But the tradeoff is that career advancement becomes less legible in a way that other people often find frustrating. Why does Alice get paid 3 times as much as me to work on cooler and more important stuff? "Alice is L7 and I'm L4" is often an easier answer to accept than "Alice is a better engineer than I am" or "People with Alice's experience have more options than I do".
> I am an L63 but the work I was doing, was something an L60-L61 could do
So you and OP believe that, these systems are good indicators of skills, so much that the last statement sounds normal?
I was thinking like that once, as well, but I got disillusioned. These stuff tend to be gamed.
> Why does Alice get paid 3 times as much as me to work on cooler and more important stuff? "Alice is L7 and I'm L4" is often an easier answer to accept than "Alice is a better engineer than I am" or "People with Alice's experience have more options than I do".
Sure, that's why these system exist. They justify pay, that's all there is.
All this to say it is absolutely reasonable for the OP to complain that they are being underutilized at the role of senior being given small byte sized projects of for no other reason than that this would prevent future growth.
