6 ms·

"But I am also at this weird point where I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred to another company. A lot of the value that I add no

"But I am also at this weird point where I am not sure if the title of "staff/principle" can be transferred to another company. A lot of the value that I add now is because of the historical knowledge I have. What we have tried as a company, what we haven't, why we built some things the way we did, how things work currently, how the politics works and the trust I have built. " This worries me too. Within my company I have a pretty good reputation due to experience but I am not famous in the industry so I don't think any leverage I have my with my current company will translate into finding jobs at other companies. That's a pattern I actually see quite often. People go very high in one company, but when something happens and they leave that company due to layoffs or other reasons they often find jobs only several levels lower and have to work themselves up again.

TheGRS 8y ago
Market forces can be tough to predict. There was a dearth of software engineers in the last 8 or so years and many of us have reaped the rewards. The hacker news articles used to be about switching jobs every 1-3 years to advance your salary and career. I don't see so many of those these days, which makes me suspect that many have found themselves in senior-level or managerial roles that they find satisfying, and maybe some found themselves in architecture roles that are very difficult to advance from (but still pay well).
- ec109685 8y ago
  I think it more likely companies adjusted their salary bands to be at least in the ballpark of each other, so you either need to move locations or take a “riskier” job if you want an automatic large bump in salary. There are clearly exceptions to this, but in general, companies have started to wise up.
analog31 8y ago
I'm in exactly this situation, at Senior Staff level. It is quite possible that a person is actually getting paid enough to make it hard for them to leave, which seems strange because it's not not the norm. The company may want to keep them because of what they can do for that company, not because of their potential market value to another company. They may know things about you, that are hard for you to communicate in a job application situation, such as how you work with people. I've decided to adopt the attitude: Enjoy it while it lasts, but don't count on it lasting forever. Live a lifestyle consistent with your market value, and squirrel the rest away. I'm also conscious about keeping my tech skills up to date. I'm reminded of an old saying among people in the entertainment business: Think about how you treat people on your way up, because you will meet them again on the way down.
- swagonomixxx 8y ago
  > Think about how you treat people on your way up, because you will meet them again on the way down. That’s an incredible saying. It really encapsulates the “fall from grace” that a lot of celebrities experience. Never saw it put in a way that would relate it to my life. Thanks for sharing!
- pm90 8y ago
  > I've decided to adopt the attitude: Enjoy it while it lasts, but don't count on it lasting forever. Live a lifestyle consistent with your market value, and squirrel the rest away. I'm also conscious about keeping my tech skills up to date. Same here. Its kinda easy to be fooled into feeling complacent when you get compensated very well and are respected for what you do and have done so far. But it will never be enough to keep you around forever; there are so many failure modes that you have to think about the possibility of being on the job market again. Which is another reason why (apart from plain old human decency) I do make it a point to reply to most of the recruiters that try to recruit me with a polite explanation that I'm happy where I am currently but please lets stay in touch so in the future if things change we can try again.
  - analog31 8y ago
    Indeed, I'm quite happy at my job right now, but stuff happens, and companies large and small have evaporated overnight.
MisterOctober 8y ago
I can really relate to this. I 'climbed the ladder' in company X and thereby acquired a lot of company-specific domain knowledge that didn't really have much value outside the company. I realized what kind of a fix I was in years ago and started to lay some groundwork for moving to another firm, but it took until this year to find a company that would place enough value on my [opaque] work at X to hire me at a salary that was comparable. Lesson learned : make a conscious and focused effort to acquire + maintain general skills and keep a visible portfolio updated!
- teekert 8y ago
  Great tip, I feel more and more that my company has ancient tech that they still adhere to (basically as massive VM riddled with third party expensive proprietary software making it impossible to eat our own dog food even) and I now have three choices 1: Learn it and grow in this company but get stuck, 2: Force modern scaleable ways upon them (I've seen people try and fail but I hear more and more employees complain, perhaps I can be the one to lead change) or 3: Leave. I think I'll make this decision within 1 or 2 years (still a lot to learn). But I feel more and more that growing in this company may be a trap.
  - fma 8y ago
    I'm in the same boat. Funny how many people here are on the same boat. So many smart people but they feel like they can't prove themselves to land a job at another company. I feel that is one thing that stinks about our industry. I think option 1 and 2 are difficult..it takes a talented leader to pull off, but it may not be appreciated by people who haven't been there. Meaning, it's easier to create a new project using x,y,z new tech. But to transform a company and bring business value from old tech, is more difficult.
  - bsder 8y ago
    I suspect you are probably at the "leave" stage. Part of being at the principal/staff level is the ability to effect corporate change for the good of the business goals. If that isn't happening, you need to ask some very hard questions as to why.
bitL 8y ago
> I don't think any leverage I have my with my current company will translate into finding jobs at other companies. You are right. Even if you are at FAANG, it doesn't really translate to a new environment, unless you are a direct pick by a CTO (you have to be famous in some way) or use your networking, which I consider unethical and don't do it.
- dacox 8y ago
  You consider networking to find a new job unethical?
- viscanti 8y ago
  > use your networking, which I consider unethical and don't do it. I don't understand the sentiment. Interviews are a proxy for how good you are. The companies hiring are very limited by what kind of information they can turn up about a candidate just through that process and for higher leveled positions like staff+ that might rarely be enough. Your network can speak much better about who you are and what value you can bring to a company. I don't understand how giving a hiring company better signal about your value is unethical.
  - bitL 8y ago
