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I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that do

I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with significant programming/math or other such experience. I do a lot of mentoring of college grads. If anyone shows an interest in Big Tech I always encourage them to apply and help them get the process started. However, it is not my experience that 50% of your average (or even above average as mentoring programs tend to select for the more ambitious) CS grads are walking into something like a Big Tech ML job with no relevant experience. Always apply if you’re curious. If nothing else, you will learn the interview process and see where you need to improve for next time. However, don’t feel bad if you don’t get the dream job right away. Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks.

honkdaddy 4y ago
Well said as usual, PragP. My experience working in big tech is that the bar for actually getting an interview for the junior positions is actually relatively low, and your standardized interview performance matters 10x more than the content of your resume. Some people apply for L3 out of college, some people after many years of experience. I’ve never seen someone turned down for “too much of the wrong experience”, what more often happens is that the ruts they got into from their previous job start to show and it affects their interview performance.
- fnbr 4y ago
  What I see happen though is people get downleveled. It’s hard to get senior at FAANG without big tech experience, let alone staff+. So if you spend your career somewhere else and try to switch to FAANG after, say, 10 years, you’ll end up getting down leveled. Now, you’re probably making more money, so maybe this doesn’t matter.
  - mathgladiator 4y ago
    I went from CTO to SDE II, and it totally made sense. There's nothing wrong with being downleveled if you are playing a different scale game. There is a huge difference being a senior engineer working on a $5,000 system versus a $1,000,000,000 system.
    - honkdaddy 4y ago
      Yeah, similar story for me. "Senior engineer" at failed startup into Founder/CTO at other failed startup. Then L3 at Snap into L4 at G. No hard feelings whatsoever. We're all moving pixels and pushing buttons for money, I try not to get too caught up in the promo game; much more interesting stuff in life outside the screen.
moeris 4y ago
> he cites a statistic that 50%... Not a statistic so much as an anecdote. He makes it pretty explicit, I thought.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ketzo 4y ago
  Eh, even if it’s an anecdote, it comes off as actionable advice: “make sure you apply to Google/Amazon/Facebook as your safety jobs, since you’ve got a 50% chance of getting in there anyway.” Which feels… optimistic.
  - coffee_beqn 4y ago
    I mean yeah they obviously don’t hire 50% of applicants. Even if they’re pre-filtered to people who think Dan Luu is a cool guy (which I do)
foobiekr 4y ago
The ML thing would not surprise me at all. ML is so hot that if you know the buzzwords and have done some hello world project, someone will give you a job. It is very much like "html coding" in 1999 and will probably have the same outcome.
- SamvitJ 4y ago
  Hard disagree. ML is hard to break into, even with strong credentials. (Source: ML engineer)
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    I think they probably mean "ML engineering" as in training pre-existing models in jupyter notebooks, the new "data science". The people that actually create/engineer anything new and useful in ML is <1% of people that "work in ML".
    - nightski 4y ago
      Are those positions real? It feels like once the model didn't work if you did not have the background to know why it wasn't working then you'd be in trouble real quick.
      - skrtskrt 4y ago
        I mean the gap between understanding how to use different models effectively and developing new ones is massive. One is like sophomore year undergrad engineering, the other is like masters/PHD. And "understanding how to use the models effectively" is being generous for what gets a lot of these people in the door.
      - jrumbut 4y ago
        I have no idea how these folks find their jobs when many top talents are struggling, but beyond getting in the door as a hire I've seen it get back out the door as a product (ML footgun as a service?). I don't have any hard numbers on this, but it's not rare.
deleted 4y ago
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hinkley 4y ago
Honestly, with no experience how would you even know what your dream job was? I had some clue how good I had it, but that was at a philosophical level ("I'm very fortunate to be here blah blah blah.") Once "it" was taken away, I started to understand at a more visceral level. And yet there are aspects that I only managed to unpack last year, which makes me wonder what I'll notice next year.
jt2190 4y ago
> Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks. But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.) Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point. Edit: The OP says it clearly: > In many ways, having no experience is better than having the wrong experience because people don't unfairly prejudge you for having the wrong experience. https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t=CMXLlvgNYO6mWHRwg31QBQ https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t...
- majormajor 4y ago
  As advice for hiring managers this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up. As advice for candidates who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what's itself a very elite "class" of people he anecdotally knows, it's not very useful: "try for that exciting job you want, and if you can't get it then, sure, take any job." Here's the problem with that advice: the class system is already in play before even your first job. What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like "Microsoft stack, not relevant" and "low profile school" are already a problem for many. (The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition so does everyone else so they're going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to some stupid/arbitrary process to filter things down.)
  - anonymoushn 4y ago
    Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it's easy enough to omit it from your resume.
    - EdwardDiego 4y ago
      Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.
ransom1538 4y ago
FAANG isn't looking for experience at all. They want smart fresh college grads - better schools first. They have a large army of middle management ready to grind them until they either quit or promote up to middle management. They put a lot of time and money into this well oiled machine. Taking on senior devs is a waste of their time, they don't have the processes or culture to integrate them - and seniors have an ability to say "no". This could be toxic. Fresh grads just take orders and start doing what the culture wants. Sure, there is a few spots for extremely specific niches - eg. you wrote podman, and they need to convert to podman yesterday. The only real hope, if you aren't a fresh faced grad is to get acquired - for some reason you get a pass from all interview hazing and drama [tons of friends in this group]. FAANGSs will also take in anyone from another FAANG at any stage in the career (nothing gives them sweeter pleasure than harming another FAANG). Stats? The average age at google is 29 years old. Which means half of their company is YOUNGER than that - and by 29 you better be a middle manager bobble head.
- projectazorian 4y ago
  > Stats? The average age at google is 29 years old. Which means half of their company is YOUNGER than that No, that’s not what that means.
  - ransom1538 4y ago
    True! It doesn't "mean" that. But you get the picture.
    - jletienne 4y ago
      I think it does though, ages are right skewed. The median is likely under 29 in this example
      - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
        The median probably is 29, that seems a lot more reasonable than the average being so.
germinalphrase 4y ago
Transitioning out of a career in HS education and seeking a path in PM. Looking for useful prep references and remote referrals if anyone is willing to extend a hand.
- natpalmer1776 4y ago
  Every PM I have met pivoted from a technical or front line role. External hires for PMs without direct prior experience are probably lottery-esque happenings.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    I expect you’re meaning product management here rather than project management, yes?
    - natpalmer1776 4y ago
      Well, given my anecdotal, and oddly specific, experience with educators seeking to enter tech-adjacent roles I assumed that PM meant Project Manager. Either way, entering tech industry right now is a tough proposition and I would personally advise anyone looking at doing so to case as wide a net as possible, as moving between roles in-industry tends to be much easier.
      - germinalphrase 4y ago
        Got it. Thanks. What’s your anecdote?
        natpalmer1776 4y ago
        Former teacher of mine sought their PMP to become a project manager, ran into issues getting the certification, I think they got their CAPM eventually and ended up getting an unrelated role at an accounting firm. Their reasoning for going after a project manager role however was basically that the job was identical to their current responsibilites as department 'lead' creating curriculum, lesson plans, etc. I have then gone on to see their comparisons between project management and teaching echoed in various forms online by various educators seeking to find something more financially rewarding.
anothernewdude 4y ago
In other words, Dan Luu has the wrong experience to teach us anything about tech hiring in general.

