Latest / The Tech Career Podcast with Fexingo: Engineering Jobs, Interviews, and FAANG Career Strategy / How FAANG Engineers Navigate Career Plateaus
Transcript
- Lucas: You know that feeling when you've been at a FAANG for four or five years, you're getting your work done, your manager seems happy — but your comp bumps have shrunk to almost nothing, and the last promotion cycle came and went without your name on the list? Luna: Yeah, I know that feeling. It's spookily common. I've heard friends at Google and Meta describe exactly that — they call it the 'competent but stuck' zone. Lucas: Right. And the standard advice you hear is usually one of two things: either 'switch teams for a fresh start' or 'just go interview elsewhere for leverage.' But I think both of those can backfire if you haven't diagnosed the real problem first. Luna: So what's the real problem? Is it about the team, the scope, or something else? Lucas: I'd say it's almost never about raw ability. Most engineers hitting a plateau are still writing good code. The issue is that the system rewards growing scope — not just growing output. And after four years on the same team, your scope tends to plateau because the team's surface area of ownership is finite. Luna: That makes sense. If you've already owned the critical service or the main data pipeline, there's nowhere else to expand without stepping on toes. Lucas: Exactly. I was looking at a 2025 internal compensation study from one of the big five — anonymized, but well-sourced — and it showed that engineers who stayed on the same team beyond four years saw median total compensation growth of just three percent annually. Meanwhile, engineers who made a strategic lateral move — not just any move — averaged eleven percent. Luna: Three percent is basically inflation. So the data backs up the feeling. Lucas: It does. But here's the nuance: a 'strategic lateral move' doesn't mean bouncing teams every eighteen months. The same study showed that engineers who switched teams more than three times in four years had lower satisfaction scores and actually took longer to reach staff level than those who stayed put. Luna: So there's a sweet spot. Not too frequent, not too static. Lucas: Right. I think the key is to figure out whether your plateau is a team problem, a scope problem, or a skill problem. A team problem means the team's charter is shrinking or the projects are low-visibility. A scope problem means you've outgrown your current area but haven't found a new one. A skill problem means you need a new capability — say, system design at scale or cross-team alignment — to justify the next level. Luna: How do you tell the difference on your own? Most engineers don't have a career coach on speed dial. Lucas: There's a simple diagnostic I've seen work. Look at the last six months of your project history. If you're still shipping features but none of them got mentioned in an all-hands or a quarterly review, that points to a team or scope issue. If your manager's feedback keeps circling back to the same vague phrase — like 'needs more strategic thinking' — that's likely a skill gap. Luna: I like that. Concrete signal, not just a hunch. Lucas: Let me give you two contrasting cases. One engineer at Meta I know — let's call him Dan — he was on the same ads-serving team for five years. Great coder, but his projects were optimizations on an existing system. His promo packet kept getting kicked back for lacking 'organizational impact.' He switched teams to a new product area, took a six-month ramp-up, and within a year he was leading the design for a new ranking model. Got promoted to staff the next cycle. Luna: That's the scope move. He went from optimization to creation. Lucas: Exactly. Another case — a woman at Google, call her Priya. She was on a infrastructure team that was already pretty senior-heavy. Every major initiative was led by someone with more tenure. She tried switching teams twice in two years, but each time she landed on another team with the same dynamic. She eventually realized her skill gap was in stakeholder management — she needed to get comfortable pitching ideas to directors. She took on a small cross-team project, built the relationships, and that unlocked a staff promo eighteen months later. Luna: So her plateau was a skill problem disguised as a team problem. If she kept switching teams without addressing the skill, she'd have stayed stuck. Lucas: That's exactly the risk. And I think this is where the 'just go interview elsewhere' advice can be dangerous. An external offer might get you a comp bump, but you're likely to face a twelve-month ramp-up at the new company. During that ramp-up, your promotion clock resets. You're basically starting over. Luna: Plus you lose all your internal networks and context. I've seen people take an external offer for a 20 percent raise, only to realize two years later they're still at the same level. Lucas: Right. I'm not saying external moves are never the answer. But if you're plateaued, the first question should be: 'Can I fix this where I am with a targeted change?' If the answer is yes — even a tentative yes — that's usually less risky than starting fresh. Luna: What about the people who are plateaued because their company's promotion bar has genuinely shifted? Like, Meta's bar for staff engineer today is way higher than it was five years ago. Lucas: That's real. The bar inflation is a documented phenomenon. In that case, the fix might be to look for a company where your current level of impact matches their staff bar. But again — that's a diagnosis. You don't want to jump to that conclusion without checking the other three first. Luna: So the framework is: diagnose first, then act. Team problem? Look for a new team or new charter. Scope problem? Find a project that expands your ownership. Skill problem? Invest in a specific new capability. Company bar problem? Consider an external move — but only after you've ruled out the others. Lucas: That's the framework. And one more thing — a lot of engineers underestimate the power of changing their narrative even without changing their work. If you've been doing the same thing for two years, the way you talk about it can evolve. Frame past work in terms of business impact, not just technical details. That alone can shift how your manager sees you. Luna: That's a good point. Perception is part of the promotion equation. Lucas: If today's conversation gave you something useful — a way to think about your own situation — I'll mention that this show stays ad-free because a small group of listeners chips in monthly at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to keep these episodes coming without any sponsors. Luna: Yeah, it really does make a difference. And we appreciate every bit of support. Lucas: So back to the practical side — let's say you've diagnosed your plateau as a scope problem. How do you actually find a project that expands your ownership without your manager thinking you're jumping ship? Luna: That's the million-dollar question. I've seen people get labelled as 'not a team player' when they start looking outward. Lucas: The trick is to frame it as bringing value back to the team. Say something like, 'I want to understand how our service fits into the broader system so I can make better decisions for our team's roadmap.' That's usually well-received. Then you volunteer for a cross-team working group or an oncall rotation for a related service. That gives you exposure without formally switching. Luna: So you expand your scope by borrowing it from adjacent teams, not by abandoning your current one. Lucas: Exactly. And once you have that adjacency under your belt, you can either formalize it into a new role or use it as evidence in your next promo packet. Either way, you've broken the plateau without a risky lateral move. Luna: I think the biggest takeaway for me is that plateaus are normal, not a sign of failure. The key is having a systematic way to diagnose them rather than panicking and making a reactive move. Lucas: Couldn't agree more. The data shows that most FAANG engineers hit at least one plateau in their first six years. The ones who break through are the ones who treat it as a data problem — not an identity crisis.