Comment by madhadron
9 hours ago
You're describing a very small number of companies that all copied each other's systems. The idea of a terminal role, for example, is pure Facebook. These do not apply in general across the industry except where managers from those small number of companies came in and shoved them in before they were fired.
In all fairness, a LOT of this was copied over from the military. From ranks to "High Year Tenure" (aka "Up or Out") nothing here is particularly innovative.
In my experience a lot of tech companies, at least in the Bay Area, have all copied this system.
Amazon had the concept of terminal role (SDE2, but I’ve heard it has changed) long before facebook existed.
I believe L5 was Google's terminal role at one point (over a decade ago) - not sure if it's changed since then.
It became L4 ~5-7 years ago, but who knows these days.