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I know on the product I work on at a fairly large well known tech company, like 80% of the engineers are working on things an end user wouldn't notice unless they were specifically looking for it and even then, probably not. At the same time, the competitive rush to hire devs left a lot of tech companies overstaffed. Not as much some people might make you think, but I definitely got a vibe from companies that they were just making sure they had as full of a pipeline as possible in 2021, and I think continued through most of 2022.
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Feb 9, 2023 00:44
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I worked in an almost 1000 person scale-up in 2020-2021 and they were constantly hiring. It seemed to be a vicious cycle of not being able to hire enough leads, pushing senior ICs to become leads, feverishly hiring senior ICs to fill gap, then the senior who reluctantly became a lead gets fed up with it and quit and the cycle began anew. This created a weird system where we hired barely competent people as seniors but it was nearly impossible to promote anyone to senior internally. One of my reports was on the cusp of being promoted when I joined and it took a year and a half to actually get her over the line.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:00
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Ensign Expendable posted:I worked in an almost 1000 person scale-up in 2020-2021 and they were constantly hiring. It seemed to be a vicious cycle of not being able to hire enough leads, pushing senior ICs to become leads, feverishly hiring senior ICs to fill gap, then the senior who reluctantly became a lead gets fed up with it and quit and the cycle began anew. I wonder how much of this is because having responsibility above IC-level has a very big chance of making your life tedious, awful, mind-numbing, and depressing. Lord knows I’d rather die than have to call any shots in any organization I’ve been in, what a shitshow. Get meetings’d to death while having enormous pressure put on you to herd an entire pasture full of rabid cats, and then be the first to get crucified when anything goes slightly wrong or a shareholder’s coinpurse feels a little light? No thank you. Computers are easy. People are hard.
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Feb 9, 2023 01:05
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My boss is leaving the company. Told me unofficially today to start looking for somewhere to go because I make too much money and the company is looking to cut costs. Did offer me a job at the place they're going, but at lower pay than I currently have.
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Feb 9, 2023 02:05
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thotsky posted:My boss is leaving the company. Told me unofficially today to start looking for somewhere to go because I make too much money and the company is looking to cut costs. Did offer me a job at the place they're going, but at lower pay than I currently have. Ouch. Good luck with the job search.
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Feb 9, 2023 04:30
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thotsky posted:My boss is leaving the company. Told me unofficially today to start looking for somewhere to go because I make too much money and the company is looking to cut costs. Did offer me a job at the place they're going, but at lower pay than I currently have. In general though, always have a BATNA, even if what you're negotiating is the status quo
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Feb 9, 2023 15:37
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Pollyanna posted:I wonder how much of this is because having responsibility above IC-level has a very big chance of making your life tedious, awful, mind-numbing, and depressing. Sadly the alternative is to sit and watch as my life was made tedious and depressing by people who don't have any business managing anything more complicated than a Tamagochi. It's not so bad so far, they might be rabid cats, but they're my rabid cats, and if it takes the occasional crucifixion to keep them running then that's fine.
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Feb 9, 2023 18:57
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Pollyanna posted:Computers are easy. People are hard. is why I went back to IC now at staff level I have plenty of manager-adjacent responsibilities (and compensation) but without most of the tiring people management stuff i do have a lot of respect for good managers, it's a hard job to do well. maybe why so many managers are mediocre.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:05
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Guinness posted:is why I went back to IC I'm still convinced it's easier to ladder up on the management track.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:12
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leper khan posted:I'm still convinced it's easier to ladder up on the management track. probably true, to a point. there are more middle managers than staff+ engineers in most organizations. but to get to director/vp gets similarly choked to making principal engineer, and i think you have to be more pyschopathic to top out on the management track. personally i'm pretty happy getting paid a lot to be an IC even if my theoretical ceiling is lower, and having time/energy to put toward other things in life.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:19
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Guinness posted:
To truly top out, yeah probably. Those behaviors also really help climb, so even if you're not psychopathic you would at least have to get very good at handling sociopathic behavior in people in roles adjacent to yours. On the flip side, a high level non sociopath in a large organization that IS good at that, who can umbrella a lot of the cruel bullshit away from their teams, is one of the only ways you get a truly enjoyable work environment for others to thrive in. So more power to the people who do choose to do that.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:38
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I also feel like the management track is a lot more influenced by poo poo that's not fully inside your control. For example, while you have influence over future hires, most managers will start with a team entirely hired by someone else. Become the manager of a team with a bunch of rockstars you barely need to manage? Wow you look great! Now you get to manage the other managers! Become the manager of a team of fuckos who need to copy paste code they cannot read and gently caress poo poo up? Wow, hit the bricks rear end in a top hat! Of course in the long term you can influence this stuff, but basically every managers performance is built on a foundation of other peoples decisions. I think this makes it more random than an ICs path and why it seems like just as many, if not more, lovely ones advance than good ones.
