Engineering Levels at Honeycomb: Avoiding the Scope Trap
It has been seven years since Rent the Runway posted their engineering ladder, kicking off a veritable trend of engineering teams open sourcing their ladders. Interestingly, nearly all of them seem to have coalesced around “area of scope” as a useful proxy for level. At first glance, “area of scope” does seem to make sense. Senior engineers should be able to work across larger areas of the organization. In addition, your area of influence should expand as you gain experience.