's what they are called at Google, but I could be wrong. That's the ratio I'm calculating

[BoorishBears]

You didn't misread it, I said 1 manager (L6)to 3 L5s.

L6 is Engineering Manager 1. That's how far up an L8 is.

And L6s are usually estimated to be 10% of Google. You can assume that there are order of magnitudes fewer devs each time you go up from there.

Also to be clear, it's extremely to be hired into Google higher than an L6. Even getting hired in as an L6 takes more experience than it does to join as an L5 and become an L6.

Most L6s at other FAANG companies would be downleveled without a very very strong performance, so getting reached out to as an L8 is not a small deal...