In A Performance Guide For Engineers - Part 1, I talked about the importance of dealing with ambiguity and developing initiative and drives. I went in depth on the expectation of L3 and L4 engineers. Now we move on to the bucket of Senior Engineers (L5 and L6).

Now you are a senior engineer at L5. You start to own medium to large projects. It may last 3-6 months in size. You will likely drive a small group of engineers to hit the goal, not just working on one-person projects. With more people involved, there is way more ambiguity. You have to understand your team, not just yourself. 

May Joe overcomplicate design? You might want to review his technical design. 

Does Lisa like to be optimistic about timelines? You probably should think about adding some padding before communicating the overall timeline out. 

At this stage, we expect you to unblock yourself successfully and unblock your team members. You proactively initiate a conversation with people from different functions and teams. You proactively mentor other engineers to make them better.

At this level (L5), initiative and drive are a must-have.

It’s not enough to complain that the PRD is not ready. Thus my timeline is delayed. So if you come to me with statements like this, my first question would be: what have you done to ensure PRD is on time? Have you engaged in conversation with your cross-functional partners to set the timeline expectations? Have you escalated when that convo doesn’t work? Have you attempted to fill in the gaps?

At this level (L5), we want to see early signs that you can drive business impact through smart engineering tradeoffs and business intuition. 

We often see engineers at this level asking a lot of why. And they treat product managers as peers and think critically about the engineering work slotted and the business goal. 

You are a peer to your product manager, not a report. 

We observe successful L5 engineers showing a lot of curiosity in their conversations, and they don’t take the PRD at face value.

“Why is this feature needed?” 

“This solution seems to be an overkill.” 

“Have you considered this option? It’s way less engineering work and can achieve the same result”. 

“How about we test some low tech hacks to quantify the opportunity before we invest heavily?” 

You are more than halfway there if you think about return (business impact) on investment (engineering weeks). This practice and intuition take a long time to develop. But from my experience, it’s the reason why some people grow from L5 -> L6 way faster than other people. 

Execution-wise, L5 engineers demonstrate the ability to operate in a “fire and forget” way. 

At L5, the engineer is involved way early in the project lifecycle and is a productive counterpart to PM/Design/DS/Research. If you are project lead and are not involved early, you should ask to be part of it.

The conversation between a manager and a senior engineer to “fire off a project” is likely: “Hi Brandon, we have a XXX project coming up. PM YYY is playing with the idea now. Could you go and figure it out?” After that, the engineering manager forgets about it. The senior engineer then takes the project into their own hands and drives it forward. Unless the engineer calls it out explicitly, we will assume the project is running swimmingly.

At this level, communication is pushed instead of being pulled. Therefore, your EM should not need to ping you weekly for a progress update. Your PM should not be surprised when you make the tradeoff on timeline, scope, and quality. You thrive to send out weekly updates and capture meeting notes proactively. When sh*t happens, you yell as loud as possible and as early as possible so people are aware and can group up and make a decision. 

From my experience, most people choke at L5->L6 and seldomly L4->L5. That is why most companies consider L5 a terminal level you can stay on forever. It’s that way for a good reason: from L3 to L5, you practice almost the same skills, but at larger scales. So you answer this question: how can I do more, with higher quality, with more people at higher speed? However, reaching L6, you need a fundamental mindset shift. 

L5 engineers focus on “doing the things right”, while L6 engineers focus on “doing the right things”. 

L6 is the first level that the majority of your performance hinges on delivering business impact.  Of course, every engineer is accountable for business impact. But at L6, excellent execution and communication are granted. The business impact you generate and enable through other people are the most crucial evaluation points. 

Business impact is always your north star. . 

• As a result, you should always start from the big prize and work backward to figure out how to achieve them. First, you probably want to develop your business intuition to scout great impactful ideas. Second, you probably spend time building trust with your PM/Design/DS/Research teams so you can be effective in influencing the team roadmap. Third, you probably start mentoring engineers on your team to improve their skills and competency. Finally, you probably network with engineers across the company to spot and gain pointers in the future

L6 engineers operate at the team level, while L5 engineers often operate at the project level.  You are probably the engineer the product manager or designer sought after when they have a wild idea and want to bounce ideas from the outside. You know the product domain very well; you have a product and engineering vision across a longer time horizon; you can connect the dots across individual features; your engineering team trusts you and grows because of you. 

You are considered thought leaders of the team. 

We also look for multiplier effects from great L6 engineers. For example, do other engineers get better because of your code review, mentorship, and feedback? Does your team (not just yourself) have a track record of hitting impact goals despite product ambiguities? Do you uncover new directions/new ideas that translate into business impact? L6 engineers are considered as senior engineering managers/ product managers to guide technical and product directions.

We believe L6 engineers are mature enough to step up and tolerate misses or gaps in other functions. For example, EM is on parental leave. Could you do 1-1 with subsets of the team during their absence? Also, there are product gaps for edge cases, and the product manager is super swamped. Could you propose a reasonable option to cover that gap, set up a meeting, and align with the product manager later? When in doubt, ask what you would do if you are the CEO of the team. That is the level of ownership we expect from an L6 engineer. 

There are many more nuanced expectations at each level, and I didn’t include them in this newsletter. To avoid this email being too long and too dull to read, I intentionally leave L7+ expectations for the next mirror post.

Let me know what do you think about my mirror post and connect me though twitter @lilyruo.