5 ms·

I'm stunned someone like GM could entice anyone from top-tier tech firms AT ALL, regardless of compensation.

bastawhiz 3y ago
Some folks really love what they do, and being given the keys to the castle to do what they love the way they want to do it is an awfully enticing opportunity.
- kevstev 3y ago
  Yeah, I mean its one thing to take a seat in a rocketship and go along for the ride, but its quite another from a challenge and career perspective to turn the rocket thats falling to earth around and pointing it in the right direction. Generally at this stage in my career, I would probably enjoy the latter more. I was a smallish part of two turnarounds like this, and its just a real joy watching people get unshackled. Just stripping away busy work like requiring accounts to get approvals by 3 people (and why not just give everyone in the tech org a gitlab/pagerduty/whatever account and write a script that if they don't use it for a month, its automatically deactivated). Just asking why repeatedly until you finally get to the "scary" person no one wanted to confront who can't give you a good answer so you just say ok, lets just get rid of this... Removing the busy work, getting rid of bureaucracy, which I hear exists in enormous amounts at GM and other automakers... yeah taking that and just turning everything on its head can be wonderfully rewarding. I would take a job like that again in a heartbeat. And tbh, he is a big enough deal at this point its not like its going to be career ending if he fails. And if he does fail, its likely just going to be from not being given enough authority to make the changes he wants. One kind of argument that may be very difficult to swallow for his upper management- allowing fully remote workers/teams. I am sure there are a lot of people that will want to work on something like this, but not a lot of them are going to want to move to Detroit to do so. So then you pivot to "well are you open to opening an office in the Bay area" and they reply "well that sounds expensive!" and you say... well we can also do it cheap and hire remotely, maybe even save on salaries... and then you get the "but what about [how do we know if they are working|Corporate Culture|That sounds scary" and on and on it goes until someone blinks. Anyway, getting into the weeds, but this is just a small facet of what goes into a role like this, before even getting into anything technical.
todd3834 3y ago
Some people like to jump into extremely difficult situations if they think they have enough power to fix them. These situations usually have amazing rewards if you succeed.
throw9away6 3y ago
They pay enough money they can probably pick off people that have petered our in their tier 1 company and would have been on the way out anyway
juancn 3y ago
He likely was promised an awful lot of power and freedom to do what he thinks it's right. Challenging situations can be fun, specially if you succeed in the end.
foobiekr 3y ago
Compensation and title are basically everything once you leave the IC role. Trampolining through GM is just fine if you want to land at some other mega company after. IMHO, most tech ICs have literally no idea what comp packages look like when you get out of the bottom and middle. Sure, they know that Pichai is making $220M a year but they recognize that's unusual. Making $10M+ a year, though, isn't that unusual in these big companies once you are an SVP or EVP plus lots of deferred comp perks and so on. Strategically, you work at tier one companies in order to _facilitate_ these career moves. The FANG/etc.-focused crowd needs to ask themselves what their terminal goals are.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zen_1 3y ago
  I'm a newgrad, would you mind giving me a rough overview estimate of a full career's comp growth (excluding outliers like HFT)? What I'm seeing in my cohort is newgrad offers ranging from $100k-$300k/year (FB rockstar return intern offer), with an expected promotion/jobhop to mid level dev in 2 years and then senior in another 2-3 (assuming you do well). What happens after that?
  - foobiekr 3y ago
    My suggestion to you would be to focus on your long term strategic goals. Job hopping optimizes near term but will leave you without a solid network of allies and no big base of trusted lieutenants to draw from when you are trying to build a team. That last one matters a lot when you find yourself at 40 and needing to staff your startup with people you trust that you know are good because you've worked long enough with them to know their work ethic and that they can do the job and will stick it out all the way to shipping v2. Your career is more than comp. North of a million a year TC is possible in most large tech companies outside of FANG for distinguished engineer roles.
aaplnisider 3y ago
I was an engineering manager in Mike's org. I heard he was pushed out. Also, at GM he's reporting directly to the CEO whereas at Apple he reported to Eddy Cue who reported to Tim Cook. This move puts him one level closer to the CEO spot.

