You can make it to L5/6 without being a good engineer. I interviewed several Uber/Amazon engineers and they couldn't solve a simple problem (very easy problem that most bootcamp grads could do).
A lot of them get there by being interviewed by other bad engineers, and just float when the market is strong, or use politics to get in a good position.
A guy at my company just merges library upgrade PRs blindly. That's all he does. He fought getting dependabot up on Github, but he finally conceded. He hasn't done a commit since. I've reported it to management, but I was told it wasn't our team's responsibility.
There are tons of dark corners to hide in at big companies.
A lot of them get there by being interviewed by other bad engineers, and just float when the market is strong, or use politics to get in a good position.
A guy at my company just merges library upgrade PRs blindly. That's all he does. He fought getting dependabot up on Github, but he finally conceded. He hasn't done a commit since. I've reported it to management, but I was told it wasn't our team's responsibility.
There are tons of dark corners to hide in at big companies.