honkdaddy 4y ago

Well said as usual, PragP. My experience working in big tech is that the bar for actually getting an interview for the junior positions is actually relatively low, and your standardized interview performance matters 10x more than the content of your resume. Some people apply for L3 out of college, some people after many years of experience. I’ve never seen someone turned down for “too much of the wrong experience”, what more often happens is that the ruts they got into from their previous job start to show and it affects their interview performance.

fnbr 4y ago
What I see happen though is people get downleveled. It’s hard to get senior at FAANG without big tech experience, let alone staff+. So if you spend your career somewhere else and try to switch to FAANG after, say, 10 years, you’ll end up getting down leveled. Now, you’re probably making more money, so maybe this doesn’t matter.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  I went from CTO to SDE II, and it totally made sense. There's nothing wrong with being downleveled if you are playing a different scale game. There is a huge difference being a senior engineer working on a $5,000 system versus a $1,000,000,000 system.
  - honkdaddy 4y ago
    Yeah, similar story for me. "Senior engineer" at failed startup into Founder/CTO at other failed startup. Then L3 at Snap into L4 at G. No hard feelings whatsoever. We're all moving pixels and pushing buttons for money, I try not to get too caught up in the promo game; much more interesting stuff in life outside the screen.

moeris 4y ago

> he cites a statistic that 50%... Not a statistic so much as an anecdote. He makes it pretty explicit, I thought.

deleted 4y ago
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ketzo 4y ago
Eh, even if it’s an anecdote, it comes off as actionable advice: “make sure you apply to Google/Amazon/Facebook as your safety jobs, since you’ve got a 50% chance of getting in there anyway.” Which feels… optimistic.
- coffee_beqn 4y ago
  I mean yeah they obviously don’t hire 50% of applicants. Even if they’re pre-filtered to people who think Dan Luu is a cool guy (which I do)

foobiekr 4y ago

The ML thing would not surprise me at all. ML is so hot that if you know the buzzwords and have done some hello world project, someone will give you a job. It is very much like "html coding" in 1999 and will probably have the same outcome.

