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Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#281

Post by justinlilly »

I left Google after 3 years to join a startup in the project management space. It was clear that I could work on a product that made lots of money (ads) or was in front of lots of people (maps), but I couldn't actually make a difference in how the company operated. So I joined as employee #2 of a startup and eventually managed some people.

I now work at Amazon. I understand that I'm working for a company who will pay me very well in exchange for me to show up and write code and not think about engineering any other time without prior allowance (lol opensource). This is a bargain that I feel fine with, now that I've entered into it with eyes open.

Eventually, the money won't be enough to keep me and I'll look around for a medium sized startup that sells thing to people for money and has a sustainable business model (aka not into hypergrowth).

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#282

Post by antognini »

mdasen wrote: post #260
the_clarence wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is L5?

L5 is one of Google's internal levels. They're putting it there to let people know where they were in Google's hierarchy and they note that it denotes Senior. From what I know, people generally start at 3 right out of school.

To expand a little bit, you usually start at L3 as a fresh graduate, and then are expected to be promoted to L4 within ~2-3 years, and then L5 after another 2-3 years (although it could be shorter). L5 is considered a "terminal" position, in the sense that once you get to that level you're no longer expected to get promoted. (L3 and L4 are, by contrast, more "up or out", where if you don't get promoted after long enough you can get fired.) I actually met an L5 engineer at Google who had been there since 2002. Promotions to L6, L7, etc. start to get exponentially more difficult.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#283

Post by rhymenoceros »

shimon wrote: post #152
mywittyname wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is running a startup better than being the CTO of a startup?

Not OP, but there are some common problems, assuming they were a non-founder CTO: - Instead of leading an eng team, maybe CTO meant "our entire tech team". - Maybe the founders sucked, or had personal conflicts. - Maybe the business was broken in ways a technologist can't fix. - Maybe the business was viable but this individual did not enjoy being a part of it. Could be anything from "there are too many salespeople y…

Indeed. Also, non-founder CTOs often find themselves in the odd position of being responsible for success and delivery but not being able to influence overall company strategy, particularly in tech-focused companies. It's almost like being a second-class citizen of the leadership team.

Not all companies are like this, but smaller ones that are looking for CTOs (whether due to founder splits or turnover) often are.

The other thing that sometimes happens is when a CTO position is carved out for a company that is doing well but needs "maturity," typically due to missed deadlines/etc. This can be a pretty terrible experience unless this sort of thing floats your boat - a lot of the downsides of working for a large company, but still the risks of working for a small one.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#284

Post by MoBattah »

a13n wrote: post #4

Running my own bootstrapped SaaS startup, Canny ( https://canny.io ). I've always wanted to do a startup. Last year I wrote a blog post about the biggest lessons learned during the transition. Seems pretty relevant. https://hackernoon.com/software-engineer-to-saas-founder-c16... Also left SF to be a digital nomad. SF is so expensive and if you aren't fundraising you don't need to be there. There's so much of the worl…

Digital nomad - are you AirBnBing around various countries or are you staying in coliving/coworking communities?

I ask because I'm interested in doing that soon.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#285

Post by jkchu »

logfromblammo wrote: post #138
pjc50 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems mad that something like "ingredient parsing" could ever be a business; on the other hand, a decade ago I was sharing a house with a PhD student who was trying to do effectively the same thing with chemistry papers to extract relevant formulae. Worked well for clearly defined things like "1,1,1-trichloroethane", less well for colloquial things like "formaldehyde" or, god help you, "lead". (Is a "lead research…

Lead (/leed/) researcher - most senior of your research team. Plumbologist - a person researching lead (/led/). Plumbous researcher - researcher made primarily from lead (/led/). Probably an AI that deeply resents the materials-based engineering flaws in its processor core and robotic reality interface. Lead (/leed/) plumbologist - most senior of a research team investigating lead (/led/). Plumbous plumbologist - afo…

Well that clears that confusion up :)

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#286

Post by mtlynch »

megaman8 wrote: post #175
mtlynch wrote: post #23

Ex-Googler here. I was a SWE L4 and left after four years in frustration with the promotion process ( https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ ). Since then, I: * Moved out of my $3.3k/mo Manhattan apartment and bought a home for $200k in Western Massachusetts. Paid in cash so I no longer have to pay rent/mortgage. I feel like my time is much less "metered" now because my annual living expenses are so low, I can pursue…

It's a great article. But, I'm always surprised to see people are surprised by this: "That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money." And it's doubly surprising when highly educated/smart people don't understand this. I think there's something fundamentally flawed about our education system that isn't teaching or preparing people for the real world. I think…

I think that's oversimplifying it a bit. I minored in Economics so I'd like to believe I have a decent understanding of it.

