Have you ever wondered how engineers are evaluated and compensated @Apple? This week we talk about Leveling & Performance Reviews.

Levelling - ICT vs EM

ICT stands for Individual Contributor in Tech and it's the career path engineers at Apple are identified with.

EM stands for Engineering Manager and it's a side & parallel track that engineers wishing to be just doing meetings all day long can laterally move to, just kidding, but not really kidding.

My levels throughout the years

When I first joined Apple in 2014 I was just a couple of years out of college and was given the ICT3 role. I joined the Milan (Italy) office for a year waiting for my visa to move to the US. I moved to the US in December 2015 and got the same level (ICT3).

One year later, in December 2016, I was promoted to ICT4. Finally, before I left in 2020 I already crossed salary ranges for an ICT4 and I was gonna be promoted to a ICT5 (also known in the industry as Staff Engineer, which is currently the position I have at Uber)

Now, let’s talk about each level to understand what it means, from expectation to compensation.

The ICT2

While this exists, Apple almost never hires engineers as ICT2, mostly out of convenience. ICT2 don't get any RSU, however they do get overtime paid and Apple learned the hard way that if they pay for overtime, people will do plenty of.

RSU: Restricted Stock Unit. Stocks granted by the company based on your performance which typically vest in a total of 4 years, 25% each year. At other companies vesting schedule is different, for instance at Uber they vest every month.

Expectations

If you ask anybody in the industry, many have different opinions on the expectations for engineers given their level, however I like the simplicity my manager explained this to me many years ago.

ICT 3: you are given tasks and you are supposed to need some help and guidance to carry them to completion; your work and impact is within your team.

ICT 4: you are given tasks and you should be able to autonomously get them done; your work and impact is within your team and nearby teams, but still within your org.

This is also a terminal level at Apple, which is to say, the expectation is that the majority of engineers will be ICT4 forever. You will still get yearly salary bump and stock options, but your level won't change.

ICT 5 (Staff Engineer): you are no longer given tasks. You go around and find your own problems to solve. These problems are cross functional and it's your job to involve the right stakeholders and convince people to do the needed work to solve them. Most often the work and impact is at company level. I estimate Apple has thousands of ICT5 - which might seem a lot but remember Apple has over 160,000 employees. I was about to become ICT5 when I left and I am not a Staff Engineer (ICT5) at Uber.

ICT6: most of the engineers who got to this level come from acquisition - Apple bought your company and you are one of the lead in such company - you are hired as ICT6. It's also parallel to the managerial track to Director level. I estimate Apple has only hundreds of ICT6. I know a few of such individuals. One was a director at Amazon. Another joined the company 15 years ago and has over 100 patents: https://patents.justia.com/inventor/kurt-piersol

Distinguished: probably less than 100 within the whole company. I never met any distinguished engineer at Apple - that I know of at least.

There are two more roles, but they are literally non-existent: Senior Distinguished and Engineering Fellow.

Lateral Move 

Something interesting is that every time you change job within Apple, whether is for another engineering position or to become an engineering manager, Apple considers that a lateral transfer - aka they are not changing your job level nor they are giving you more money.

Interview

It's also sad that Apple is one of the only company left that requires you to go over a full round of interview (~5 hours) when you change job internally, even though it's a lateral move.

That’s it for this week!

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See you next Thursday

Luca