Comment by webmaven
4 years ago
> Which is to say that the positions in k8s that qualify for L7/L8 promo-worthy work are to a first approximation, just the steering committee.
So you are basically agreeing that an engineer who wants to advance to that level has to go and start a shiny new project (open source or not) so they are, by default, on the steering committee or the equivalent.
The k8s steering committee is a rotating set of 7 people with elections of 3-4 members every year. You need a sustained record of contributions and leadership to k8s, but no you don't need to have been one of the original creators.
What happens when the promoted person is rotated off the committee?
The same thing that happens when any other L7 or 8 completes a major initiative. They find something else to work on. Many of the steering group members also lead multiple (in some cases, a dozen or more) k8s working-groups, but they presumably also have responsibilities related to their company (and possibly how their company uses k8s), so they'd focus more intently on those things, or perhaps they started some initiative while on the steering committee and continue to lead that particular thing even once off of steering.
No. Leadership is not a frozen thing. And leading a tiny nascent project doesn’t have remotely the scope required to hit these levels. It is absolutely not the case that “start greenfield projects” and “grow to 7/8” are connected.
And yeah, growth to these levels is hard. The expectation at Google is that the majority of engineers never hit 6 in their entire career.