Programmer's growth ladder and level definition

With the development of the company, the number of research and development personnel is increasingly large (6k+), how each individual growth, development, cultivation, play strange upgrade is not only an unavoidable proposition, but also an important proposition of the company. In the Internet this line with BAT led gradually developed its own mature and formed the technical personnel promotion system and level definition. For example: Plant B from T1 to T10,a plant from P1 to p11,t plant four large levels (T1 ~ T4) Each of the large-scale internal subdivision of several small levels. But no matter how the division, I feel from the growth of their own process to review, the overall can be divided into several distinct boundaries of the stage.

Primary

New entrants to the workplace are generally at this level. This is not a distinction between undergraduate or master's degree, such as my first Master's degree graduate into a junior engineer, undergraduate is an assistant engineer. And the company for just graduated students of the level definition is similar, undergraduate t1-1, Master T1-2. The big grades are T1, and the subdivision on a small scale may be slightly different at the beginning of the pay (don't ask me how much I'm poor, but I don't know, but I don't think it's a big difference). Thinking back that year just graduated from school to attend campus preaching, T factory to preach, undergraduate annual salary is 60,000, master 80,000, Ph. D 100,000, and at that time, Huawei Unified to master degree than undergraduate monthly high 1000, I reckoned now the relative gap should be similar to it.

Only from the annual income gap to read Shuo Bo is a very not cost-effective choice, and just a lot of people choose to read Shuo is to have a better choice of work, and the choice of the standard is also precisely the pay-dominated aspects, which seems to be a misunderstanding ah. Of course you can also read for the academic dream, but I reckoned such a person thousand. Last year, saw the period of "wonderful", a Tsinghua male from the undergraduate reading doctor, ran to the program said a half-day is to find what work and distress, provoked the same as the Tsinghua-born dwarf tight classmate on the spot. And the same as the guest of Kevin Tsai said the words are true words:

It's time to spend time studying, perhaps to procrastinate on life's decision-making.

Said so much in fact, whether undergraduate or master, as a programmer into the workplace are novice, to start from the most basic learning, such as: learn and familiar with the company's common development techniques, tools and frameworks involved, familiar with the company's development process specifications and so on. Perhaps the doctor will be slightly different, but it may also depend on whether the field and academic achievements are in the air of the industry, such as the AI field, which recently warmed up with AlphaGo.

Intermediate

What is the most essential distinction between intermediate and primary, I think, is embodied in the independence aspect. Junior students just enter the company, usually also to arrange one-on-one tutor to help its quick start, so a lot of junior students at work on the mentor there is a dependency. After working for some time (1, 2 years bar), they are familiar with the company's various development process specifications, familiar with some of the business, products and code involved in the project, and can complete the business function development as required.

So intermediate engineers can independently undertake the development work, and even some can guide the new people, and grow into the Company "action execution" level of the backbone. The basic requirement of this level is: complete the action, achieve the quality, optimize the efficiency. but most of the engineers observed at this level can do it, but the quality may be flawed and even defective in efficiency. And on the efficiency and quality is always in constant iteration and improvement to continue to improve, and itself in this process continues to grow towards the next step forward.

And a lot of people stuck in this stage, is because although constantly in the completion of work, but did not go to reflect, precipitate, iterative and improve, leading to stay in the constant repetition.

Senior

This level is basically a subsystem or module that can be independently responsible for a small project or a large project, and is a key member of the project, which belongs to the largest individual contributor in the team or project.

Compared to the intermediate level, senior engineer in the "Action execution" layer is a critical force, not only to complete the development of advanced difficult tasks, but also in the user experience (quality improvement) and performance optimization (optimization efficiency) can be more comprehensive consideration. Not only does the development task complete quickly and well, but it can also clearly define how fast and how good. For example, a response time of 99.9% for a service is 20 milliseconds, memory consumption is estimated to be no more than 1G, concurrent throughput of 10000 per second, similar to the use of clear data to define service quality and efficiency.

Senior

Some of this level is called " Senior Engineers ", some are called " architects ", and different names represent two different directions of development. In the basic research and development, algorithm or specific technical complex areas will be "senior engineer" direction, is in depth priority. In the field of business-oriented development, business complexity is higher than technical complexity, it will be "architect" direction, is the breadth first.