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Feb 9, 2023 19:46
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High level IC work has some of those issues as well but it tends to have more to do with priorities and budget coming from your organization or above. That stuff tends to be less visible at the staff- level but it's still there.
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Feb 9, 2023 20:21
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Yeah each gig has its own host of problems. For me it really just comes down to how many meetings I need to have and how much engineering I actually get to do.
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Feb 9, 2023 20:41
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Laddering up, I think the management work is fundamentally easier on the leadership swimlane than the principal/distinguished engineering one, at least for someone working in or adjacent to platform engineering. You're expected to spend a certain amount of your time building your org and its leadership team, then you grow, coach, and mentor people who make things happen. There is a direct connection between how well you do your job and how well your org performs. Principals, though, are expected to lead entirely by influencing peers. This makes them not only accountable for all of the politics of a director (and probably more) without the rewards of growing their directs, but they have to understand how to message coherently to every single person in the company, from engineers to product managers to tech lead/managers to middle managers/directors to VPs and the C-suite. Their messages have to be communicated to leadership with enough fidelity that the heads of their orgs can argue confidently from their positions in meetings with other leaders. They're accountable for the outcomes of those conversations and how those messages are internalized while frequently not actually being the people delivering them. They're closer to successful campaign managers, or political strategists, than they are to anyone making decisions. And while they do that, they're expected to dive deep, play Undercover Boss on random stuff throughout the company, and run well-scoped POCs that deliver impressive enough results to convince people throughout the org to follow along.
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Feb 9, 2023 21:53
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wilderthanmild posted:I also feel like the management track is a lot more influenced by poo poo that's not fully inside your control. For example, while you have influence over future hires, most managers will start with a team entirely hired by someone else. Being able to weed out the fuckos while retaining rockstars is a management skill. I've seen too many teams where thanks to lovely management the only people left are the ones who can't get a job anywhere else. To be honest, I've encountered only three or four irredeemable fuckos among devs, by which I mean people who had absolutely no interest in either working in a team or producing a working product at all. There were plenty of weak devs that turned into passable juniors once they were given tasks of appropriate scope and enough structure to deliver them properly. In my experience, senior management also gives a lot more leeway to middle managers stuck with a difficult team than senior devs stuck with a garbage fire of a code base. It could be because these problems are more relatable, or it could be because of a class divide where the devs are just whiny and lazy but
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Feb 9, 2023 22:12
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Vulture Culture posted:this may be a desperation play on the part of your boss, who may be in hot water and trying to cause as much collateral damage as possible on the way out Nah, I know things are poo poo and mismanaged. Not her fault. I saw it coming from the start. Her ulterior motives, if she has any, are more along the line of wanting me with her as a decent hire, and not feeling bad for leaving me in a potentially bad situation since she made the introduction in the first place. Going to work on my BATNA though.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:21
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Vulture Culture posted:Laddering up, I think the management work is fundamentally easier on the leadership swimlane than the principal/distinguished engineering one, at least for someone working in or adjacent to platform engineering. You're expected to spend a certain amount of your time building your org and its leadership team, then you grow, coach, and mentor people who make things happen. There is a direct connection between how well you do your job and how well your org performs. The management track is a lot more established. Right now we're still trying to figure out what an IC role looks like above the individual team level. We'll eventually get there but for now there's confusion.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:23
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Hey, I've been thinking more and more about career direction so if it's alright I want to ask some advice because people I've talked to have said some things that are starting to make me panic a little bit. I've got about 8.5 years experience, all at one employer on one team. I've been promoted up two bands in that time (and my responsibilities have grown commensurate), and we've definitely shifted the focus/direction to be much more forward looking in that time, so I don't think it's fair to call me completely stagnant, but it is starting to worry me. The big problem is, I work for a company you've heard of on a team that maintains a Java application server you've probably only got bad things to say about. Which sucks, because what we're actually working on a much newer open source Java application server that I think is among the best, but no one knows about it. But I don't even directly work on the product, but developer tooling related to modernizing applications to run on the product. So I feel like, if I ever want to do anything other than what I'm doing now (or if I get laid off) I'm stuck: no FAANG hiring manager will be able to read more than about 5 lines past the department name on my resume before throwing it in the trash, and no startup hiring manager will even get that far. People I've talked to haven't really had any advice, just jokes and condolences. I feel like I developed soft skills around feature design, serviceability, advocacy, even user interfaces etc. but tech stacks rule everything around me and a decade of Java SE and nothing else doesn't open many doors. Do I have any path forward other than working 80 hour weeks for the next few years to try to shore up the skill gap in my spare time? Do I have to start over janitoring reporting jobs for a bank for a decade to get this stain off my history before finally having the chance to do something interesting in my 40s? I feel like both of those paths just end with me burned out and unemployed. Do I just try to make myself as indispensable as possible here and hope I never have to find out?
