Comment by hintymad
Good news. L8 is now the new 7, thanks to rapid promotion in Amazon in the past few years, so the ratio is probably 3%, give or take. Joke aside, it's a fact of life that resources tend to concentrate to the top of a large company. For instance, partner engineers in Microsoft also enjoy great life. The real good news, though, is that wealthfront's CEO already gave actionable solution: join a blow-out small-to-medium company. The rationale is simple: what matter is growth. With growth comes challenging problems, career opportunities, talent density, and potential financial reward. That is, don't join FAANG, find a younger future FAANG. Of course, it's not easy, but it is definitely actionable and viable.
>> blow-out small-to-medium company
This is surprisingly more difficult than it seems. You could go by VC fame, but even those have only a 10-20% hit rate, with a decent chance you end up at Juicely or whatever.
You could go by VC dollars raised, but that often sets you up for sales-driven companies rather than true engineering-rich cultures.
You could go for obvious stand-out products (OpenAI, Claused) but you notice there arent that many positions except in rare cases.
Am I over-simplifying this?