There is another pitfall in the layered support structure: how would you hire, train, or otherwise produce L2 support engineers?
You cannot hire someone directly as L2, as there is a learning curve for company- and product-specific issues, and a freshly hired "L2" would have to learn. However, they are shielded from the most frequent issues by a hoard of L1s and thus cannot learn about the typical problem areas or troubleshooting approaches.
So they have to either graduate from L1s or accept a downgrade from being a developer.
There is another pitfall in the layered support structure: how would you hire, train, or otherwise produce L2 support engineers?
You cannot hire someone directly as L2, as there is a learning curve for company- and product-specific issues, and a freshly hired "L2" would have to learn. However, they are shielded from the most frequent issues by a hoard of L1s and thus cannot learn about the typical problem areas or troubleshooting approaches.
So they have to either graduate from L1s or accept a downgrade from being a developer.