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Tech company career ladders

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Re: Tech company career ladders

#171

Post by s2g »

sheepmullet wrote: post #27
maxxxxx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. From my experience as contractor I think bigger companies are often better and more predictable places to work. There are some small companies that are great but a lot of them don't pay well and are run by people who care only about themselves.

> From my experience as contractor As a contractor you have essentially already taken a deal where you get paid a premium but have no expectation of career growth. If you have no expectations of career growth at work then big companies are fantastic.

> If you have no expectations of career growth at work then big companies are fantastic.

Pretty much.

You can end up in a spot where you can grow fast.

Or you can end up stagnating for years (me).

Re: Tech company career ladders

#172

Post by akhilcacharya »

Arcten wrote: post #123
akhilcacharya wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because working as an SWE in bigtech can pay 2-3x as much? Including signing a FB new grad can make up to ~$225k in their first year. There aren’t many industries where this is possible with a bachelors or less.

Not that it detracts from your point, but the best offers I've seen for FB new grad are 115k salary, 270k/4 RSUs, and 100k signing, giving ~280k first year.

I mentioned $225k because that's the baseline from what I understand. Rockstars can get $100k signing and more RSUs.

I'm very sad I'll never get that...

Re: Tech company career ladders

#173

Post by akhilcacharya »

mrep wrote: post #115
akhilcacharya wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because working as an SWE in bigtech can pay 2-3x as much? Including signing a FB new grad can make up to ~$225k in their first year. There aren’t many industries where this is possible with a bachelors or less.

Also, most SWE in big tech aren't working crazy hours like investment banking.

They really aren't. I have friends at bulge bracket banks that easily worked 12 hours a day and sometimes weekends. At Amazon I was hard pressed to find anybody work more than 10 in the office on crunch weeks.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#174

Post by s2g »

zwkrt wrote: post #25
kevan wrote: post #17

If anyone's wondering SDE2/L5 at Amazon is the first 'career' role on the engineering ladder.

Is that true? I would have guessed it was 3 based on the expected level of responsibility of the respective roles. As an engineer I felt like L5 was a position that meant I could trust the coworker to be effective, but I would be wary of joining a team that had no L6s.

It's a dumb policy, but it's true.

I was on a team with no one above SDE-I. That was bad.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#175

Post by wallflower »

kamura wrote: post #100
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…

Its definitely an important quality to be able to sweet talk and create pleasant relationships with the other colleagues. But for myself it becomes really hard to do so with people, with whom my relationship might have downgraded, which in a working environment can have a serious impact in your progression, your evaluations and how much respect other people actually give you. On the tech side, I have also felt that m…

Have you checked out your local meetup groups? Whether you are located in the city or the suburbs, birds of a feather like to flock together.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#176

Post by newfoundglory »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #165
newfoundglory wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I got this information from my research in the 90s, and it’s definitely valid today. Your own citizenship does not change, but your children will be eligible to register as a British citizen through form MN1 Section 3(2)

> To qualify under this section, the parent who is British by descent must have been born to a parent who was a British citizen otherwise than by descent (or if that person died, then they would have been a British citizen otherwise than by descent but for their death). The British citizen by descent parent must have lived in the UK (or, if the child was born on or after 21 May 2002, in a British overseas territory) for a continuous period of 3 years at any time before the child’s birth. During that period they should not have absences exceeding 270 days. The application must be made whilst the child is under 18 years of age. The 3 year residence requirement for the parent does not need to be met if the child is stateless.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Re: Tech company career ladders

#177

Post by newfoundglory »

biztos wrote: post #146
newfoundglory wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a British citizen, you can move to any country in the EU. If you marry your girlfriend, she can move with you, and other countries in the EU will not require her to show income to move with you. You could be there in a few months, without waiting for companies to notice you. Source: am British citizen by descent, have lived in France. Edit: and then to move to Britain from an EU country she doesn't need to sho…

I might have this wrong, but last I checked IIRC the deal is your non-EU spouse has a right to live with you (assuming you're an EU national) in any EU country other than your own. She would also have a work permit, should she choose to work. In your own country the local immigration rules apply to your non-EU spouse. So for a UK citizen with a Taiwanese wife it would be extremely simple (until Brexit of course) to m…

As another commenter mentioned, it is known as the Surinder Singh application - you have to show that you are genuine residents of the other EU country, and then your home country has to treat you as they would any other couple with the right to live in the EU - https://www.gov.uk/family-permit/surinder-singh

Re: Tech company career ladders

#178

Post by newfoundglory »

keont wrote: post #62
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…

God fucking damnit. With that amount of knowledge and detail, I hope you end when you are comfortable to be, and accepted as well. This situations seem so fucking ridicolous to me. Any country would be fortunate to have someone like you.

“This amount of knowledge” appears to be a canonical example of “just enough knowledge to be dangerous”. It appears that he’s spent years arranging his life under a false understanding of the relevant laws that could have been cleared up by a question on immihelp, or ten minutes with a UK immigration lawyer.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#179

Post by sokoloff »

mercutio2 wrote: post #147
sokoloff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar story here. Most PIPs do end in termination or voluntary resignation, but I have seen some engineers completely turn around and blossom under the focus and structure (and frankly, scrutiny) that a PIP provides. Sometimes people just don't know how to work or how to accomplish what's expected of them and outward observation of lack of productivity can miss the underlying cause that might be correctable. (It's…

Are PIPs public knowledge at your BigCo of choice? Sounds like your (peripheral) experience has been positive, so not criticizing, just curious. I’ve always treated PIPs as something only to be discussed between manager and struggling employee. One of the most painful things for me in administering PIPs is not the “you are on thin ice, here’s a bunch more structure and documentation” part, but rather, the requirement…

> Are PIPs public knowledge at your BigCo of choice?

We try to have them not be. I'm an exec and have 5 tribes reporting into me for years, so I've had the opportunity/obligation to discuss, strategize, and track the outcome of a couple dozen PIPs in my org over the last decade.

Leaders spending extra time and attention on team members who are struggling is no secret and doesn't need to be. (It's not like the rest of the team doesn't have any idea who is struggling.) It's only the "PIP-p bit" that is formally secret.

I had initially thought of a PIP as a ceremonial formality to be processed along the path to a lawsuit-free termination. Having seen them play out over the years, I now think that's an overly skeptical viewpoint.

Re: Tech company career ladders

#180

Post by audleman »

fyfy18 wrote: post #40

Does anyone else feel really put off on the idea of working at a big tech corporation by articles like this? If I wanted to play the career game, I would have studyied something more business related and got a graduate job at somewhere like KPMG.

I worked in startups for 10 years, now I'm at my first big corporate gig.

I'd say that it's not as bad as it sounds, as dramatic stories tend to find their way up the HN ranking.

Working for big corp you have to pay the "corporate tax", which is this sort of inhuman set of corporate rules. As a free human being it feels really weird and offputting. What's really weird is the people who have been here for their entire careers and don't see that it's weird. Somebody described it like growing up in a dysfunctional family; it feels normal to you.

Anyhow, you can also keep your humanity and look at the rules as a minor annoyance that doesn't have to get you down. You can also think about it as part of getting a much larger paycheck. Some of my co-workers are ready to throw that away to work on their passion, but I quite like it.

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