Semantics and not true of all FAANG companies, eg check https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Microsoft&tr.... Historically, the org levels pull from military enlisted/officer E1-7 vs O1-7 splits so actually would lean towards our definition more.
Levels.fyi supports what I said. Amazon, Facebook, and Google have L6 as the second level of management. (Facebook sometimes uses the "L" indicator, and M1 is L6). There is no company where "L6" means upper management.
> Historically, the org levels pull from military enlisted/officer E1-7 vs O1-7 splits so actually would lean towards our definition more.
I don't think there's reason to believe this. Google, for example, doesn't have a split. Nor does Amazon. Facebook does, but it only resembles the military rankings by coincidence, since it likely took more from Google's leveling system originally (and afaik there are still leftovers from that).
To the main point, while the compensation methodologies work differently at every company, I expect that the "rising tide" effect is always present.
