đ Hi, this is Ryan with this weekâs newsletter. I write about software engineering, big tech/startups, and career growth. Thank you for your readership, we hit 46,000 readers this week đ đ
This week, I wrote about how high ratings donât necessarily lead to career growth. If you find the post helpful, please share it with your friends and coworkers. Enjoy!
Meta hired me as a new grad even though I had already worked at Amazon for 8 months. This made me hungry to grow since I felt behind.
When I learned about Metaâs rating system, I became even hungrier. The top rating (âRedefines Expectationsâ) felt like something worth chasing after. This made me want to focus all my energy on getting high ratings.
One day, my manager explained something unintuitive to me that changed the way I structured my career. He told me that high ratings wouldnât necessarily help me grow.
Ratings vs Promotions
Ratings tell you how much impact you had compared to what is expected for your level. If you get lucky or work a ton of hours, even a junior engineer can have more impact than a senior engineer. That alone wonât help you grow.
For promotion, you need to learn the âbehaviorsâ of the next level. Without them, thereâs a risk that youâd get promoted too early and have trouble meeting expectations.
Hereâs an example where high ratings wouldnât get you promoted. Imagine youâre a junior engineer who works an obscene amount. You land three times as many features as others. Youâre going to get a great rating, but you might not have learned any new skills.
What youâve shown is that youâre a strong junior engineer, but itâs not clear that you could sustain what is expected at the next level. If you didnât work as much, then your raw output wouldnât make up for gaps in your ability to lead others for instance.
Behaviors > Ratings
Getting great ratings always feels good, but focusing on the behaviors of the next level is much more worthwhile. There are a few reasons for this:
You can take behaviors with you - If you learn the behaviors of a Senior Engineer, those will help you wherever you go
Behaviors are sustainable, ratings are a grind - The highest ratings require outsized impact which is often a ton of work. Behaviors on the other hand help you have more impact with the same amount of time
Promotions pay much more than ratings do - Example Meta pay from levels.fyi:
IC4 â IC5 Promotion = ~$133k per year pay increase
Redefines (3x bonus) @ IC4 = ~$75k one-time bonus
Your refreshers (yearly stock grant) will be a little bigger too in (b), but promo pay should still be more
[Personal opinion] Larger scope is more satisfying - Grinding out tons of work within your level gets repetitive
Focus your career conversations with your manager on learning next-level behaviors. Donât worry about ratings so long as youâre on track for meeting expectations at your level. In practice, next-level behaviors often lead to solid ratings anyway.
Thanks for reading,
Ryan Peterman
You don't get paid for time, you get paid for value
> Donât worry about ratings so long as youâre on track for meeting expectations at your level. In practice, next-level behaviors often lead to solid ratings anyway.
This part is key. Itâs important to build some baseline credibility at the current level first before trying to push for the next one.
You donât need to be top 1% at your current level. Management just needs to trust you enough to hand you next-level scope.