    I have seen how groups of people with dubious ethical standards played whole companies, pushing each other forward at the expense of more capable people, later taking their cronies with them to whatever company they landed, applying the same strategy. One of them made it to a director position at Google, largely propelled by "great networking". I can't with clear conscience support cronyism that deprives others of their shot at greatness and don't do it myself (rejected a couple of CTO roles advised by a friend with contacts etc.). I decided that expert/meritocracy ideal is better than what I see throughout the industry and academia.
    - fouc 8y ago
      cronyism and networking are quite different things though
javadocmd 8y ago
I would argue that company-specific historical knowledge is not the value you (et al) are bringing. The value is the soft-skills of effective leadership that distinguish Principal from Senior (to use the article's parlance). Successfully transferring this to another company is an exercise in knowing how to demonstrate and sell those skills. And, of course, in finding a company and an interview panel that understands their value. Anyone worth their salt should realize that the long-term value of technical leadership far eclipses the short-term value of knowing what happened that one time we tried switching from Technology A to Technology B. (And unless you've completely purged your engineering department, such institutional knowledge is there to be queried.)
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  “Successfully transferring this to another company is an exercise in knowing how to demonstrate and sell those skills” Any ideas for doing this other having a lot of public visibility? I may have answered the question already but there may be other ways .
  - tibbetts 8y ago
    Learn to talk about your accomplishments like an entrepreneur or executive would: impact with quantified customer and company value. Not “I switched our development from Java to Go” but “improved time to deliver new customer functionality from 8 weeks to 4 weeks through new platform choice. Improvements in agility yielded $8 million in revenue growth.” Another thing I don’t see enough in this thread is emphasizing software you managed to avoid writing. That’s the real secret of being a 10x engineer: telling your organization when building something expensive is not necessary, either because you don’t really need it, can use something simpler, or can adopt something that already exists.
    - matwood 8y ago
      > Not “I switched our development from Java to Go” but “improved time to deliver new customer functionality from 8 weeks to 4 weeks through new platform choice. Improvements in agility yielded $8 million in revenue growth.” This is important for any level job. Java to Go by itself is really only interesting for a low level position. 8MM revenue growth is a person that will almost always get another look. In general, using exact numbers that can be backed up is better because they tell the why. Using the Java to Go example. Sure, the work was done but why was it a good idea? What did the company receive out of the change? How did the interviewee think about and mitigate the risks?
imhoguy 8y ago
People who leave your company may poach you some day, so continue your quality work and keep in touch with them. That is called networking.
valleyjo 8y ago
I’ve seen this happen even within the same (large) company. Someone is a director level who has maybe 100 reports. The entire product gets cut. The IC’a find other jobs within the company. There are only so many Director level positions around and many of them are achieved organically. The ex-director then goes somewhere else as a regular engineering manager unlikely to ever have such a position again.
- pm90 8y ago
  Yeah this is pretty common in most large enterprises. If your company is not in a hyper-growth stage (i.e. its a cash cow) then upper management positions become a game of musical chairs and political infighting as some leaders try to promote "their" people to top positions to hold on to their power and status. I guess there are certain folks who find this enjoyable. Personally I find it a massive waste of really good talent and perhaps the single biggest reason why I enjoy the dynamism of the SV startup ecosystem even if I don't directly participate in it.
  - hk-mars 8y ago
    Yes, this situation also make uncomfortable. My company needs me to create new features and design implement the framework, but those managers always get involved with me. I known I can create more technical new features as competitive-advantages for the company at this stage.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Three of my former managers “self demoted” to an IC because they didn’t really enjoy management. Including one of my former managers who is in his late 50s who self demoted after his kids graduated. Now he’s a full stack React/C#/Azure developer and said he threatened to quit his job when they tried to promote him.
  - erichurkman 8y ago
    You need a path of self-demotion otherwise the only route to fixing a misplaced promotion is by firing or quitting.
imetatroll 8y ago
I think you are wise to worry. Last year I was laid off from a company whose technology I helped build for years. I was promoted up to the position of "CTO"... with no team below me. It was a very small company working on email archiving and encryption that still runs today. As the system admin and solo developer I was spread thin, working on a system that now processes anywhere from 80 to 120 (150?) million emails a month. In the last several months I sent out my resume to at least 40 different companies, but the only offer I received was through someone my previous boss knows. It isn't a CTO level position. To be clear I was let go because the company ended up having financial difficulties. It is a strange story to tell and sometimes I wonder if people think I am weaving it as I go. I'm not. It did leave me severely burnt out and I find the question "what was your biggest accomplishment?" to be a frustrating one during interviews because I did so much for that previous company that I almost don't remember any of the subtle details. I thought that the numbers would speak for themselves but nobody seems to care. I find it bizarre. The other thing that might be fascinating is that the technical portion of interviews seem to be where things stall out for me. I would never claim to be an incredible programmer, but my previous companies system was not a trivial piece of software. I am probably going to give my one and only job offer a try and see how that goes. shrugs Finally when I say build I mean to say that there was a PKI api + c library for interfacing that layer when I started. The website, the inbound/outbound email processing, the ES portion of the service etc were all built by me. So the parts that brought the actual customers were built by me.
- D-Coder 8y ago
  "I find the question "what was your biggest accomplishment?" to be a frustrating one during interviews because I did so much for that previous company that I almost don't remember any of the subtle details." I've kept a daily work log at my last few jobs -- just a line about each significant thing I made progress on, so usually one sentence a day (and often the same sentence for several days). This could be helpful.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    I've been doing this starting this year. It's magic.