Some folks really love what they do, and being given the keys to the castle to do what they love the way they want to do it is an awfully enticing opportunity.

kevstev 3y ago
Yeah, I mean its one thing to take a seat in a rocketship and go along for the ride, but its quite another from a challenge and career perspective to turn the rocket thats falling to earth around and pointing it in the right direction. Generally at this stage in my career, I would probably enjoy the latter more. I was a smallish part of two turnarounds like this, and its just a real joy watching people get unshackled. Just stripping away busy work like requiring accounts to get approvals by 3 people (and why not just give everyone in the tech org a gitlab/pagerduty/whatever account and write a script that if they don't use it for a month, its automatically deactivated). Just asking why repeatedly until you finally get to the "scary" person no one wanted to confront who can't give you a good answer so you just say ok, lets just get rid of this... Removing the busy work, getting rid of bureaucracy, which I hear exists in enormous amounts at GM and other automakers... yeah taking that and just turning everything on its head can be wonderfully rewarding. I would take a job like that again in a heartbeat. And tbh, he is a big enough deal at this point its not like its going to be career ending if he fails. And if he does fail, its likely just going to be from not being given enough authority to make the changes he wants. One kind of argument that may be very difficult to swallow for his upper management- allowing fully remote workers/teams. I am sure there are a lot of people that will want to work on something like this, but not a lot of them are going to want to move to Detroit to do so. So then you pivot to "well are you open to opening an office in the Bay area" and they reply "well that sounds expensive!" and you say... well we can also do it cheap and hire remotely, maybe even save on salaries... and then you get the "but what about [how do we know if they are working|Corporate Culture|That sounds scary" and on and on it goes until someone blinks. Anyway, getting into the weeds, but this is just a small facet of what goes into a role like this, before even getting into anything technical.

todd3834 3y ago

Some people like to jump into extremely difficult situations if they think they have enough power to fix them. These situations usually have amazing rewards if you succeed.

throw9away6 3y ago

They pay enough money they can probably pick off people that have petered our in their tier 1 company and would have been on the way out anyway

juancn 3y ago

He likely was promised an awful lot of power and freedom to do what he thinks it's right. Challenging situations can be fun, specially if you succeed in the end.

foobiekr 3y ago

Compensation and title are basically everything once you leave the IC role. Trampolining through GM is just fine if you want to land at some other mega company after. IMHO, most tech ICs have literally no idea what comp packages look like when you get out of the bottom and middle. Sure, they know that Pichai is making $220M a year but they recognize that's unusual. Making $10M+ a year, though, isn't that unusual in these big companies once you are an SVP or EVP plus lots of deferred comp perks and so on. Strategically, you work at tier one companies in order to _facilitate_ these career moves. The FANG/etc.-focused crowd needs to ask themselves what their terminal goals are.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zen_1 3y ago
I'm a newgrad, would you mind giving me a rough overview estimate of a full career's comp growth (excluding outliers like HFT)? What I'm seeing in my cohort is newgrad offers ranging from $100k-$300k/year (FB rockstar return intern offer), with an expected promotion/jobhop to mid level dev in 2 years and then senior in another 2-3 (assuming you do well). What happens after that?
- foobiekr 3y ago
  My suggestion to you would be to focus on your long term strategic goals. Job hopping optimizes near term but will leave you without a solid network of allies and no big base of trusted lieutenants to draw from when you are trying to build a team. That last one matters a lot when you find yourself at 40 and needing to staff your startup with people you trust that you know are good because you've worked long enough with them to know their work ethic and that they can do the job and will stick it out all the way to shipping v2. Your career is more than comp. North of a million a year TC is possible in most large tech companies outside of FANG for distinguished engineer roles.

aaplnisider 3y ago

I was an engineering manager in Mike's org. I heard he was pushed out. Also, at GM he's reporting directly to the CEO whereas at Apple he reported to Eddy Cue who reported to Tim Cook. This move puts him one level closer to the CEO spot.