Don't the majority of FAANG engineers cap out at Sr. Engineer and that's a title you can get just a few years out of College? So are +/-50% of Google engineers stagnant?
For companies as prestigious as FAANG, I think such rules are thrown out the window. Assuming you choose to leave, you probably will have no shortage of companies asking you to come work for them.
I am starting year 6 at my company, which would fit your description of big pond. I'm also painfully aware I'm stagnating.
That said, unless I completely change my role and/or specialization, I don't see any room to grow.
I'm a frontend engineer with some fullstack mixed in. Going backend would certainly be an interesting change, but it would be at the cost of atrophying frontend skill/knowledge, the end result being it would be harder to get a future FE (atrophy) or BE (beginner/mediocre skillset) job. Especially since companies these days seem to be creating FE specific interview tracks.
> unless I completely change my role and/or specialization
That would be the point, yes.
I definitely did not mean to imply that spending 6 years doing the same thing at a big company is in any way better than doing the same at a small company.
My point was that since a large company likely does allow you to completely change your role, domain and specialization without quitting, you should look at years-per-role and not years-per-company.
There's plenty of big pond companies with enough roles to keep someone learning and improving for decades.
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