FAANG staff in 5-6 years out of school is not impossible. I know a couple. They are significant outliers in terms of focus, dedication (i.e. hours worked), and raw intelligence. If I had to guess, I'd say 1 in 30 from the population of Google-level engineers.
> They are significant outliers in terms of focus, dedication (i.e. hours worked), and raw intelligence.
As someone who has worked at FAANG for 5 years right out of school, getting to staff is less about raw intelligence and more about being lucky with working on projects that did not get canned and finding supportive managers. My friends much smarter than me have not had a good growth purely because they were unlucky with initial team assignment and PA / reorgs cancelling their projects.
That is true, but one "young staff" I know was initially assigned to a dead-end project. She made it her life's mission to find something more interesting and promotable, and succeeded. But there's definitely luck involved.
Is there a large org where commitment/getting things done is more important/valued than social skills/network/luck? I.e. is there a fair model to measure an individual‘s contribution?