TheGRS 8y ago

Market forces can be tough to predict. There was a dearth of software engineers in the last 8 or so years and many of us have reaped the rewards. The hacker news articles used to be about switching jobs every 1-3 years to advance your salary and career. I don't see so many of those these days, which makes me suspect that many have found themselves in senior-level or managerial roles that they find satisfying, and maybe some found themselves in architecture roles that are very difficult to advance from (but still pay well).

ec109685 8y ago
I think it more likely companies adjusted their salary bands to be at least in the ballpark of each other, so you either need to move locations or take a “riskier” job if you want an automatic large bump in salary. There are clearly exceptions to this, but in general, companies have started to wise up.

analog31 8y ago

I'm in exactly this situation, at Senior Staff level. It is quite possible that a person is actually getting paid enough to make it hard for them to leave, which seems strange because it's not not the norm. The company may want to keep them because of what they can do for that company, not because of their potential market value to another company. They may know things about you, that are hard for you to communicate in a job application situation, such as how you work with people. I've decided to adopt the attitude: Enjoy it while it lasts, but don't count on it lasting forever. Live a lifestyle consistent with your market value, and squirrel the rest away. I'm also conscious about keeping my tech skills up to date. I'm reminded of an old saying among people in the entertainment business: Think about how you treat people on your way up, because you will meet them again on the way down.

swagonomixxx 8y ago
> Think about how you treat people on your way up, because you will meet them again on the way down. That’s an incredible saying. It really encapsulates the “fall from grace” that a lot of celebrities experience. Never saw it put in a way that would relate it to my life. Thanks for sharing!
pm90 8y ago
> I've decided to adopt the attitude: Enjoy it while it lasts, but don't count on it lasting forever. Live a lifestyle consistent with your market value, and squirrel the rest away. I'm also conscious about keeping my tech skills up to date. Same here. Its kinda easy to be fooled into feeling complacent when you get compensated very well and are respected for what you do and have done so far. But it will never be enough to keep you around forever; there are so many failure modes that you have to think about the possibility of being on the job market again. Which is another reason why (apart from plain old human decency) I do make it a point to reply to most of the recruiters that try to recruit me with a polite explanation that I'm happy where I am currently but please lets stay in touch so in the future if things change we can try again.
- analog31 8y ago
  Indeed, I'm quite happy at my job right now, but stuff happens, and companies large and small have evaporated overnight.

