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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?

#351

Post by mtlynch »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #343
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…

I want to do something with AI/ML and recipes also but monetizing a passion is not always possible. Have you seen the NYTs open source recipe ingredient parser? +1 for moving to a less expensive area and ‘buying back’ some of your own time. I did this a long time ago and have seldom regretted it.

>Have you seen the NYTs open source recipe ingredient parser?

That's actually what I based mine on. I wrote a series of blog posts explaining how I did it:

https://mtlynch.io/resurrecting-1/

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

#352

Post by mtlynch »

timClicks wrote: post #338
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…

Hey Michael - have been following your story for several months. Disappointed to hear that the recipe parsing idea didn't work out for you.

Thanks for reading! Yeah, it's a shame but I expected that I'd have lots of ideas that don't work out. I'm trying to maximize what I learn from them and minimize the amount of time it takes to find out if an idea is viable.

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

#353

Post by DesiLurker »

mpweiher wrote: post #238
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #51

Ex-Amazon (and ex-Vmware) here. Worked at AWS from 2008 to 2014 (Europe, then Asia, then USA), then Vmware (also USA) from 2014 to 2016. I then spent ~1 year at a startup, as CTO - the experience sucked, and I consider it to simply be a big mistake. 1.5 years ago, I left that job, worked on a new idea, and in August 2017 I founded a startup, Fabrica, with two other friends. I am still there. No salary. Bootstrapped u…

> money is to buy things that matter to you. Yes. > To me, not working at a corporation matters. Yes. Don't see myself every going back. And don't have to. "Money is coined freedom" -- Fyodor Dostoevsky If your money is not buying you freedom...you're doing it wrong. :-)

dude .. that really gets the point across. I'll remember it.

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

#354

Post by rpcastagna »

oblio wrote: post #125
tinktank wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the net worth of an L6 for 8 years at Google?

Since from what I hear a fresh grad in the Bay Area gets $100k+ just in cash, we could extrapolate. I'm guessing that's at least $150k (probably more like $200k+ in today's market) in total compensation for year. Add about $20k+ in cash and probably the close to the same in Google shares per level, that would make it easily $400k per year. So he would have gotten $3.2 million, I can't imagine his expenses being highe…

You're so low it's actually kind of uncomfortable.

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

#355

Post by the_clarence »

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…

I’ve heard about that pressure to have an impact (you have an impact score right?)

What if you refuse to write up how impactful you were? Or what if you do it lightly? I usually don’t care much about this sort of things as long as I’m doing my job.

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

#356

Post by derefr »

mulmen wrote: post #349
derefr wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If what you do doesn't make an impact for customers and/or other teams in the organization, was it really worth doing? If what you are doing isn't making an impact, why is it being assigned to you in the first place? Or, to put that another way: a worker is hired to do things. Their comparative advantage is in doing ; time they spend in any other role than doing is labor that would have been better allocated/delega…

This is so right and also so different from reality that I had to read it twice for it to register.

Assignment-by-comparative-advantage comes pretty close to existing in exactly one case: a military, in war-time, after the war has gone on for a few years, when opportunities to prove one's managerial competence "for real"† have allowed for a winnowing of the incompetent hired-in-peacetime officers, and gaps in the ranks have been filled by promotions for meritorious service.

This ideal state is what people tend to be vaguely gesturing toward when they say they want "meritocracy." Even this state isn't really meritocratic, but it certainly has a management structure that knows what it wants and is actively steering every action of their subordinates to get the highest-ROI goals accomplished sooner than later; and where there is enough demand for skilled work that skilled workers are reserved to exclusively do the work they do best.

† The assumption (that seems to cash out at least somewhat) being that when two armies of equal size clash, the winner will be the one with a better leader-of-leaders, the one who has instilled a better management philosophy into their officers, such that the army as a whole ends up being run well. If there was some way to make entire departments of a company "fight", the way that two army battalions can engage in mock battle to determine their overall relative competence, capitalism might actually be able to succeed in evading the Peter Principle. Anyone have a good idea of how to do that?

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

#358

Post by quickthrower2 »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #95
sjg007 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel disconnected in Western Mass? I am not sure how remote you are but I live in a remote area now but work remotely and feel it. Hell, even in the Bay area I was remote-is since the commute was isolating. All I can say about the culture there is that you have to job hop to develop relationships that may lead to future opportunities. *Btw your cartoon on your blog is good. If that's your original creation you…

Western Mass is awesome. The environment's beautiful, housing can be cheap, and drinking water is some of the best in the country. People are generally less rules-oriented and clique-oriented than in the Boston area. The art and music scenes are much better. The "progressive activism" community is thriving, but you can also hunt with a rifle on private property. Food is cheap and there are tons of thriving local farm…

> you're constipated you can roll through Springfield and get shot at just like you can in East Cambridge or Mattapan

You should write for the Lonely Planet :-)

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

#359

Post by the_clarence »

antognini wrote: post #282
mdasen wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eno…

What about L1 or L2?

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

#360

Post by twiceaday »

antognini wrote: post #282
mdasen wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eno…

This is no longer the case. L4 is the new coasting position.
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