Jumping to L4 or Startup or Growing in Current Role

Software Engineer [Senior Associate] at Taro Community2 months ago

I’ve been a SWE in my bank’s 1.5 year rotational program (will hit 2 years at the company in Aug). 

Rotation 1 (Year 1) – contractor‑heavy team, so “real” intent was rare. For 7 months, I picked up only tiny tickets before the whole project was canned. GenAI hype exploded right then; my skip kept nudging us to automate business workflows, so I pitched use cases and wound up leading a handful of GenAI web‑app POCs - literally the only work our team had for a quarter.

Right before that rotation ended, I got promoted to the next level at my company (between junior and mid level - most get promoted at the 1.5-2.5 yr mark). Was told the promo was mostly due to my very strong communication + customer focus skills, not raw tech depth. Still, those soft‑skill wins earned killer product buy‑in and are now showing up on the official roadmap.

Recruiting sabbatical (per Alex’s advice) Results:

‑ Late‑stage startup: aced the system design, bombed on a coding round.

‑ Google: interviewed at L4, down‑leveled to L3, made project match… then HC said no; failed a lot of other junior/mid interviews

When I rotated, I landed on a greenfield GenAI team last year. Cool domain, but heavy upstream dependencies meant two months of spike work and only trickles of real intent, so my engineering muscles aren’t exactly sore. I’m shooting for L4 at FAANG/late‑stage startups, but the L3→L4 course shows there is still a delta in the behaviors and output I exhibit and produce and that of an L4. With no PM and senior engineers stretched thin, I’m mentoring a junior and handling unplanned tasks - some of which I could close by consistently practicing L4 behaviors.

On rough weeks I flirt with a PM pivot (promo feedback praised my communication & customer focus and I wonder if that would play more to my strengths), but the relative scarcity of roles in comparison to SWE at every level and lower comp keep me in SWE. Meanwhile I’m recruiting again and hacking on a passion side project but am torn between:

• Patience – growing here, polish skills, ship the side project

• Big Tech – dream but higher risk of sinking (per Alex’s code quality video some things only come with time - wonder if I can just “brute force” survival at the L4 level)

• Startup bridge – upside is nonstop shipping which might help bridge the gap between where I am and big tech but don’t like the idea of 12+ hour days

Any advice would be helpful - thanks in advance!

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Discussion

(3 comments)

1
Elliot Kang
•Software Engineer
2 months ago
I feel your pain. You're in the dilemma of

stay in this weaker company and just practice good behaviors

go to a company with a much better engineering culture

Seems like you're choosing option (1) but even that is starting to get hard. The gap between the best and the rest is just so big. Here's a few options you can realistically take:

Re-interview at FAANG (preferably Google/Meta) and accept the downlevel to L3, you'll still make more than Capital One

Go to a later stage startup with a lot of ex-FAANG engineers. The issue with this is that there are a ton of washed up engineers and you basically get the bottom of the barrel (most of the time). But there are some good teams at startups

Go to an early stage startup and into the crucible. 12+ hour days are common

FAANG will give you the best average outcome, the later stage startup can actually speed you up almost as much as the early stage startup (with 1% of the risk). The third option is 95% not worth it.

final note:

I'm not sure if non-stop shipping at an early startup is very good. As a new engineer you're going to be fighting against a bunch of engineers who have terrible SWE behaviors (one sentence Jira tickets, massive 1K+ line PRs, etc). Add that to the stress of a company going under and you're basically putting so much stress on yourself for no reason.
0
Software Engineer [Senior Associate] [OP]
•Taro Community
2 months ago

For context when I say gap between where I stand and L4 I mean:

I can complete tasks independently, but I’ve never owned anything for more than a couple of sprints - and given our roadmap, I probably won’t. Over the last few months, per the courses, I’ve doubled down on better design docs and cleaner PRs for >  week‑long work, but my first team’s “LGTM and move on” culture (the top engineer was a mid level) left little room for that. Even though my new team is receptive and likes these behaviors, the scope, rigor, and review depth here feel miles behind what big‑tech mid‑levels are expected to handle - and that’s the behavior gap I’m trying to close. Likewise, I am trying to learn these skills by continuing to flesh out my side project but wonder if that's enough since I have to self-assess my behaviors, designs, and methodologies.

Also, Alex, I know you are in the process of launching a career course which might help with this but this has been on my mind for a bit so I thought I might ask :)
0
Software Engineer [Senior Associate] [OP]
•Taro Community
2 months ago
One last thing: another thing that worries me is the fact that I haven’t specialized in a stack as I’ve bounced between front end, backend , and more backend/GenAI work and now consider myself “full-stack.” Per one of the Taro courses I watched recently, I remember it mentioning the importance of honing skills in one stack as you grow into the mid level role. Thoughts or recommendations here beyond honing these skills through personal projects?