MisterOctober 8y ago

I can really relate to this. I 'climbed the ladder' in company X and thereby acquired a lot of company-specific domain knowledge that didn't really have much value outside the company. I realized what kind of a fix I was in years ago and started to lay some groundwork for moving to another firm, but it took until this year to find a company that would place enough value on my [opaque] work at X to hire me at a salary that was comparable. Lesson learned : make a conscious and focused effort to acquire + maintain general skills and keep a visible portfolio updated!

teekert 8y ago
Great tip, I feel more and more that my company has ancient tech that they still adhere to (basically as massive VM riddled with third party expensive proprietary software making it impossible to eat our own dog food even) and I now have three choices 1: Learn it and grow in this company but get stuck, 2: Force modern scaleable ways upon them (I've seen people try and fail but I hear more and more employees complain, perhaps I can be the one to lead change) or 3: Leave. I think I'll make this decision within 1 or 2 years (still a lot to learn). But I feel more and more that growing in this company may be a trap.
- fma 8y ago
  I'm in the same boat. Funny how many people here are on the same boat. So many smart people but they feel like they can't prove themselves to land a job at another company. I feel that is one thing that stinks about our industry. I think option 1 and 2 are difficult..it takes a talented leader to pull off, but it may not be appreciated by people who haven't been there. Meaning, it's easier to create a new project using x,y,z new tech. But to transform a company and bring business value from old tech, is more difficult.
- bsder 8y ago
  I suspect you are probably at the "leave" stage. Part of being at the principal/staff level is the ability to effect corporate change for the good of the business goals. If that isn't happening, you need to ask some very hard questions as to why.

bitL 8y ago

> I don't think any leverage I have my with my current company will translate into finding jobs at other companies. You are right. Even if you are at FAANG, it doesn't really translate to a new environment, unless you are a direct pick by a CTO (you have to be famous in some way) or use your networking, which I consider unethical and don't do it.

dacox 8y ago
You consider networking to find a new job unethical?
viscanti 8y ago
> use your networking, which I consider unethical and don't do it. I don't understand the sentiment. Interviews are a proxy for how good you are. The companies hiring are very limited by what kind of information they can turn up about a candidate just through that process and for higher leveled positions like staff+ that might rarely be enough. Your network can speak much better about who you are and what value you can bring to a company. I don't understand how giving a hiring company better signal about your value is unethical.
- bitL 8y ago
  I have seen how groups of people with dubious ethical standards played whole companies, pushing each other forward at the expense of more capable people, later taking their cronies with them to whatever company they landed, applying the same strategy. One of them made it to a director position at Google, largely propelled by "great networking". I can't with clear conscience support cronyism that deprives others of their shot at greatness and don't do it myself (rejected a couple of CTO roles advised by a friend with contacts etc.). I decided that expert/meritocracy ideal is better than what I see throughout the industry and academia.
  - fouc 8y ago
    cronyism and networking are quite different things though

javadocmd 8y ago

I would argue that company-specific historical knowledge is not the value you (et al) are bringing. The value is the soft-skills of effective leadership that distinguish Principal from Senior (to use the article's parlance). Successfully transferring this to another company is an exercise in knowing how to demonstrate and sell those skills. And, of course, in finding a company and an interview panel that understands their value. Anyone worth their salt should realize that the long-term value of technical leadership far eclipses the short-term value of knowing what happened that one time we tried switching from Technology A to Technology B. (And unless you've completely purged your engineering department, such institutional knowledge is there to be queried.)

