Be female. The pendulum is swinging back and overcompensating. At my workplace women are given opportunities and preferential treatment that men are not. And I work in defense software.
What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
61–70 of 218 posts
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#62Value all parts of compensation that you cannot easily sell at zero. Options? Zero. RSUs for a private company? Zero. Promises for future raises? Zero. Actually: any promises - zero. (Promises on signed paper may sometimes be worth more than zero) Always remember that the place you work at has no (and owes no) loyalty to you. Calculate accordingly.
Cool, I have $1500 to wire for free. Do you want it? You just agree I'm now the owner of everything you mentioned. (All your stock options etc). No other obligation on your part. $1500 for free. What's your email? Oh wait. Turns out you aren't going to agree with what I just proposed as you don't actually value them at $0 hence not interested in trading $0 for $1500. Basically you're full of shit. (Lying.) If you wer…
You can have all the options i still own on startups i worked at for $1500
email is me@dmitry.gr
Let me know when you want the wire transfer info
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#63Get an Adderall or Vyvanse prescription. There are plenty of doctors who will prescribe it without grilling you too hard for a legitimate ADHD diagnosis.
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which FAANG company hasn't been giving you bonuses or refresher grants?
Definitely not Google or Netflix. Netflix they’re automatic and basically the same for Google.
Alphabet shifted the timing of stock compensation in 2017Q1, and this definitely screwed over some Noogler cohorts in 2017 (who may have expected a refresh in January 2017 or July 2017, but actually didn't get one until January 2018).
https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2017_Q1_Earnings_Transcr... (first paragraph, page 3)
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has to be Amazon or Apple. Probably Amazon due to the skimping on RSUs and bonuses, have heard that they’re upping the PIPs lately
"Upping the PIPs"? Is that a thing? For a company to formally raise the bar across the board as a means to not give bonuses or raises! I wonder if having Amazon on your resume is a bad signal now. Risk of the candidate being a participant in a toxic environment. Also a signal that the candidate was at Amazon because they couldn't get into other FAANGs (is it common for people to select Amazon over others when holding…
As someone who is involved in some of the recruiting process at a large tech company, I can say that the Amazonians who come our way tend to be decent people stuck in a toxic environment. Whenever I do a culture fit interview with them, I have several tactics I use to draw out the horror stories they inevitably have, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised by how they seemed to have maintained their own integrity through it all.
The contrast of their own attitude and actions in the face of being in a bad situation ends of very much working to their advantage. I enthusiastically recommend many of them as a "hire." On the flip side, every so often I churn up one of the perpetrators of toxicity, and I make sure what they tell me about themselves gets meticulously captured and reported to the decision makers.
So just having worked at Amazon doesn't automatically disqualify you in my book.
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#66It's interesting that nearly all of these pieces of advice are fairly non-controversial. What's the point of posting stuff anonymously if it's the same stuff that most people would be happy to attach their name to?
I was hoping for some Machiavelli-style tips as well, if only for the entertainment value. Something like, “if you cannot be both loved and feared by your employees, it is better to be feared.”
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which FAANG company hasn't been giving you bonuses or refresher grants?
Has to be Amazon or Apple. Probably Amazon due to the skimping on RSUs and bonuses, have heard that they’re upping the PIPs lately
Why do you guys automatically want to hate on Amazon so much? Amazon compensation doesn’t work like that. In fact there are no bonuses. You get a sign on bonus and 4-year stock grant so no way you get anything lower than the number specified in your offer letter.
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#68Have the courage to stand up for what you believe in, even if it terminates your employment status. I'm only unkeen to have my name on this, because I haven't done it, and I wish several times in the past, I had. I respect the person who did this early in his career in one ISP immensely: it was stunning to watch somebody say "you're full of shit" to the new CEO, and walk out. (he was btw, full of shit)
I've done similarly career-threatening things in the past and my strongest advice is to stand and deliver in an actionable way.
Telling the CEO he is full of shit is not actionable. Telling the CEO that his plan will not work and that to save the situation he needs to do XYZ is. If you've judged the situation correctly and that level of drama is actually necessary, then either they will respect you and do it or they wont and you'll quit/be fired. Either should be fine for you from your perspective as an employee even if financially it's a leap.
I say it's good advice because it's turned out to be very good for my career. I've had it blow up in my face once and turn out better than silence every other time. That's a muh better ratio than I would have guessed, I suspect because it's easier to fear the consequences of action than inaction.
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#69It's interesting that nearly all of these pieces of advice are fairly non-controversial. What's the point of posting stuff anonymously if it's the same stuff that most people would be happy to attach their name to?
Hi Nostrademos — I was involved in this project. We asked a lot of questions and the answers to some others were quite a bit more controversial (we're going to release a new question each week or thereabouts). But one thing we learned in the process was that seriously successful people doing their thing feel pretty gagged. It's not worth it for them to write even things that seem uncontroversial to you or me, because…
Yeah, I figured it was something like that. There are plenty of things that I believe are true but don't say because the blow-up potential just isn't worth it. (And I'm someone who actually likes arguing on the Internet.)
Why not do something actually anonymous, though? Put up a form box on your website where people can write anything in response to the prompt, and let folks access it through Tor? Then post the results with the appropriate disclaimer. You might need to moderate it a bit to cut out crap like "PENIS1!!11!1!", but you might also get some genuinely interesting commentary.
Then again, this is basically what Blind does.
Re: What’s good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?
#70"HR does not operate with your interests at heart, do not talk to them." -- Anonymous
Be smart enough to determine if your interests align with the company's interests before talking to HR. Sometimes they do.