My Time at Snap
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My Time at Snap
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Re: My Time at Snap
#2>He did tell us to use the word “epoch,” but not before explaining what the word meant and that it was not, in fact, the same word as “epic,” to a room full of native English speakers. He then proceeded to opine on what he thought the Latin roots of the word might be, which I’m convinced to this day he was making up on the spot.
"epoch" actually comes from Greek :)
Re: My Time at Snap
#3Prior to the first day of boot camp they flown us to an airport in San Diego, everyone gathered at the USO lounge on the opposite end of the airport to wait for everyone else flying in.
At midnight, a bus rolls in to the parking lot. Everyone was told to line up in a formation, head forward, arms straight and down to the side.
The bus door opens and out pops a drill instructor with the vigor of a tasmanian devil, barking out orders. Everyone got loaded into the bus in orderly fashion and was told to to put our heads down, cradled between our legs. The bus drove around for what seemed like an hour. Later I found out the camp was next door to the airport.
Upon arrival, the bus stopped, the bus driver got out and the drill instructor got out. We were left to our selves, with no instructions, no understanding for ten minutes. Then came an imposing man with a wide brimmed hat with a voice that sounds like a frog inhabited his throat.
He proceeded to say in a frank manner we are now to disembark off this bus and make our way outside to find a pair of gold foot prints on the ground. We are each to line up on them and wait for further instructions.
After the last person has gotten off the bus and when everyone was situated, we are then told the meaning of those foot prints. It is a tradition passed on through history, whereby someone before us had stepped on those foot prints prior to starting boot camp and there will be people after us to step on those foot prints.
From there we entered the gates thus began our journey to become United States Marine Corps, an organization with a history of over 243 years.
tl;dr -- Every organization has whackadoo indoctrination.
Re: My Time at Snap
#4Prior to the first day of boot camp they flown us to an airport in San Diego, everyone gathered at the USO lounge on the opposite end of the airport to wait for everyone else flying in. At midnight, a bus rolls in to the parking lot. Everyone was told to line up in a formation, head forward, arms straight and down to the side. The bus door opens and out pops a drill instructor with the vigor of a tasmanian devil, bar…
Imagine being dunked into a tub of water as your indoctrination. And yet - churches (and other religious organizations) have had high member retention for centuries!
Re: My Time at Snap
#5What genre of porn is this?
Re: My Time at Snap
#6>He did tell us to use the word “epoch,” but not before explaining what the word meant and that it was not, in fact, the same word as “epic,” to a room full of native English speakers. He then proceeded to opine on what he thought the Latin roots of the word might be, which I’m convinced to this day he was making up on the spot. "epoch" actually comes from Greek :)
It would've been lovely if someone had directly interrupted this "John" anytime he attempted to expound extensively after being asked a minor clarifying question. This sort of person shouldn't be tolerated, not even by employees.
Re: My Time at Snap
#7Act I - The Offer:
I knew what I was getting myself into. There were red flags, but I chose to ignore them for the sake of a huge equity offer.
Act II - Council:
Snap starts every employee’s onboarding off with some real hippy type of shit. The aforementioned hippy shit can continue into your regular employment if you so desire, which I did not.
Act III - The First Months:
For the first ~1/2 year at Snap, I was mostly isolated on a handful of projects where I became the sole maintainer, and rarely got to interact much with other engineers or my manager.
Act IV - The Phantom Resident:
When I worked for Snap in Venice, we occupied a beach-front condominium with a likely fictitious resident who supposedly slept in our “conference room” to meet zoning requirements.
Act V - Moving to Santa Monica & ADA Semi-Compliance:
The Snap Santa Monica offices were pretty standard big tech office fare. Miniature “phone booth” meeting rooms raised the ire of building inspectors over ADA compliance, and the company implicitly encouraged employees to continue using the non-compliant facilities while replacements were acquired.
Act VI - The John Months:
I needed to stay until at least the following February to vest the first 10% of my stock grant, but it was proving difficult to keep going. A friend on the customer ops team, Nate, offered to have me transfer over and work on their projects full time, and after receiving assurances that I would be able to travel around the holidays and work remotely I jumped on it.
Act VII - The Team Change Switcharoo:
I went through with the team change to customer ops, but for HR purposes I ended up technically reporting to an engineering manager on a different team. Nate, who was going to become my manager under the original plan, didn’t take this news well, but I didn’t mind. The work on the new team proved enjoyable and the stock price even started to recover as I began vesting my stock grant.
Act VIII - The Beginning of the End:
I got a hatchet job of a performance review from my time working for John, and Nate left the company which put me in a tricky situation. I ended up truly joining the team I was technically a member of, and began integrating more into their work alongside my own.
Act XI - The End of the End:
Remember the agreement I made with customer ops about working remotely around the holidays? My new team decided they weren’t going to honor it, and didn’t let me know about that until just a few months before I was planning a trip.
Act X (The Finale) - Dealing With The Fallout:
I couldn’t find any way around the predicament I was in, and had to leave the company. Despite some minor depression symptoms I managed to find a new job and walked away from what would have been a life-changing amount of money.
Re: My Time at Snap
#8> When I say that it was a bedroom, I don’t just mean that it would be identified as a bedroom on the condo’s floor plan, I mean that this room had a fully made up bed crammed into it next to the conference table and video conferencing unit.
That's hilarious.
Re: My Time at Snap
#9Life changing amount of money for dev tools and a smattering of HTML/CSS. Right.
Re: My Time at Snap
#10There seems to be a valuable lesson for OP about the cost of not playing ball here.
Assuming OPs side of things is mostly true it sounds like:
- OP was working for a bad director, one so bad that they eventually got fired - Instead of placating this director and pretending to take their concerns into consideration, OP fights back more than other teammates (reading between the lines of the quote "However, given that I was far from John’s favorite (we never openly came into conflict, but I didn’t put the requisite amount of enthusiasm into jumping through his hoops to really get onto his good side)" here) - The director gives him a very poor performance review, that seems to have had serious impact on OPs career, team selection possibility, and personal finances, despite the director eventually getting fired
It just seems like a very high price to pay just to be able to tell yourself that you're not putting up with bullshit.