231–240 of 447 posts
Yourself. 13 years, 14 in December, as freelancer, I get to work directly with people who have problems, my software really helps them instead of being an internal tool that will get reinvented in 5 years at big corporations. I choose my own projects, I am constantly learning in different industries, meeting (both virtually and in person) people from all 5 continents and while the pay is great my biggest motivator is…
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counter point: after working for small owner-run companies where the owner took everything personally, I will forever only work in big tech. The owner ran the show and was emotional. Every time a competitor launched something new, they would change course and race to copy them. Ended up delivering nothing and eventually laid off after 1.5 years. At a big company, everyone is spending someone else's money and the peop…
The hard part about choosing the small business route is you have to do a really good job (and somewhat get lucky) at screening the owner and company. I had only ever worked at mega corps my entire carrier until my latest job at a Now I could have missed some red flags or just had bad luck and regretted it/had a bad experience but just passing a year in I'm happier than ever with work and really excited about the fut…
In large companies things get standardized, so there’s a more likely chance of an average experience.
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This is good advice, with the caveat that the owner needs to not be a dick. I've worked in environments like this both with amazing owners and with truly horrifying owners.
Yeah, watch out for small companies that are desperately trying to get big but have been small or oscillated between 10-40 people seemingly from the beginning of time. There's a particular type of person who runs these businesses and that person is extremely common. They cannot delegate and micromanage everything so once they get beyond their ability to manage every facet of operations themselves, their leadership ab…
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This is accurate in my experience. Actually, I'd say you're lucky if you find a small company that isn't at least mildly dysfunctional.
Agreed. I'd be curious what people count as "small" these days though. Less than 100? Less than 50?
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All FAANG/MANGA are two years stints. Its a common experience but of course many people stay longer and are comfortable with that traditional view of being married to a corporation. A) Netflix is an ideal first company in the Silicon Valley circuit because their compensation package is a simple formula of , which makes negotiating the next place much easier because you’re more liquid already and already know what the…
Why are they two year stints when usually you're getting RSUs as part of your package that often have a 4 year vest?
> There's an offshore team in Traansylvania busy making it a legacy codebase As someone working for a US company in Mexico, I take offense at that :(.
I loved every minute of my time working at Netflix. Great, talented coworkers who I could constantly learn from, management chain from bottom to top of former engineers, so they understood when you would say, "I worked on this for a week but have no results because it didn't work". Plenty of resources to do what you needed to do, and lots of autonomy to do what you thought was right. Very little process and upper man…
I also don’t have a college degree but have the experience to back me up. I’ve noticed at organizations where they hire fresh out of college or bootcamps is just a bunch of people that would rather talk computer science than write code that can be read in the future.
The best companies are hard to find gems that look like shit from the outside. For example, one company I worked for would dispute every Glassdoor review that wasn’t a 5 star saying it was a disgruntled former employee. It was a highly toxic company with amazing reviews on Glassdoor. Compare that with the company I’m at today that has just over a 3 stars.
The best companies that aren’t complete shit will empower you and encourage you to be your best. They understand they hire for your expertise and get the fuck out of your way. They demand results and also realize that results can take time. Not many people are able to work in this type of environment. You’re essentially looking for a company who treats employees like a team. Just like any professional sports team, the worst players are cut. However, the company also understands balance and sees excessive working as a problem. You’re looking for a company where the one doing the hiring is looking for someone smarter than they are.
In my opinion, the best way would be to read the reviews, and I mean really read the reviews you find online. Why are people saying what they say? Are they new hire reviews? Research the executive team and anyone else you can find at the company on LinkedIn. Before you go to any interview do research on the company and come prepared with questions you want answered based on your findings. Ask the company why you should work for them without being direct. Try talking to others who work there and get a feel for their personalities. If you smoke, go find where the smokers are and start conversations with them. If you get an offer, negotiate a contact for 90 days. During those 90 days, you want to keep interviewing the company. How’s the onboarding? Are they setting you up for success? Is there politics? Are there any assholes? Look for any red flags. There might be warning flags but the point is, you both are testing each other out.
Every company will have its pros and cons. I’ve decided to work at smaller companies which pay a little less but I have more opportunities to learn and grow vs a larger company where I’m a one trick pony.
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Agreed, liking it here so far. But you do have to make sure you get on an interesting team. I wouldn't want to be on a lot of different teams here.
Is it really true that once you pass the interview and orientation you get to choose the team you want to work on?
Internal transfers after 1 year are pretty easy. I've seen people transfer earlier, if it's clear the fit between employee and team isn't there.
I've been at Facebook for about a year and a half. Before this I was at startups in the marketing and financial industries. We've been under scrutiny for the whole time that I've been there, and the company is pretty unpopular from a vocal population on here, but it's been really nice to work for. We obviously have job security, and I've been very impressed with the management chain above me. At least on my team, the…