Kelsey Hightower

And I tell the PM, hey, you want to go to GopherCon?

We'll launch it on stage.

We launch it on stage.

We tell people how we designed our worker, how the internals work, and then they can just come sign up.

That was the trifecta.

You do the work, you have the vision, you execute, you launch, and you land.

And the landings compiled over seven years is how you go from like, I think maybe L5 to Distinguished Engineer.

L9, that's like four promotions.

Yeah, four promotions, seven years.

Oh, no, no.

I was focused on the next levels because that was the goal.

Because think about it.

If my whole career, I've always tried to acquire the skills and make the impact so I can move to the next level.

And so at Google, the levels were expressed as promotions.

And there was a point in time in the org that I was in, there was no level seven for an individual contributor.

So now we have to make a level seven.

And then once you get to a level seven, now you kind of paved the way for the other people that want to come up through that icy path.

And then level eight isn't the same as level seven.

Level eight isn't the same, or level nine isn't the same as level eight.

And yes, there is a formula to some of the promotions early.