SamvitJ 4y ago
Hard disagree. ML is hard to break into, even with strong credentials. (Source: ML engineer)
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  I think they probably mean "ML engineering" as in training pre-existing models in jupyter notebooks, the new "data science". The people that actually create/engineer anything new and useful in ML is <1% of people that "work in ML".
  - nightski 4y ago
    Are those positions real? It feels like once the model didn't work if you did not have the background to know why it wasn't working then you'd be in trouble real quick.
    - skrtskrt 4y ago
      I mean the gap between understanding how to use different models effectively and developing new ones is massive. One is like sophomore year undergrad engineering, the other is like masters/PHD. And "understanding how to use the models effectively" is being generous for what gets a lot of these people in the door.
    - jrumbut 4y ago
      I have no idea how these folks find their jobs when many top talents are struggling, but beyond getting in the door as a hire I've seen it get back out the door as a product (ML footgun as a service?). I don't have any hard numbers on this, but it's not rare.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hinkley 4y ago

Honestly, with no experience how would you even know what your dream job was? I had some clue how good I had it, but that was at a philosophical level ("I'm very fortunate to be here blah blah blah.") Once "it" was taken away, I started to understand at a more visceral level. And yet there are aspects that I only managed to unpack last year, which makes me wonder what I'll notice next year.

jt2190 4y ago

> Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks. But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.) Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point. Edit: The OP says it clearly: > In many ways, having no experience is better than having the wrong experience because people don't unfairly prejudge you for having the wrong experience. https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t=CMXLlvgNYO6mWHRwg31QBQ https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1551665467864977408?s=21&t...

majormajor 4y ago
As advice for hiring managers this twitter thread is very actionable: stop judging people harshly for working their way up. As advice for candidates who want to work at TrendyCo outside of what's itself a very elite "class" of people he anecdotally knows, it's not very useful: "try for that exciting job you want, and if you can't get it then, sure, take any job." Here's the problem with that advice: the class system is already in play before even your first job. What colleges do you think fancy tech employers hang out at and recruit at? What internships do you think are going to get your resume past their initial screen? Things like "Microsoft stack, not relevant" and "low profile school" are already a problem for many. (The broader problem with wanting to work at TrendyCo is that by definition so does everyone else so they're going to be drowning in applications and have to resort to some stupid/arbitrary process to filter things down.)
- anonymoushn 4y ago
  Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it's easy enough to omit it from your resume.
  - EdwardDiego 4y ago
    Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.

ransom1538 4y ago

FAANG isn't looking for experience at all. They want smart fresh college grads - better schools first. They have a large army of middle management ready to grind them until they either quit or promote up to middle management. They put a lot of time and money into this well oiled machine. Taking on senior devs is a waste of their time, they don't have the processes or culture to integrate them - and seniors have an ability to say "no". This could be toxic. Fresh grads just take orders and start doing what the culture wants. Sure, there is a few spots for extremely specific niches - eg. you wrote podman, and they need to convert to podman yesterday. The only real hope, if you aren't a fresh faced grad is to get acquired - for some reason you get a pass from all interview hazing and drama [tons of friends in this group]. FAANGSs will also take in anyone from another FAANG at any stage in the career (nothing gives them sweeter pleasure than harming another FAANG). Stats? The average age at google is 29 years old. Which means half of their company is YOUNGER than that - and by 29 you better be a middle manager bobble head.

projectazorian 4y ago
> Stats? The average age at google is 29 years old. Which means half of their company is YOUNGER than that No, that’s not what that means.
- ransom1538 4y ago
  True! It doesn't "mean" that. But you get the picture.
  - jletienne 4y ago
    I think it does though, ages are right skewed. The median is likely under 29 in this example
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      The median probably is 29, that seems a lot more reasonable than the average being so.

germinalphrase 4y ago

Transitioning out of a career in HS education and seeking a path in PM. Looking for useful prep references and remote referrals if anyone is willing to extend a hand.

natpalmer1776 4y ago
Every PM I have met pivoted from a technical or front line role. External hires for PMs without direct prior experience are probably lottery-esque happenings.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  I expect you’re meaning product management here rather than project management, yes?
  - natpalmer1776 4y ago
    Well, given my anecdotal, and oddly specific, experience with educators seeking to enter tech-adjacent roles I assumed that PM meant Project Manager. Either way, entering tech industry right now is a tough proposition and I would personally advise anyone looking at doing so to case as wide a net as possible, as moving between roles in-industry tends to be much easier.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      Got it. Thanks. What’s your anecdote?
      - natpalmer1776 4y ago
        Former teacher of mine sought their PMP to become a project manager, ran into issues getting the certification, I think they got their CAPM eventually and ended up getting an unrelated role at an accounting firm. Their reasoning for going after a project manager role however was basically that the job was identical to their current responsibilites as department 'lead' creating curriculum, lesson plans, etc. I have then gone on to see their comparisons between project management and teaching echoed in various forms online by various educators seeking to find something more financially rewarding.

anothernewdude 4y ago

In other words, Dan Luu has the wrong experience to teach us anything about tech hiring in general.