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Feb 14, 2023 03:04
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you're pulling a carry on then. nobody at a faang is going to throw your resume away because your experience isn't good enough or whatever. they probably won't even look at your resume. they'll just say "ok this person passed the interview, i have headcount, and they didn't say any slurs on the phone, welcome aboard." hiring managers aren't even part of the general process until the interview is over most of the time unless it's a particularly high-level or targeted hire
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Feb 14, 2023 03:08
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I used the wrong term then. Whoever is looking at resumes deciding who to call for interviews. Since the name is known to be bad, they'll read it, roll their eyes, think "oh yeah, that's what our product really needs, to get older, more bloated, and slower". Crumple crumple crumple.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:18
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I think you're being too hard on yourself and giving up before you even try. For better or worse resumes aren't that important in tech hiring, but even so you probably have a much better one than you think. Showing growth with two promotions and maintaining a well-known product (even if it is WebLogic?) demonstrates many positive things. Focus on identifying and highlighting those skills and achievements. Whether what you worked on was "cool" or not is beside the point when it's a real product out in the world serving real applications. Java and JVM skills are highly relevant to tons of companies, including FAANG type companies. Accentuate the positive, demonstrate your smarts, and be ready for the typical interview trivia bullshit and you'll be gucci.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:19
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I got contacted by multiple FAANG recruiters based only on my LinkedIn which had nothing but companies and dates and the companies weren't high profile tech, it was a defense contractor for a few years and then a financial company for a few years. With layoffs happening it's not a great time to be looking at FAANG, but when things normalize a bit you'll be fine.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:23
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Every company I've ever worked for had exclusively garbage products and it never stopped me from finding another stupid job
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Feb 14, 2023 03:25
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carry on then posted:I used the wrong term then. Whoever is looking at resumes deciding who to call for interviews. Since the name is known to be bad, they'll read it, roll their eyes, think "oh yeah, that's what our product really needs, to get older, more bloated, and slower". Crumple crumple crumple. I assure you. No one gives a poo poo. The way you're carrying this is more problematic than any work history. Just send in applications.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:37
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crossposting the real advice i gave in the other thread which is to get a goddamn therapist
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Feb 14, 2023 03:38
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carry on then posted:I used the wrong term then. Whoever is looking at resumes deciding who to call for interviews. Since the name is known to be bad, they'll read it, roll their eyes, think "oh yeah, that's what our product really needs, to get older, more bloated, and slower". Crumple crumple crumple. God I wish our HR department knew enough about our open positions to have opinions like that. bob dobbs is dead posted:crossposting the real advice i gave in the other thread which is to get a goddamn therapist Never a bad idea in 2023 but if you're gonna do it then do it sooner than later. The wait lists are looong. wash bucket fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Feb 14, 2023 |
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Feb 14, 2023 03:39
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if you're so scared of rejection that you're pre-emptively rejecting yourself and not even sending in an application, then you will definitely never land that faang job. just send it in. what's the worst that can happen? they never get back to you because they don't have any headcount for hiring right at this moment? that's the same outcome as you get by being too afraid to put your application in in the first place.
