4 ms·
This should definitely be updated with a year (2020). This time period was peak "corporate engineering" culture imho. During this period I felt like a stranger
by crystal_revenge 2y ago
This should definitely be updated with a year (2020). This time period was peak "corporate engineering" culture imho. During this period I felt like a stranger in my own field.
In my entire career I had never cared about "leveling" and suddenly I found a world of people obsessed with it. Engineers were being hired en masse so your actual skills mattered little (you were going to be solving real problems, you were there to boost your managers head count), but your ability to "play the game" was everything. I figured out the rules, and had my bit of success but working in tech sucked in this time period (aside from comp). The worst part was that this infected companies of all sizes.
While you can still play the FAANG-game today if you want, it's increasingly become not required and I'm seeing more and more teams hiring people based on technical skills and the ability to solve real and actual problems. Weird smart people are starting to be in demand again (rather than pariah's because they couldn't perform the shibboleths required to fit-in). My last two companies had no "leveling" and were much better for it.
Hopefully we'll return to a time when people are exited for a role because it offers interesting problems to solve rather than chasing some meaningless career ladder.
- zelphirkalt 2y agoHow do you look for companies? Any indications typical for conpanies, that don't suck?
- crystal_revenge 2y agoMost of my recent gigs have come through friends working on interesting problems, but those places have done plenty of hiring so I know this is not the only way to find these. My recommendation is to start looking for teams doing interesting work out there and reach out to them directly (especially if they're smaller startups). Technically curious people reaching out to teams working on hard problems is a strong signal for those teams. But the key is, don't present yourself as looking for work, show you're interested in the same problem and have skills that will help. One caveat: if you're expected in FAANG style TC, then you won't be able to find great teams. You can still get paid well and work on interesting stuff, but if you are addicted to very high TC then you're going to have to fight it out at large companies still.
- teaearlgraycold 2y agoI’m ex-Google. I quit because of the terrible culture of head count boosting and promotions. I’m personally happy with the compensation trade-off of making startup pay if it means I get startup culture.
- wonnage 2y agoI feel like the entire industry decided to just copy Google's career ladder in 2012 and now we have a bunch of titles pulled out of thin air. People talk about being a staff engineer like it's a concept that existed forever but it truly feels like a few influential companies just made up the term and willed it into existence.
- tjpnz 2y agoHow do you play "the game"?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jrs235 2y ago*I think you meant "(you weren't going to be solving real problems, you were there to boost your managers head count)". Probably too late to fix the typo too.