Whether in depth or breadth, entering this level of instruction has accumulated considerable accumulation in specific areas, serving as a technical backbone in the project and team. In addition to the accumulation of their own professional knowledge, skills and practical experience, it is also possible to summarize effective methodologies and guide and organize the application of team members together. Proactively export your own experience and provide technical support for cross-team projects.

A lot of work has a certain number of years of senior engineer card into this level of the threshold side, I think there are two reasons, on the one hand, although a variety of actual combat experience, but there is no systematic to comb their accumulation of many years, not a good form of system. The so-called system is also the above-mentioned precipitation of effective methodology, the most effective methodology is to help the rapid decision-making, and the correct probability of decision-making will be relatively high. On the other hand, it is that although the chest has ballpark, the belly Tibetan thousand words but does not come out, appears the obvious bottleneck effect, causes the negative effect is difficult to its "senior" degree to make the effective appraisal.

Experts

Technical experts generally lead major technical projects in the company, and in the technical field of their subdivision, in the industry also has a recognized influence. To "Home" name will make people feel unreachable, unattainable. The actual "home" also sub-size, the general "Everyone" is actually rare treasures, the country is rare, is indeed remote, but also has a "small family" is relatively not so far away.

And the experts combined influence, influence sounds very empty, that change a relatively real angle to say influence. As a Java programmer, there are always a few people in the process of learning to use Java, and you are not only going to read their books but also to see and use the code they write, and you will never get around in this area of Java. So this is their real influence in this field, and naturally they are experts in this field. So, experts may be the people in this field that you can't go around.

Evaluation

With a level definition, how do you measure the level of what a person belongs to? This is a relatively loose standard in a low-level assessment, and the more advanced it is, the harder it is to assess. For different levels of assessment some large companies (such as the T Factory) have defined the criteria for covering multiple dimensions and have given detailed explanations. For the high-level promotion will be organized by the company's expert review team to the promotion of the reply, the jury of the judging panel is based on these multidimensional standards to make a comprehensive evaluation.

The multi-dimensional standards here are objective, while judges ' judgments are subjective. This is like diving in the Olympic Games such as a project, there is a set of actions, groups and technical difficulty coefficient, these are objective standards, which for the athletes to judge the completion of some consensus judgment, but the nuances are subjective. If Guo Jingjing and a rookie to participate in the international competition, they jump the same difficulty the same group action, complete the same good, but in the end maybe Guo jingjing will score a little higher, I remember the Olympic Games have appeared, this is the subtle point of subjective judgment.

In fact, it is much harder and less accurate to assess a programmer's level in a half-hour debriefing than to score a dive. As mentioned earlier, many "advanced" engineers have been accumulating in specific areas for years, but this is only the first level: deep understanding and mastery of knowledge and skills in a given field. The next level is to be able to express and demonstrate the knowledge and skills of the field and to make it easy to understand, if you do this layer, the basic will greatly reduce the threshold and difficulty for you to assess. and further, if your views and perceptions of the field are not only understandable but also inspiring, and shared with two of times, then you naturally have the professional influence of the high-level talent requirements in many organizations. And in the process of extracting ideas and understanding and sharing from accumulated sediment, it will deepen your cognition in this field, and even help to find blind spots, and constantly form the loop of positive feedback.

Climbing Building

Career development is like climbing a building, each level is like a floor. Lu Xun once said in "hometown":

In fact, there is no road on the ground, walk more people, it will become a road.

So, the ladder defined above is just the way many people have traveled, we just have to go along this road to continue to grow can climb up the floor is not low. Just to a certain level we will find that there are still several layers on it, but we can't see the next level of stairs. Because there are not many people go up, also can not become a road, nature can not see, this may be a lot of large companies to a certain level of dilemma.

This line of programmers is in the midst of technology and the Internet, so no matter how much you've accumulated before, you can't stop. Once you stop, you may become a pond of stagnant water, a dry day. After seeing the road, it is time to go to the Invisible Road, this road who also can not define, only to try. Starting from here, each step is a different choice, and every choice affects the different paths of life in the future.

Programmer's growth ladder and level definition