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I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

mtlynch.io

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Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#151

Post by 2sk21 »

nlh wrote: post #53
tyingq wrote: post #5

It appears it isn't going terribly well so far: https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/ https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-1/ But, he doesn't seem discouraged. I'm guessing whatever equity he had means he has a fair amount of time to figure it out.

It isn’t going well yet from a financial perspective, but he writes this: “People have asked me if I’m still happy with my decision to quit and start my own company. The answer is definitely yes. As someone who has always valued independence, I love being a solo developer. It makes a world of difference to wake up whenever I want and make my own choices about how to spend my entire day. This is how I want to live the…

Indeed, if you can achieve financial independence before striking out on your own, you will be able to do it with less stress. There is a lot of available information about the FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early) that worth reading for younger software developers who want to work independently.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#152

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

downerending wrote: post #141

Title is a lot like salary--hoping for a significant improvement within a company is a fool's errand. The way to get "promoted" is to switch jobs.

Salary is the important part, some companies will give out the title but not the corresponding salary. It's especially bad at places like Amazon, where you will often be given deferred and reduced compensation below the bottom of the next band. It really makes no sense to chase promotion unless you are going for L7+ https://www.teamblind.com/article/How-refreshers%E2%80%9D-wo...

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#153

Post by cosmodisk »

I work for a small company and have a fairly high level of freedom when it comes to making decisions on which projects to work on.This year I worked on projects I deemed most beneficial to the busines. At the end of the year I did receive an absolute zero on top of my base salary.So in 2020 I will only work on projects that will mostly benefit me personally but not necessarily the company.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#154

Post by [deleted] »

2sk21 wrote: post #149
UncleMeat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that this is one view. The committees were changed a few years ago to no longer be "faceless" for most engineers. Now committees are made up of managers who work fairly near you in the org chart. I work in an org that is explicitly tasked with a huge amount of maintenance and refactoring work. Our promo rates have historically been higher than other orgs. There is a very widespread belief that things like code…

Does Google follow the practice of setting annual goals? At IBM where I worked for many years, we had to create something called a PBC (Personal Business Commitment). The idea was that you would be judged on how well you did with respect to those stated goals.

[deleted]

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#155

Post by mathewsanders »

I get the point of being able to measure success by something quantifiable, but the emphasis on individuals needing to prove the impact they’ve made strikes me as an odd setup.

I’ve never worked at a FAANG but currently at a F100 in fintech, and as the product manager for our team, part of my role is to make sure our team is doing work that has quantifiable value.

But for ICs on the team they’re not penalized if I make the wrong decisions and lead the team down a negative path (however part of my role in being successful is making our team goals transparent to all the team so they can help course correct if my thinking is way off).

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#156

Post by bluntfang »

doublement wrote: post #112
bluntfang wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, you're right, I should rethink my argument. Billion dollar businesses aren't made on chainsaws and rocket engines. They're mostly made in conference rooms by salespeople with capitol. So, identifying as a chainsaw or rocket engine is basically just an admitting that you're a tool willing to work for less than what the salespeople think what your labor is worth. You aren't going to change the world as an IC. If…

You're not working for "less than what someone thinks your worth", you're working for a price set by the market and an assessment of what level of quality your work is. A developer gets paid before the salespeople have anything to sell. It's up to the company and its salespeople to try to not lose money on their deal with their R&D people. Considering the context of the article (Google engineer) and how much people i…

>You're not working for "less than what someone thinks your worth", you're working for a price set by the market and an assessment of what level of quality your work is.

So what about that 1x engineer who negotiated for 50k more than you, even though your output is better than his. Your company isn't jumping to give you a raise. Is that just "the market"?

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#157

Post by dadoge »

m0zg wrote: post #114
benjaminwootton wrote: post #8

The idea of working to please an anonymous promotion committee is quite depressing. Why do this “pick me” dance when it’s completely within your control to get the job you want within a few weeks? By far the path of least resistance is simply to get a job and the promotion elsewhere. Or do something entrepreneurial like this guy and completely tie your skills and abilities to the rewards. As a talented engineer at Go…

There's a twist to this. Once you reach the "senior" level, you don't have to "play the game" anymore. You're pretty well compensated, the requirements to get to the next level are stratospheric, so you could just stay a T5 forever. Although it'll gnaw on you that your former engineering peers who have switched to management seem to have a much easier time going up the ladder, even though they suck mightily as manage…

Lol

As a senior engineer at a big tech co, can agree with this. I switched teams recently and the new manager asked me what my career plans were and said “oh you think the packet you made to get a senior level is big, a staff eng needs like X number of pages and they are only N number of engs in the company”.

Talk about hitting a wall.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#158

Post by joshuamorton »

mathewsanders wrote: post #155

I get the point of being able to measure success by something quantifiable, but the emphasis on individuals needing to prove the impact they’ve made strikes me as an odd setup. I’ve never worked at a FAANG but currently at a F100 in fintech, and as the product manager for our team, part of my role is to make sure our team is doing work that has quantifiable value. But for ICs on the team they’re not penalized if I ma…

The process has changed since Lynch left (actually it changed ~the week he left Google). For promotions up to L5, the decision is made by people within your org, who should have context on whether you were working on the right things or not.

By L6+ (even as an IC), part of your job is to make decisions that are good for the organization, so having to justify them is not unreasonable.

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#159

Post by [deleted] »

craftinator wrote: post #144

"In my head, the promotion committee was this omniscient and fair entity." I think this is the pure, gullible heart at the center of the word naivety. It's strange for me to read it and believe that anyone would ever write this without a strong side dish of sarcasm, and especially about Google. Google, the evil advertisement agency, Google the clobberer of GMail accounts, Google the banner of Android developers. How…

[deleted]

Re: I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)

#160

Post by [deleted] »

domador wrote: post #126

Do the members of this dystopian-sounding promotion committee at Google actively develop software themselves (when they're not promoting or failing to promote people)? Is this a case where those who can't develop software judge those who can? Or am I reading too much into one ex-Googler's account of their own experience?

[deleted]
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