Particularly confusing because "Senior X" is a job title in big tech cos where it actually means "mid-career" or even "early mid-career". Certainly not Xm massive, but maybe the upper half/third of XXXk massive.
On the + side, at least "senior" in tech is not nearly as bad as "VP" in the banking world, where a "VP" at a household name bank might be lucky to scrape out 200K and is probably an IC salesperson or low mid-level manager :p
This is wildly inaccurate. Senior in Google is 350k, in Microsoft 260k, in Amazon 340k. "Early mid-career" is also wildly inaccurate. While the ladder in Google goes up to 11, 90% of people never exceed 5 (senior). It's also the last level where your primary responsibility is designing and developing software, everything above that is about influencing.
> This is wildly inaccurate. Senior in Google is 350k, in Microsoft 260k, in Amazon 340k.
Those are averages (and probably slightly old ones at that). Mid six figures is in-range for Senior at most of those companies.
> While the ladder in Google goes up to 11, 90% of people never exceed 5 (senior).
But when do people first reach that level? Again, my point was that "lots of tech workers with Senior in their title are in fact mid-career or early mid-career." Not that everyone with the Senior title is mid-career.
Looking at Levels.fyi, and my personal experience, typically between 5 and 10 years.
Reminder: Retirement age is 65 and people graduate college around age 22. 65-22 = 43. Let's be generous and assume tech workers retire over a decade earlier than most people.
So if you become Senior with 12 yoe, that's an early mid career position. If you become Senior with 15 or even 17 yoe, that's solidly a mid career position. Even 20 yoe is mid-career if your work to 65. Looking at levels.fyi, becoming Senior with 5-10 yoe is not abnormal.
I'm not sure how you can realistically say that someone in their late 20s is "not mid-career".
This reality ("influencing" as you put it) hit me hard this year. It's something I don't care about in the least, and I had to accept staying "senior" for the indefinite future. Human organizations are not what you thought they are when you were in your early 20s ...