maxxxxx 8y ago
“Successfully transferring this to another company is an exercise in knowing how to demonstrate and sell those skills” Any ideas for doing this other having a lot of public visibility? I may have answered the question already but there may be other ways .
- tibbetts 8y ago
  Learn to talk about your accomplishments like an entrepreneur or executive would: impact with quantified customer and company value. Not “I switched our development from Java to Go” but “improved time to deliver new customer functionality from 8 weeks to 4 weeks through new platform choice. Improvements in agility yielded $8 million in revenue growth.” Another thing I don’t see enough in this thread is emphasizing software you managed to avoid writing. That’s the real secret of being a 10x engineer: telling your organization when building something expensive is not necessary, either because you don’t really need it, can use something simpler, or can adopt something that already exists.
  - matwood 8y ago
    > Not “I switched our development from Java to Go” but “improved time to deliver new customer functionality from 8 weeks to 4 weeks through new platform choice. Improvements in agility yielded $8 million in revenue growth.” This is important for any level job. Java to Go by itself is really only interesting for a low level position. 8MM revenue growth is a person that will almost always get another look. In general, using exact numbers that can be backed up is better because they tell the why. Using the Java to Go example. Sure, the work was done but why was it a good idea? What did the company receive out of the change? How did the interviewee think about and mitigate the risks?

imhoguy 8y ago

People who leave your company may poach you some day, so continue your quality work and keep in touch with them. That is called networking.

valleyjo 8y ago

I’ve seen this happen even within the same (large) company. Someone is a director level who has maybe 100 reports. The entire product gets cut. The IC’a find other jobs within the company. There are only so many Director level positions around and many of them are achieved organically. The ex-director then goes somewhere else as a regular engineering manager unlikely to ever have such a position again.

pm90 8y ago
Yeah this is pretty common in most large enterprises. If your company is not in a hyper-growth stage (i.e. its a cash cow) then upper management positions become a game of musical chairs and political infighting as some leaders try to promote "their" people to top positions to hold on to their power and status. I guess there are certain folks who find this enjoyable. Personally I find it a massive waste of really good talent and perhaps the single biggest reason why I enjoy the dynamism of the SV startup ecosystem even if I don't directly participate in it.
- hk-mars 8y ago
  Yes, this situation also make uncomfortable. My company needs me to create new features and design implement the framework, but those managers always get involved with me. I known I can create more technical new features as competitive-advantages for the company at this stage.
scarface74 8y ago
Three of my former managers “self demoted” to an IC because they didn’t really enjoy management. Including one of my former managers who is in his late 50s who self demoted after his kids graduated. Now he’s a full stack React/C#/Azure developer and said he threatened to quit his job when they tried to promote him.
- erichurkman 8y ago
  You need a path of self-demotion otherwise the only route to fixing a misplaced promotion is by firing or quitting.

imetatroll 8y ago

I think you are wise to worry. Last year I was laid off from a company whose technology I helped build for years. I was promoted up to the position of "CTO"... with no team below me. It was a very small company working on email archiving and encryption that still runs today. As the system admin and solo developer I was spread thin, working on a system that now processes anywhere from 80 to 120 (150?) million emails a month. In the last several months I sent out my resume to at least 40 different companies, but the only offer I received was through someone my previous boss knows. It isn't a CTO level position. To be clear I was let go because the company ended up having financial difficulties. It is a strange story to tell and sometimes I wonder if people think I am weaving it as I go. I'm not. It did leave me severely burnt out and I find the question "what was your biggest accomplishment?" to be a frustrating one during interviews because I did so much for that previous company that I almost don't remember any of the subtle details. I thought that the numbers would speak for themselves but nobody seems to care. I find it bizarre. The other thing that might be fascinating is that the technical portion of interviews seem to be where things stall out for me. I would never claim to be an incredible programmer, but my previous companies system was not a trivial piece of software. I am probably going to give my one and only job offer a try and see how that goes. shrugs Finally when I say build I mean to say that there was a PKI api + c library for interfacing that layer when I started. The website, the inbound/outbound email processing, the ES portion of the service etc were all built by me. So the parts that brought the actual customers were built by me.

D-Coder 8y ago
"I find the question "what was your biggest accomplishment?" to be a frustrating one during interviews because I did so much for that previous company that I almost don't remember any of the subtle details." I've kept a daily work log at my last few jobs -- just a line about each significant thing I made progress on, so usually one sentence a day (and often the same sentence for several days). This could be helpful.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  I've been doing this starting this year. It's magic.