The problem isn't that Google just says, "Hi, donate time to us, your corporate overlords, in exchange for nothing." Instead, they make a very reasonable argument of, "You should help your teammates and colleagues."

Imagine that you're on a team with a junior developer. Their feedback is basically worthless to promotion committees because they're low-level. If they say, "Hey, can you help me understand why my code is crashing?" the selfish answer is, "No, if I spent two hours helping you, the benefit I provide to you is not measurable or quantifiable and won't help my case for promotion." But it would also be kind of miserable for everyone if you constantly avoid helping your teammates and only do the absolute minimum required to avoid standing out as egregiously unhelpful.

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#287

Post by formalsystem »

I worked at Microsoft for about 3 years as a product manager and as an applied scientist. Most of the people I worked with were passionate, worked long hours and knew their shit. What drove me to leave eventually was that I had little leverage in deciding what to work on so had little control over what I'd become an expert in.

Right now I'm working solo on a strategy game inspired by the Lebanese Civil war and platforms to make running reinforcement learning algorithms in different environments much easier. TBH, I'm not sure if things will work out but I feel a lot happier and find some comfort in knowing that I'm learning many transferable skills.

As others have mentioned in this thread, I think of this experience as buying out my freedom for a couple of years with a hope that I can extend it should things work out. Contract work would be ideal but I'm still figuring out how to meet good potential clients in my area (Core ML + Data science + Infra)

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#288

Post by notJim »

thecatspaw wrote: post #118
BayAreaSmayArea wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that comes up in these discussions is the concept of “company time”. Company resources is clear cut, but what is company time for a salaried employee? How does that change with being a remote employee? I’ve moved to a strategic product role and honestly work less than an hour a day on average and seldom go into the office. If I decide to work on a side project does that restrict me from git commits between…

> Company resources is clear cut, but what is company time for a salaried employee? Usually salary comes with an expectation of hours per week/month, and usually also comes with a software where you write down your hours, to track overtime, minus time, etc. So all the time you write down in that system, counts as companytime.

You've had this at tech jobs? I've definitely never had to track time at any of my tech jobs (nor have I ever been eligible for overtime .)

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#289

Post by walshemj »

mtlynch wrote: post #23

Ex-Googler here. I was a SWE L4 and left after four years in frustration with the promotion process ( https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ ). Since then, I: * Moved out of my $3.3k/mo Manhattan apartment and bought a home for $200k in Western Massachusetts. Paid in cash so I no longer have to pay rent/mortgage. I feel like my time is much less "metered" now because my annual living expenses are so low, I can pursue…

Interesting how many slots where open for each promotion round /board (in Uk terminology)

I have been in a similar situation at British telecom where the competition was even more intense.

In systems engineering (where most but not all the engineers and developers sat) you would have 16-20 promotion slots from MPG2 to 4 every 15/16 months.

Several hundred people would get through the paper sift to even get an interview - as my boss said get an interview the company was 100% sure that you where capable of performing at that level I had three successive boards and didn't get it.

MPG2 was the entry level grade BT had a super flat structure. Some people where so desperate they would join payphones to get a promotion.

More savvy ones joined the mobile side as they where known for having serious grade inflation

Re: Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why?

#290

Post by walshemj »

twblalock wrote: post #193
technofiend wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote your article: The problem, as I discovered at promotion time, was that none of this was quantifiable. I couldn’t prove that anything I did had a positive impact on Google. If they hornswoggled me into helping them, it’s evidence of their strong leadership qualities. I was just the mindless peon whose work was so irrelevant that it could be pre-empted at a moment’s notice. Don't take this as an ad-homimen att…

This is spot-on, and it's also true in organizations without stack ranking. It's actually not a cynical way to view your job. If what you do doesn't make an impact for customers and/or other teams in the organization, was it really worth doing? I've consistently seen that successful engineers focus on work that has an impact, and they are good at making it known. The first part is obviously good, but a lot of enginee…

Actually it is deeply cynical I have seen:

People aggressively going for promotion and as my team leader said "but he hasn't done any real work for 6 months".

I saw some one going for the first management level spend a million pounds of share holder money and 15 man years redeveloping a system in oracle - Because having a project worth > 1 million and with more than 10 staff was a tick box for promotion.

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