Ask HN: Ex-FAANG developers, where are you now and why? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by sjg007 » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

daveoflynn wrote: post #155

lemming wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a contractor in the UK, I paid less tax than an employee would. HMRC brought in IR35 to try to combat that, but at the time I was contracting (early 2000's) most contractors were still paying less tax - I'm not sure if that's stricter these days. I was in London working in web & finance at the time, so it was a fairly distorted market. I did get bitten by the dot com crash, but even so I was only out of work for a…

Contractors still do a bit better than employees, though HMRC keep talking about seriously cracking down on the practice.

Cracking down seems like a bad idea.. you lose dynamic flexibility on both sides. What would the upside be?

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

#192

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #10

johan_larson wrote: post #7

I left Google after three years as an SDE because I had really really had enough of my bosses, I wasn't promoted when I figured I deserved it, and a project that meant a lot to me wasn't getting the staffing it needed to succeed. I left for a more senior position at a smaller, less prestigious software company, though I've moved again since. Right now I'm working remotely from Toronto for a Silicon Valley start-up. U…

> That famous proverb about Japanese nails absolutely applies. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by twblalock » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #156

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…

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 engineers disdain self-promotion. However, self-promotion is not a bad thing if you really are good at your job, because it opens up opportunities to have an even greater impact, which is good for you and for the company.

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

#194

Post by kevstev » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

thrwthrwthrwy wrote: post #179

kevstev wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a general sense, both. I am working in finance at a hedge fund now, but for a more or less pure tech group. My previous job was for a large e-commerce player, but before that I spent about a decade doing various forms of algo trading and HFT.

What skills do you need to work as a software developer in algo trading and HFT? What sort of job titles should you be searching for? Most jobs in this space seem to want Statistics or Applied Math related majors. I want to look for software development jobs in HFT.

Generally low level C++ will do it. I have been out of the game for about 5 years now, but when I left the game was all about speed speed speed. We weren't trading smarter anymore, it was just about trading fast. If you are faster, you don't just put an order out there with an opinion that the market will move in your favor, you get an immediate risk free return (risk free assuming operationally everything works as expected). I also worked on the "benchmark strategy" side- VWAP/TWAP type algos, when they were very new, and there was some statistics involved but the math was fairly simple. I haven't kept up with that side of the space, I am sure they have added complexity, but fundamentally you are looking at how a particular security has traded in the past- IE how much volume does it tend to trade at 10am vs 10:30 vs 11am, compare that with market statistics for the current day- is it high or low volume, is volatility higher- and apply some heuristics about what % of a parent order to put in the market at any given time.

This is a bit separate from the actual execution in the market, which is called smart order routing, and that just focuses on speed.

The best book on this still seems to be the now almost 10 year old "Algorithmic Trading and DMA" by Barry Johnson. If you want to get a feel for the strategies involved, this is your best bet: https://www.amazon.com/Algorithmic-Trading-DMA-introduction-...

As for job titles, they tend to be generic like "infrastructure developer, strategist" but look for key words like "Smart Order Router, Algorithmic Trading, Index Arb (itrage), statistical arbitrage, market making, dark pool. I put two of those in Morgan Stanley's site and got a bunch of relevant hits. Posting numbers 3119617 3120636 are actual jobs in this space.

A better bet is to just look at job openings for the companies who specialize in this stuff- Virtu, Jump, Hudson River Trading, Citadel Securities, etc...

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

#195

Post by ccantana » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

dxhdr wrote: post #162

softawre wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what % of people you lose right there because you're trying to be smart/clean/whatever with "the email" link.

It lost me until I came back and read this comment; I did not think to click "the email." The page reads as a standard newsletter subscription form so I just closed the tab.

Helpful feedback, thanks. Just updated the landing page to make things clearer.

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

#196

Post by chrisweekly » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

lemming wrote: post #88

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…

Great article about the promotion process and the employee dynamic at Google. It very accurately summarises much of why I quit there so quickly after coming in via an acquisition. That conversation made me realize that I’m not Google. I provide a service to Google in exchange for money. I was very lucky to have a friend who taught me that very early (not about Google specifically, the same applies to any company). Wo…

I'm in a similar situation wrt self-employment / consulting after many years of trad. FT roles. Now making more $, and have way, way, way more control over how I spend my time.

When you wrote

> Freedom is really worth a lot of money, at least for me.

it seemed to imply you took a paycut to gain your freedom. To a degree, I would make that trade-off too. But, your point about contractors making twice [it can easily be 3x] what FT colleagues do, made it sound like you don't need to trade money for freedom, rather enjoy both. Hope that's the case for you too! If not, know that it can be!

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

#197

Post by johannes1234321 » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

romed wrote: post #115

drewg123 wrote: post #76

Does it count if you move from one to the other? I spent 2 years as a L5 (Senior SWE) at Google in MTV. I could not negotiate a deal to work remotely under my VP or find a team under a different VP allowing remote work that I was interested in (and which was interested in me).. I left after promotion to staff (L6) and went to Netflix where I work on the Openconnect CDN. Netflix is so much smaller that I feel like I h…

Congratulations on making Staff after only 2 years. You’d think it would be alarming to Google how often engineers leave immediately after being promoted.

What's the benefit of waiting for promotion and then leaving? Any benefits you gain from that? Naïvely I'd assume it'd make sense to collect some of the extra cash for a while.

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

#198

Post by abc_lisper » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

romed wrote: post #115

drewg123 wrote: post #76

Does it count if you move from one to the other? I spent 2 years as a L5 (Senior SWE) at Google in MTV. I could not negotiate a deal to work remotely under my VP or find a team under a different VP allowing remote work that I was interested in (and which was interested in me).. I left after promotion to staff (L6) and went to Netflix where I work on the Openconnect CDN. Netflix is so much smaller that I feel like I h…

Congratulations on making Staff after only 2 years. You’d think it would be alarming to Google how often engineers leave immediately after being promoted.

Why do people do this? Wont the promotion mostly pay in stock anyways?

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

#199

Post by sjg007 » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:41 PM UTC

kangax wrote: post #127

I was E6 at Facebook for 1.5 years. Left due to a combination of not finding the right team/project and constant pressure to work on something impactful rather than fixing existing issues I cared about. This seems to be a common issue at FB with senior engineers joining and having to ramp up quickly (2 of the senior teammates left while I was there for the same reasons). Currently at WeWork where you don't have to wr…

"multi-page assessment of all the impactful things you've done" ... ?

So things aren't organized along a product line?

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

#200

Post by paulcole » Thu, Oct 11, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

jakevoytko wrote: post #26

I worked on the same team at Google for 4.5 years, and left 3 years ago. I was bored; I was getting better at doing the same thing, but I wasn't expanding as an engineer. I worked on a free product. We had no market incentives to make time-boxed decisions and could declare anything we did a success whether it was or not, which drove me nuts. I was at the New York office, so when the company got bad press you could us…

Sadly a lot of what's featured on Etsy now is mass produced crap masquerading as handmade.

I get why it was essential to the business. You can only grow so much as a small truly handmade market. Then it's OK to sell "vintage" clothing and on and on...