I agree with this completely and honestly didn’t think about this.
In my department in BigTech (consulting) your first paragraph is expected from an L5.
Good written and verbal communication skills and being able to work with customers is the expectation of an L4/new college grad.
Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have met an L5 SDE that I would let have anything to do with my customers directly. But I’m equally sure they wouldn’t let anyone in my department push code to core services (even though I have found a bug in the code of a core service and worked with an SDE to fix it).
In my department in BigTech (consulting) your first paragraph is expected from an L5.
Good written and verbal communication skills and being able to work with customers is the expectation of an L4/new college grad.
Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have met an L5 SDE that I would let have anything to do with my customers directly. But I’m equally sure they wouldn’t let anyone in my department push code to core services (even though I have found a bug in the code of a core service and worked with an SDE to fix it).