What is L5? | Hacker News (2024)

Zaheer on Oct 11, 2018 | next [–]

Google's internal leveling codes. I made https://www.levels.fyi exactly for questions like this :)

mdasen on Oct 11, 2018 | prev | next [–]

L5 is one of Google's internal levels. They're putting it there to let people know where they were in Google's hierarchy and they note that it denotes Senior. From what I know, people generally start at 3 right out of school.

antognini on Oct 11, 2018 | parent | next [–]

To expand a little bit, you usually start at L3 as a fresh graduate, and then are expected to be promoted to L4 within ~2-3 years, and then L5 after another 2-3 years (although it could be shorter). L5 is considered a "terminal" position, in the sense that once you get to that level you're no longer expected to get promoted. (L3 and L4 are, by contrast, more "up or out", where if you don't get promoted after long enough you can get fired.) I actually met an L5 engineer at Google who had been there since 2002. Promotions to L6, L7, etc. start to get exponentially more difficult.

twiceaday on Oct 12, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]

This is no longer the case. L4 is the new coasting position.

the_clarence on Oct 11, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

What about L1 or L2?

acchow on Oct 12, 2018 | root | parent | next [–]

Google Engineering doesn't have L1 or L2 (you could consider interns as L2)

quest88 on Oct 11, 2018 | prev [–]

Senior Software Engineer.