461–470 of 1001 posts
I am not kidding: you are all set to be CTO or dev lead (mind: only if there’s actually a team so you don’t have to do much development) at some late-early stage funded startup, that wants a long-time Google alum on their staff, in leadership. Without even a change in your work ethic. Not even slightly a joke.
I have three friends at Google who are nice, smart people, but terrible employees. All three of them seem to be doing just fine in their Google careers. One is very smart, but he's been telling me literally for years that he has zero motivation, to the point where he sometimes won't actually start working until 6PM. He's moved around within Google trying to find something he's interested in, but it's just the same th…
I know companies that won't hire Google employees because of this reputation.
come on...
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I guess I've only lived in the bay area 20 years, but this strikes me as quite dramatic. I know literally dozens of men in tech happily raising families in the Bay Area. It's true the male/female ratios are worse (although we should certainly adjust for the large gay male population). But when I talk to friends who are dating, it's the women who seem to be struggling to find anybody decent, not the men. Perhaps the p…
> It's true the male/female ratios are worse The fact that there are way more men than women in the Bay is a statistical reality, which you admit yourself. Then you bring an opinion blog-post by a single woman as counter-evidence. Ironically, all these complaints about "guys there that have a disgusting sense of entitlement" just go to show how picky she is, and can afford to be, in San Francisco. Nothing in GP's pos…
Your conception of what women are looking for in a man might not hew as closely to reality as you think.
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Curious why do you say that?
Because such an unimaginative character will see no value in your input and will ignore everything you have to say, perhaps even going as far as excluding you from the decision making process and withholding information from you, therefore undermining your position within the organization. Don’t think it can’t happen to you, because it can.
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> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respect…
> My advice would be work hard, save your money, travel when you can to better locales to improve your social life, but with the eventual goal of permanently moving out when you've saved enough. If you pick your destination within the USA well, dating prospects will improve greatly, and if you look worldwide (and can overcome the language and immigration issues), it could improve dramatically. The Bay Area will seem…
Do you believe the stock market will get bad if he doesn't win the election? or is it the other way, i.e. if the does get re-elected, the market will be better so it will take you less than 2 years to reach your goal?
I've never heard this take before so I'm genuinely curious.
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> You can expect some hundreds/thousands dollars per year This is not correct. A senior (meaning L5-L6+, nothing crazy) engineer at a big public tech co will get 6 figures yearly in stock compensation in addition to their salary.
Sorry, but this is urban legend to me. No saying it does not happen, but that is definitely a very special case. I manage a team of quantitative developers in a Hedge Fund and do between 50 and 100 interviews per year, at senior level. I have head hunter compensation report on the candidates. I see regularly candidates from Google, Amazon, and finance industry. I very rarely see 6 digit bonus for big techs. My experi…
You should ask for a refund. Senior engineers at FANG in the Bay Area will typically make over $100k/year in stock. Total compensation of $300k-$400k is pretty normal, and includes salary, stock, and bonus. Netflix is an exception; compensation is mostly or all in cash.
The flip side is that, even with $350k/year income, you probably still can't comfortably afford a nice 3-bedroom house in a good neighborhood to raise a family (unless you've already been working in the Bay for a while and saved up a big nest egg, or your spouse makes a similar amount and continues to work full time while you raise a family).
Since I moved to the Bay Area, I've realized the high salaries aren't worth it to me. If I were still in my twenties, I could make it work, but as it is, I'd end up paying a truly absurd amount of money for a small, over-priced house, and my entire paycheck would go towards paying the mortgage for the foreseeable future. So I'm looking to transfer to a non-Bay Area office ASAP, even if it means a pay cut.
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I've visited a few countries in SE Asia and could never see the appeal of living there longterm, at least in the metropolitan areas. The food and living costs are cheap but in return you get terrible air quality and lack of clean tap water.
Costa Rica is where I landed. Pretty nice. Let me know if you need advice.
Humblebrag much? I spent the first 7 years of my career in the public sector. Talk about a career killer. If you are concerned about getting a job elsewhere, just study and do online coding exercises like crazy. That should land you a job at most companies with whiteboard interview at your seniority level. If you are concerned about actual learning, most of my professional growth has been on the job. I spent a long w…
> just study and do online coding exercises like crazy Is this really the new go-to for the software industry? Which "online exercises" and "study" tools do you recommend the most? I would love to visualize what this new canonical basis looks like. Since it will apparently define the software of the 2020s.
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This blows my mind that in the US one can make such insane money in tech while still being a slacker and retire early with a dream house bought and paid for while in Europe devs are slaving away through SCRUM powered meat grinders burning themselves out for a 3% salary increase on a pitiful 40-80k/year, no stock options, without any hope of early retirement or owning a decent home without a 30 year loan or financial…
No, that’s not generally true in Europe. It depends solely on the company. During the first 12 weeks of fatherhood, I worked two days instead of five and my perceived productivity stayed the same. As an expert slacker and procrastinator, you can slack in many places. Salaries in IT are generally very good in all European countries and if you manage your salary well, you’ll buy a house when you’re in the mid-thirties.…
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I’ve never had much trouble finding an interesting thing to spend my work time on. The biggest problem is usually deciding when to look for something new and what I want to do next. Getting the opportunity to do that usually comes quickly from there, even if it’s not always the pathway I expected. :) I’ll admit I’ve got advantages that maybe everyone doesn’t have (a deep set of experience from a variety of areas orga…
I mean this in the nicest way possible (I envy your optimism!), but I'm curious how long you've been working as the last 12 years have been an exceptionally good period in tech. My career started in the middle of the dot-com era in the late 90s, so I've been through a few cycles where finding engineering work was hard and people who had crappy jobs were grateful for the income. Those experiences dulled my optimism ab…
You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to cobble together work during a downturn like that if I were to lose my primary job and be unable to find another. I would likely take the most fulfilling work I could find. Then when times were good I’d resume more fulfilling work. Just like I’ve done through out the time I’ve been in the field so far.
Given that we have been in a 12 year period of one of the largest tech expansions in the history of our industry, I don’t see why it makes any sense to argue that people shouldn’t be seeking fulfilling work now.