4 ms·

This is highly dependent on who you are as a person, but I'd honestly say most of the big tech firms excepting a few which you can suss out based on reputation.

This is highly dependent on who you are as a person, but I'd honestly say most of the big tech firms excepting a few which you can suss out based on reputation. IMO people overestimate how much you can know about whether a team will be good over the span of 2+ years. I've had several friends land at a small company with what seemed like a great team and then the great manager was replaced by a bad one, the job started sucking, and everyone had to jump ship and go on a new job search. If it happens soon enough after you join you may not be able to leave for over a year for appearance's sake. At big companies, you can still get bad teams but many places, such as Stripe, make it super easy to switch teams for a better fit.

sokoloff 5y ago
I think employees wildly overestimate the negative resume impact of leaving any individual role "too soon". Your life is short and your career is shorter. Don't stay at a place that sucks. If you show up with one short stint, I might ask about it, but I'll totally understand a "it wasn't what I was expecting answer". If you have two of those with at least one 2-3 year stint (ideally including a promotion), that's also fine. The danger only comes when you have 5+ stints of 6-15 months in a row. That reads like you might have a performance/potential problem.
JohnBooty 5y ago
many places, such as Stripe, make it super easy to switch teams for a better fit. Another commenter mentioned that this is a strength of FB, and I find it amazing. I've not experienced that in my time in the industry though I've never worked for any "famous" technically-oriented orgs. Don't misunderstand: I have a rock-solid belief in the importance of team fit. Nobody can do good work unless they're a good engineer and have found a good team fit. I'm just amazed that any orgs actually pull this off, rather than simply considering somebody a bad hire. That's what I've always seen. Unless it was an engineer that had already succeeded at a given company for a number of years, and was faring poorly with a new team.
- Hermitian909 5y ago
  It happens! I've fortunately never needed to do it but I know easily 50 engineers who've made a successful team jump within 3-8 months of the initial hire.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    That's fascinating and excellent to hear. How does management (and everybody else involved) determine that they're a bad team fit vs. a bad hire? In some cases it might be easy: if the developer has done highly visible, rockstar-level work elsewhere, or if folks on the team have worked with them in the past. What about other cases, where you have a good engineer with a solid career that hasn't had high-visibility wins? If I was working "in the trenches" alongside such an engineer, I might have a sense of this, or I might not. Maybe I just haven't worked at a company where this sort of patience is viable. FB and others have effectively infinite amounts of cash. But at the companies where I've worked, there's never been the patience (or cash) required to let 100-250K engineers sort of slowly find their way. I feel I should reiterate that I'm 100% in favor of this; just kind of amazed it's possible. =)

sokoloff 5y ago

I think employees wildly overestimate the negative resume impact of leaving any individual role "too soon". Your life is short and your career is shorter. Don't stay at a place that sucks. If you show up with one short stint, I might ask about it, but I'll totally understand a "it wasn't what I was expecting answer". If you have two of those with at least one 2-3 year stint (ideally including a promotion), that's also fine. The danger only comes when you have 5+ stints of 6-15 months in a row. That reads like you might have a performance/potential problem.

JohnBooty 5y ago

many places, such as Stripe, make it super easy to switch teams for a better fit. Another commenter mentioned that this is a strength of FB, and I find it amazing. I've not experienced that in my time in the industry though I've never worked for any "famous" technically-oriented orgs. Don't misunderstand: I have a rock-solid belief in the importance of team fit. Nobody can do good work unless they're a good engineer and have found a good team fit. I'm just amazed that any orgs actually pull this off, rather than simply considering somebody a bad hire. That's what I've always seen. Unless it was an engineer that had already succeeded at a given company for a number of years, and was faring poorly with a new team.

Hermitian909 5y ago
It happens! I've fortunately never needed to do it but I know easily 50 engineers who've made a successful team jump within 3-8 months of the initial hire.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  That's fascinating and excellent to hear. How does management (and everybody else involved) determine that they're a bad team fit vs. a bad hire? In some cases it might be easy: if the developer has done highly visible, rockstar-level work elsewhere, or if folks on the team have worked with them in the past. What about other cases, where you have a good engineer with a solid career that hasn't had high-visibility wins? If I was working "in the trenches" alongside such an engineer, I might have a sense of this, or I might not. Maybe I just haven't worked at a company where this sort of patience is viable. FB and others have effectively infinite amounts of cash. But at the companies where I've worked, there's never been the patience (or cash) required to let 100-250K engineers sort of slowly find their way. I feel I should reiterate that I'm 100% in favor of this; just kind of amazed it's possible. =)