this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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What's L5 and L6? What's TC?
L5 and L6 is a label for career progression, like getting promoted from staff to senior, just with different words. TC is total compensation.
Total compensation per what, year?
Yeah, typically per year. And usually it's called Total Compensation because some of it is in salary, some in stock, some in stock options, sometimes even some kinds of perks, etc.
So all of that gets balled up into Total Compensation, which is different than annual salary
$550,000 a year as a software developer. That's insane money. You could buy a luxurious house in the city CASH after saving for two years with that salary, where I live. Including other expenses. They are making 3x my salary, also as a software developer.
Amazon throws money at people with niche skill sets.
They were paying engineers with experience with SELinux and CDS developers nearly 500k the past few years.
Insanity
Tbf selinux tends to be a hell of a black box. Anytime my shit doesn't work and I can't explain why, I default to blaming selinux and hit up IT. Seems like I'm right about half the time lol
SELinux is super simple, you just gotta understand how the system works.
Once you understand the syntax and flow of SELinux policy then writing it is easy. Writing GOOD policy on the other hand …. Lmao.
Typically most IT departments “fix” it with
setenforce 0which is the equivalent of removing the seatbelt cuz you can’t figure out how to latch it.Android has one of the most “robust” applications of it but it doesn’t serve the purpose a good policy does, it does add a substantial layer of defense. Apple contracted my company to come out and teach them how to SELinux a few years back. Ultimately they (companies that desire SELinux as an added layer of defense) tend to just pay “us” to do it instead lmao.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe that's the point. 😆 That understanding it is the hard part.
I love these people who are like "no no, X is easy, because I understand it."
If course you think it's easy — you understand it already...
What I am saying is that it looks significantly more daunting then it truly is, once you understand the basic concept of it (which I’m positing is actually fairly simple) the rest follows easily.
Specifically here though I mean SELinux is “simple” if you understand how Linux works and operates, as you’re constraining syscalls and access
I think as a developer I just have no idea what policies are applied, so it's just "somethings fucky here" all the time. Maybe an organizational issue :)
It's open source - literally the opposite of black box.
You're talking implementation. I'm talking practice.
Yes, selinux is open source, I can look up the documentation, etc.
But since I'm not IT it isn't my job to manage selinux - from my perspective it's just something that rears it's head when there's a policy I didn't know about that interferes with me running my stuff.
So from the perspective of it not justifying Inflated wages, you're probably right? Anyone can learn it. But in my experience few developers do.
The "where I live" part is key. Because very likely this person is in SF, where they cannot buy a luxurious house cash with that money, and where cost of living eats surprisingly far into that stupid high number.
But notably, this is why all the normal people who don't make a half million dollars a year can't live in SF! 😅
That's why I mentioned "where I live". 😉
Career levels at Amazon (basically pay grades)
Total Compensation
At Amazon you have the following levels
L4 - Junior. A new grad. Expected to be promoted within 2 years or let go
L5 - Mid engineer. Very wide band. Encapsulates anything between a level 2 engineer and a team lead at other companies. Can be expected to lead individual teams at times. Is considered a “terminal” position (there’s no expectation of a promotion past here)
L6 - Senior. Has the scope of what a Staff engineer would at other companies where you’re not only concerned with your team but others in the department. I think like 10% of engineers ever hit L6
L7 - Principal Engineer. You have like 1-2 of these per department. These are more like architects at other companies. About 1-2% of engineers ever hit this band.
L8 and beyond are for fancy hires and shit. Very few if anyone ever works their way up to those bands.
So, where are L1-L3?
Are L3 student programmers?
L2 people who never coded anything in their life?
L1 are people who can't read? Like babies?
Non-engineering roles I think.
IIRC levels correspond to all employees across the company.
Yeah it’s weird and I don’t get it either.