Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech company career ladders

rachelbythebay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 188 posts

Re: Tech company career ladders

#81

Post by newfoundglory »

ensiferum wrote: post #69
peterburkimsher wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Home" is a place I can settle, start a family, go back to and live in. I grew up near Geneva. My parents bought a house in France because it was cheaper. My dad crossed the border every day to work at CERN and take me to international school. I can't be Swiss, because my parents weren't resident. I can't be French, because I wasn't born there. The nearest French hospital is 2 hours away through the mountains and CER…

Sorry I don't buy this. You make this sound as if you were stateless which of course is not the case or you wouldn't be able to be in Taiwan either unless you sneaked into there and are in fact working illegally.

He's not stateless, he's British.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#82

Post by jaggederest »

tejasmanohar wrote: post #24

Within a job ladder, you then have levels. They tend to map onto years of experience, *whether you have a degree or not*, what kind of degree it is, how well you do in your interviews, how much money you ask for or hint about, and possibly how well you did as an intern. I don't work at a big corp. Has anyone seen career growth stall directly because they lack a (bachelor's) degree (in CS)? This article doesn't direct…

No, but I have seen people's career stall because they worked on the wrong project.

As my manager put it at the time "Nobody gets promoted for reducing the size of a tire fire by 50%".

You have to be really strategic about what you work on, and for who. It's not about the technical contributions, it's about finding and retaining a sponsor higher in the organization. You help them torpedo competing initiatives and increase the headcount they manage (headcount is points), and they help you navigate the political climate to get onto the project du jour.

I worked at an old school BigCo for 3 years and we shipped not a single product from a team of ~300 people if you count peripherally involved people. The only thing that saved us was that we managed and maintained a small software tool used directly by the CTO of the conglomerate, which we could wave as a ward against interference.

Some of those 300 got promotions, some got transferred (far away from their home and family, into different divisions that they had no experience with, aka exile), and some got laid off, even though as far as I could tell none of us had any ability to affect the end result (priorities changed too quickly to make any headway). For the record, I quit.

Mean time between reorganizations, management shakeups, and goal shifts was ~2.5 months.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#83

Post by [deleted] »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #30

"inhumane quasi-slavery visa situation that we do to our friends who happen to be born somewhere else" - thank you so much for this rant. I've spent the last 3 years in Taiwan sitting tight and waiting until I have enough work experience to qualify for the Skilled Migrant Category visa for New Zealand (Canada and Australia are also options, with similar requirements). Now I have those 3 years, I'm trying to get a job…

[deleted]

Re: Tech company career ladders

#84

Post by knicholes »

kibibyte wrote: post #63
busterarm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah except your promotion isn't usually a level, it's lead, manager, director, or chief. You leverage that and walk to a slightly larger company in that new role after a couple of years. Then rinse & repeat once or twice and you just shaved off years of slogging through the FAANGs. After all of the above though, I would put 2-3 years in at a FAANG and then do whatever the heck I want.

FAANG == Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google (First time I heard of it; had to look it up)

No post body was provided.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#85

Post by ryanobjc »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #12

i hesitate to pursue a career of any kind, especially tech, because of all this. you have to have a pretty good personality and charisma in order to work well with your manager, or else you will make no progress which means you get fired. people are born with all kinds of quirks, peculiarities and qualities. while im a better programmer than most of the people who i went to college with, i have a special problem with…

I mean, what other magical field allows otherwise difficult to get along with individuals to have a full time job? There’s tons of leeway for weird socialization in tech. While the soft skill requirement goes up year over year, it’s still not the same as many other fields. I guess night time clerk at a gas station...?

anyways all these social skills are learnable. But only if you think they are, truly believe it, and only if you try. It might be hard. But hey.

Also consider therapy. Consider it a way of learning how to operate your mind.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#86

Post by WorkLifeBalance »

kibibyte wrote: post #63
busterarm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah except your promotion isn't usually a level, it's lead, manager, director, or chief. You leverage that and walk to a slightly larger company in that new role after a couple of years. Then rinse & repeat once or twice and you just shaved off years of slogging through the FAANGs. After all of the above though, I would put 2-3 years in at a FAANG and then do whatever the heck I want.

FAANG == Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google (First time I heard of it; had to look it up)

I feel like Netflix is only in there to make the acronym, does it really belong?

It's an odd collection, the others are tech giants yet there's no microsoft and netflix thrown in. Netflix is big but it's not Apple big.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#87

Post by north_east_dev »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #79
north_east_dev wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sucks for your situation. One question though (I'm sure you've heard before)... > For her to move to the UK requires her to meet income requirements of £18,600 per year What about if you got married?

Marriage doesn't help! "Partnership" is recognised by immigration, and that requires living together, sharing the same address and bank account for a year. This is because of a cultural shift in the meaning of marriage. It used to be one man and one woman, for life. Divorce, polygamy, homosexuality, and marriages of convenience changed that definition. I'm not trying to get distracted about whether those groups of pe…

Ok, it sounds like you've thought things through and best of luck with it.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#88

Post by newfoundglory »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #52
fjsolwmv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a country to call home?

"Home" is a place I can settle, start a family, go back to and live in. I grew up near Geneva. My parents bought a house in France because it was cheaper. My dad crossed the border every day to work at CERN and take me to international school. I can't be Swiss, because my parents weren't resident. I can't be French, because I wasn't born there. The nearest French hospital is 2 hours away through the mountains and CER…

Oh, and just to address this concern:

> future children would be stateless.

If you had children who were stateless by birth, they would become eligible for British citizenship. Also, if you live in the UK for three consecutive years, then any children born after that period will be able to inherit British citizenship from you.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#89

Post by gregknicholson »

WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #86
kibibyte wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG == Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google (First time I heard of it; had to look it up)

I feel like Netflix is only in there to make the acronym, does it really belong? It's an odd collection, the others are tech giants yet there's no microsoft and netflix thrown in. Netflix is big but it's not Apple big.

The acronym I've heard is GAFAM: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft.

Judging by http://enwp.org/Largest_companies as of right now, the order should probably be AGMAF (Apple first) instead.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#90

Post by circlefavshape »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #52
fjsolwmv wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have a country to call home?

"Home" is a place I can settle, start a family, go back to and live in. I grew up near Geneva. My parents bought a house in France because it was cheaper. My dad crossed the border every day to work at CERN and take me to international school. I can't be Swiss, because my parents weren't resident. I can't be French, because I wasn't born there. The nearest French hospital is 2 hours away through the mountains and CER…

AFAIK if you're a British citizen you're entitled to live in Ireland, and any children born in Ireland will have Irish citizenship
Post reply on HN