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Tech company career ladders

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Re: Tech company career ladders

#161

Post by xtracto »

keithnz wrote: post #41
mlazos wrote: post #2

I think this article unfairly paints small companies as some nirvana which is obviously not the case. I have plenty of friends at small companies who feel like their c-suite is filled with sociopaths and because the company is under the radar nobody cares how the employees of said company are treated.

I've always enjoyed working at small companies. I've worked at larger companies which have the "level" concept of employees, it's kindda funny to me now :) In my experience at smaller companies you get treated better, you are a more significant factor to the overall success of the company and there is very little corporate crap which often has silly requirements that get justified by a mystical word of being "profess…

>Though I know it also can go very bad for people in small companies that have mini dictators in charge.

By definition every company has a dictador. They might be "benevolent" and willing to delegate their power to some degree, but at the end of the day, they have the final say.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#162

Post by joshuamorton »

tejasmanohar wrote: post #33
tomerico wrote: post #28

For those looking to compare levels between the mentioned companies, I found http://levels.fyi useful

Can anyone attest to the accuracy of this? Levels have pay ranges , right? If so, does this site portray the lower or higher end of the range? Also, are levels pretty translatable between big corps? Does level at one company have weight when interviewing at another?

Neither. As far as I can tell, levels.fyi is mostly new-hire offers. This is reflected in the mix of compensation (large bonuses are signing, not performance bonuses).

It's also based on relatively small sample sizes. As a result, you get things that are, sort of by accident, mostly within the ranges you would expect for an employee at that level (because new hires normally start lower in-band, but they have large 1-time bonuses to make things up).

So, sometimes they're low in the range. Sometimes they're high in the range. They almost never reflect the actual compensation mix an employee would receive over a sustained time period. Maybe they're better than nothing?

>Also, are levels pretty translatable between big corps? Does level at one company have weight when interviewing at another?

Depends. In my limited experience, these levels are certainly more translatable than other titles (ie. someone who is L5 at facebook is likely to be hired at L5, or at worst L4 if they perform badly in interviews at Google, whereas someone who makes it to Senior SWE at some random software company might not have been exposed to the skills and tech necessary to be considered an L4 at Google or Facebook). That said, its not like a perfectly rigid hierarchy where putting in your time at Microsoft will guarantee you a higher level job at Amazon or whatever.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#163

Post by dilyevsky »

corporateslaver wrote: post #49
sudeepj wrote: post #29

What I also seen is people become victim of your their own success. If you over-achieve in one appraisal cycle it is very bad for you because you have increased your base-level of performance. It is like over-achieving sales target. I have learned the hard way that one needs to spread out the achievements. For example if you have good number of ideas then don't spew out all of them in one go. Introduce them say in ea…

This is true. Huge success leads to a raise and massive expectations, which can be extremely stressful.

It’s super easy to game this in a large company - switch teams immediately after promo.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#164

Post by peterburkimsher »

GlennS wrote: post #102
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…

Is there a reason you need to be sponsored by a company? Australia has a skilled independent points-based visa which gives you the permanent right to live and work. I've actually just been granted mine about a week ago. I take it that New Zealand doesn't have an equivalent? I've written up a little log of what I had to do, which you might find helpful: https://recklessclicking.com/notes/australian-immigration.ht...

Your log is very helpful, thank you! I've done a lot of research and made a lot of life choices to plan this. MEng in Electronic Systems Engineering from a UK university satisfies the education requirement from a Washington Accord country. 3 years continuous relevant work experience was the hardest because I like travelling and moving around, but I stayed here long enough I have that now. Maybe I don't have enough money to do the skilled independent visa, but if I could borrow the capital, I think I have the points.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#165

Post by peterburkimsher »

newfoundglory wrote: post #88
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…

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.

Children born overseas (e.g. France, Taiwan) can't be British. Children born in the UK from me can be British, I think.

I was in the UK for university and a Christian volunteer group, over a period of 5 years. I emailed the Home Office to ask to "upgrade" my citizenship, but they said there's no way to do that. So I'm not sure where you got that 3 year limit from. (But maybe this changed since 2012 when I was last there).

Re: Tech company career ladders

#166

Post by peterburkimsher »

justin66 wrote: post #126
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…

> If she and I had children, they would be Taiwanese from her, and would have to go to the military and learn how to kill foreigners. There's a conflict of interest - I don't want children to kill me. Taiwan isn't the only country you mentioned that has compulsory military service. Your children would "kill you" (wtf?) if they grew up in Switzerland as well.

Yes, that's correct. That's one major reason I'm not planning to move to Switzerland, Austria, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, or Israel. The choice of other countries (EU, Canada, Australia, NZ) is more flexible, and mostly emotional based on my experience of working holiday/summer jobs in those places.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#167

Post by peterburkimsher »

digianarchist wrote: post #99
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…

If you come into Canada using the Express Entry immigrantiom system then you land as a PR and so does your wife. No qualification period. Also Canada recognises commonlaw marriage.

Yes, Canada's Express Entry is one of my top-two preferences. The problem is if I then leave for more than 2 years, I lose PR. So it's not really "Permanent". I'd have to stay for 4 years and become a citizen. But that's ok - I enjoyed my Working Holiday there, and I could see myself being there for 4 years. My girlfriend said she prefers NZ though (and NZ has tougher requirements) so I'm sticking with that for now. If anything happens to our relationship though, and we decide it's better to be apart, then I'll be on the next plane to Canada.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#168

Post by sangnoir »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #164
GlennS wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a reason you need to be sponsored by a company? Australia has a skilled independent points-based visa which gives you the permanent right to live and work. I've actually just been granted mine about a week ago. I take it that New Zealand doesn't have an equivalent? I've written up a little log of what I had to do, which you might find helpful: https://recklessclicking.com/notes/australian-immigration.ht...

Your log is very helpful, thank you! I've done a lot of research and made a lot of life choices to plan this. MEng in Electronic Systems Engineering from a UK university satisfies the education requirement from a Washington Accord country. 3 years continuous relevant work experience was the hardest because I like travelling and moving around, but I stayed here long enough I have that now. Maybe I don't have enough mo…

Congratulations on your what you have achieved so far and good luck in the future! Not a lot of people know the amount of research, effort, discipline, money, sacrifice and luck go into immigration.

Hopefully your points are not just over the threshold - if they are, beware of losing your "youth points" and going below the minimum accepted points when you turn 32 or 35 (or whatever the limit is for the countries you're targeting). The years go by so fast!

Re: Tech company career ladders

#169

Post by s2g »

QGmLe wrote: post #105
WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is a stock thing. All of those companies have well performing stocks.

Microsoft stock is up 80% in the last 2 years.

edit: and they are ahead of google in market cap again. Been going back and forth for the last little while.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#170

Post by s2g »

dolguldur wrote: post #91
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)

AGAMF - Let's keep it dynamic and take the top 5 tech companies sorted by market cap.

Should be AMGAF right now.

This seems hard to keep accurate.

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