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Feb 14, 2023 03:43
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McCracAttack posted:God I wish our HR department knew enough about our open positions to have opinions like that. the quick thing that GPs do is prescribe prozac and do the antidepressants rigamarole, which also has a deec chance to be helpful, so you (carry on then) could also go to your GP. or that ketamine thing. or the brain zap poo poo subjunctive did. your basic current problems is brainworms not your actual situation i will not take back my comment about websphere being poo poo tho bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Feb 14, 2023 |
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Feb 14, 2023 03:46
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carry on then posted:Since the name is known to be bad, they'll read it, roll their eyes, think "oh yeah, that's what our product really needs, to get older, more bloated, and slower". Crumple crumple crumple. as i keep telling you, you are wrong. stop saying the same wrong thing over and over. repetition doesn't make it true, it just makes the people who are giving you advice very, very tired. if you're half this deadset against learning new things at work i feel for your TL
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Feb 14, 2023 04:42
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carry on then posted:I used the wrong term then. Whoever is looking at resumes deciding who to call for interviews. Since the name is known to be bad, they'll read it, roll their eyes, think "oh yeah, that's what our product really needs, to get older, more bloated, and slower". Crumple crumple crumple. no one is doing that, most companies have garbage products. you're not a product manager making lovely product decisions, you don't need to worry about it
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Feb 14, 2023 05:08
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Unless your resume is exclusively working for some combination of the Chinese government, Pornhub, and weed e-commerce, nobody is going to care. A lot of people will probably call you just to hear the gory stories
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Feb 14, 2023 06:17
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Hadlock posted:Unless your resume is exclusively working for some combination of the Chinese government, Pornhub, and weed e-commerce, nobody is going to care. A lot of people will probably call you just to hear the gory stories MindGeek operates at a huge scale. I expect their engineering team is in general quite good, and more than capable of working with the scale of data i deal in. Also yes I'm really interested in their internal cat video dev site. And how often they need to break out of that environment to look at issues.
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Feb 14, 2023 06:47
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and my buddy taught at the central party school for a year and they still gave her a job at google
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Feb 14, 2023 06:50
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 today I found out "central party school" does not mean Arizona State or USC
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Feb 14, 2023 08:00
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Hadlock posted:
they have a camera in the classroom that gets reviewed at the end of the day to see if you need a talking-to (and mostly a talking-to, this is an elite institution with nearly all peeps destined for serious power, they don't have consequences, except for that one prof who ran to the usa and debriefed the cia) bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 08:12 on Feb 14, 2023 |
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Feb 14, 2023 08:09
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Having experience with whatever is the latest hiring craze (Kubernetes and Kotlin here in Norway) is a nice bonus, but generally the only thing people care about is how many years of experience you have, and at 8.5 you're pretty much set.
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Feb 14, 2023 08:28
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+12% base (131 -> 146.72) and +100 golden handcuffs 
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Feb 14, 2023 14:08
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carry on then posted:Hey, I've been thinking more and more about career direction so if it's alright I want to ask some advice because people I've talked to have said some things that are starting to make me panic a little bit. I don't remember exactly why his resume passed the screen; we were explicitly looking for a senior engineer for the role. I remember sending his resume to our head of SRE at the time and saying, "Do we interview this guy? There's something here." There were eight people involved in his hiring committee. It is extremely rare to get a unanimous panel of yeses here, and this engineer did. He had a slow rampup his first 60 days and then took off like a rocket. I believe he set the record for shortest promotion to senior engineer in the history of the company, barely over six months from hire to submission to the promotion committee. He was submitted with the endorsement of four engineering managers or directors in four different departments. Pedigree doesn't matter. I'm not even sure that impact matters once you start putting big companies on the resume, because so much is due to chance and circumstance and how well your particular team is supported and positioned to thread political needles. If you work in developer tooling, platforms, engineering productivity, what I'm gonna be looking for as a resume screener or hiring manager is your ability to be an agent of change, to identify improvements and get them done, and to keep pushing even when the company is dead-set on just doing whatever it's always done. This is, without a doubt, going to be the hardest thing to communicate when you've been at the same company, in the same unit, for a really long time. What needles did you move, and what are the biggest swings you took at solving problems that turned out too big or too hard to solve? How does that demonstrate your growth trajectory? Can you sell, by showing instead of telling, the idea that you've been underutilized and you're going to be a rocket straight to the moon with the support of the right org and the right manager?
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Feb 14, 2023 15:28
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Vulture Culture posted:because so much is due to chance and circumstance and how well your particular team is supported and positioned to thread political needles.
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