You work on stimulating things and get paid what you accept.
You’ll have a yearly review where you have your say, and pay can be increased if employer think it’s worth it.
Titles are problematic in teams working to produce good stuff!
We should compare ourselves to athletes more than the MBA powerpoint version of a company.
I hear Tom Brady is a legend - is he an S10 quarterback? Senior quarterback? Or just a quarterback with high a salary based on performance?
I believe levels are instruments for managers not employees.
If you’re going to say the hierarchy should be based on people doing real work, well I agree, but that is pretty much impossible to measure in groups beyond a certain size.
This groups beyond a certain size problem is the root of the problem, not levels, which are just a stopgap measure to slow the brakes on the deterioration and degeneracy that you find in any gigantic group of people.
Poor management requires boxes.
Better management actually care and help employees perform and improve.
In the end it’s about culture.
Some sort of holistic 360 reviews by peers where others can vouch for you could work. What’s the big deal with having one senior paid 180k and another 350k if their impacts are considerably different? I have personally dealt with BS like “we can’t promote you rn but also can’t give you a raise because you’re at the upper limit of your salary band”. That’s not fair, imo.
The real thing you’re getting at is that people should only be paid and promoted for real work, and not for bullshit work, but that’s basically impossible to measure once organizations grow beyond a certain size.
Also, in orgs beyond a certain size, “holistic” peer review based evals make bullshit promo culture worse, not better. It basically ends up meaning how much people like you, and accelerates the shift toward a culture where people optimize for that instead of doing real work. And then you’re back at square one.
