[scarface74]

So how much more is someone “worth” who can understand the different parts than someone who made their career knowing how to play the promotion/leetCode/system design/behavioral interview game at any of the large tech companies and position themselves to show “scope” and “impact” by getting on the prime projects?

It’s a much more straightforward path and one I would recommend to anyone starting their career today.

I didn’t take that path. But seeing people who did have it much easier. No I’m not complaining. I’m good with where I am

[dayvid]

Even in those companies at the higher level you need additional skills to figure out impact and opportunities (opportunity sizing, XFN alignment, communication, good writing, etc.). Interviewing mainly gets your foot in the door.

There are some genius ICs who can just code and not be concerned about these things, but more often the higher levels are people who are good at their skill along with business, data analysis, product and communication skills.

[scarface74]

I agree with this completely and honestly didn’t think about this.

In my department in BigTech (consulting) your first paragraph is expected from an L5.

Good written and verbal communication skills and being able to work with customers is the expectation of an L4/new college grad.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have met an L5 SDE that I would let have anything to do with my customers directly. But I’m equally sure they wouldn’t let anyone in my department push code to core services (even though I have found a bug in the code of a core service and worked with an SDE to fix it).

[nickvanw]

Well, in my opinion, it remains to be seen whether big tech compensation for this style of work is sustainable long-term. Of course, if you're already pulling 800k/y in TC at Google/Amazon/whatever, great, you did wonderfully. If you're a brand new engineer starting your career, are there going to be a lot of those 800k jobs that offer you free daycare, dry cleaning, lunch and massages? I wouldn't bet on it. I say this as someone that has also not taken this path, but have nothing but respect for people who make a great living that have.

Otherwise, I think this is exactly how big companies succeed - they build career paths, tools and workflows to bring context to large groups of smart people to get them moving in the same direction. Ultimately there still have to be people to create the bridge, but the lever you get is massive when you have 1000s of talented engineers. You can't expect them all to understand how $x works, but you can pepper teams with extremely smart and talented experts and professional managers who collectively get them working on the impactful parts of the problem.

TL;DR there isn't a linear path, my advice is mainly for people thinking about how to be able to build value. If you can do that, you'll always be able to get a job.

[scarface74]

I spent most of my career on the “enterprise dev” side of the bimodal distribution of tech compensation. I only landed on the BigTech side by doing a slight pivot (cloud consulting).

I don’t see the day coming anytime soon that the divide narrows where it does make sense to be on the “enterprise dev” side (where most developers are) over the $BigTech side.

I’m objectively good enough at all of the areas that the article lists - I have to be to succeed in true “consulting” (as opposed to staff augmentation). But that wouldn’t have mattered unless I jumped ship to the $BigTech side.

Most outside consulting companies aren’t paying their top employees what I make as a mid level employee at my current job.

I have one or two connections I could probably leverage on the enterprise dev side that would allow me to make more if I jumped ship. But that’s only because I have $BigTech experience on my resume.

I’m not disagreeing with you. Even before working at $BigTech, I could throw my resume up in the air and get a job as a developer without doing the leetCode monkey dance because I had the skills you listed and I spoke directly to CxOs and Directors at small companies based on my network.

I haven’t done a coding interview in over a decade.