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Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

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Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#171

Post by rsanek »

krn wrote: post #97
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After the interviews, the recruiter basically told me that they couldn't make me an offer for a L4 position, considering my experience (I think he mentioned 7 years of experience). Unless I'm missing some details, this actually sounds like age discrimination.

> Unless I'm missing some details, this actually sounds like age discrimination. Wouldn't it be the same as not hiring a 30-year-old basketball player who is performing at the same level as a 25-year-old player?

ADEA does not cover people younger than 40

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#172

Post by rapphil »

alexgartrell wrote: post #159
derangedHorse wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on how technical writing can help you excel at a google? I write docs at my company all the time (that garner a lot of views) but I feel like most of the time it goes unappreciated except for those few individuals that actually need them to finish a random one-off task they were assigned.

(At Facebook, not Google) when the technical writing is used to influence a technical outcome. Particularly a strategic one. a well written memo can change the way business is done and there’s not much ambiguity around where the idea came from. That said, being an eager doc writer in an effort to claim credit or inflate the perception of your own work is a great way to lose friends and alienate people.

Why do they get offended that you are consolidating knowledge?

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#173

Post by thaumasiotes »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #114
MaximumYComb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just finished the 2nd year of my CS degree. In about 3 minutes I came up with: 1) create an empty string, call it "S2" 2) loop over each char in original string 3) if the char isn't in S2, add it to the end of S2. If the char is already present in S2 then lexicographically compare the prior S2 verse S2 with this char shifted to the end. Keep the lower ordered one. This took about 3-4 minutes of thinking and is O…

Here's what I came up with after experimenting with handling the leetcode example ("given cbacdcbc, produce acdb") manually: Build a suffix tree ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_tree ) of the input with two modifications: 1. When adding a letter to the suffix tree, skip any paths that already contain that letter. (Thus, each path will contain a given letter no more than once.) 2. Include accounting information…

After playing with suffix trees a little more, I need to make a correction:

This problem asks for subsequences rather than substrings. As a result, when adding a node to the "suffix tree", it will need to be added as the child of more nodes than it would if we were building an actual suffix tree.

This seems like the type of change that might make construction of the tree harder than O(n). In particular, it will violate the constraint that a suffix tree for a string of length n has only n leaves.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#174

Post by james_s_tayler »

donavanm wrote: post #158
james_s_tayler wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds ideal. Do you code much still as part of that?

Not as much as Id like. But that generally comes down to prioritization and the broad autonomy & area of responsibility in these roles. The self reported survey data of time spent is that principals are doing direct delivery 12% of the time median and 20% average. That said there does seem to be a push to reemphasize the ‘exemplary practitioner’ aspect and scale back on the high level “architecture” and pseudo PM asp…

Thanks. I really appreciate the reply. It matches with what I thought might be the case. I've taken on a more senior role lately as my career progresses and I'm finding I'm spending only half my time doing direct delivery and the other half doing project management type work and coordinating changes across teams etc. I love the autonomy that comes along with it but I'm so used to the idea of getting paid to cut code that when I don't cut as much as I used to I feel like I'm not keeping up. Reality is I'm busy with other stuff and I'm learning to just accept that more and start to lean into it.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#175

Post by vonmoltke »

yodsanklai wrote: post #34
southphillyman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In both cases, the conclusion was that my results were good enough for an L4 position, but they wouldn't hire me for less than L5. (Why not, I'd be happy as an L4...). Can you elaborate on this? Were you interviewing specifically for L5 roles? I wonder if years of experience or even achievements can be used against a candidate by raising the bar so to speak. Maybe one is a L5 at their current company but only a L4 e…

I was applying for a software engineering position. No particular level was specified. After the interviews, the recruiter basically told me that they couldn't make me an offer for a L4 position, considering my experience (I think he mentioned 7 years of experience). Interestingly, I had the exact same explanation at two different companies. A year later a different recruiter from the same company contacted me again…

Google happily extended me a lowball L4 offer, despite my 16 years of experience. I think they seriously thought I would take it based on my less-than-prestigious work history.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#176

Post by fatnoah »

syndacks wrote: post #79
fatnoah wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve tried this strategy a number of times and I wish it was that straightforward. I'm currently at a FAANG and it is that straightforward. You don't just say, "hey, I should have people under me" but you do say that you're interested in managing folks some day. The company even offers a specific development track and training for people that want to do that. That's also how I got into management at a non-FAANG comp…

I'm curious if you can answer the question I posed on this thread a few sibblings up. Thanks.

It looks like another user answered your question and covered it well, but I'll add my own color as well.

>What's the bar for being hired as a FAANG engineering manager?

In my past cycle I interviewed at, and received offers from two of the FAANGs. Past Engineering management experience was required and experience managing other managers was definitely a big plus. I think it's that latter bit that really makes a candidate very attractive since there seems to be high demand. A history of strong IC experience and technical leadership was also required.

I didn't have FAANG experience, but did have significant startup experience and a clear career progression, culminating in a few years at larger (>10k people) companies. One benefit of startup work is that the majority of my past experience is being the primary architect & owner of complicated production codebases and systems. The larger companies provided an opportunity to show how I was effective working cross functionally and getting things done in orgs where I was not in the chain of command.

So, tl;dr: is that strong IC background plus a few years of management are required, but specific types of experience can make you more attractive.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#177

Post by heedlessly3 »

sulam wrote: post #25

I would not recommend trying to interview as a manager for any large tech company without having first been a manager in another role. I would also not recommend doing this for small startups, but some may be willing to hire you into such a role without you being able to point to concrete experience in the role (the filters aren't as strong). I say this because that is personally a cardinal rule of mine, and I've nev…

No, someone shouldn't be discouraged in applying. But they should know that their chances are low.

If an inexperienced manager is hired by the tech company, the blame falls on the tech company's hiring practices when things don't work out, not the applicant. People will always want a big raise or promotion.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#178

Post by donavanm »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #174
donavanm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as much as Id like. But that generally comes down to prioritization and the broad autonomy & area of responsibility in these roles. The self reported survey data of time spent is that principals are doing direct delivery 12% of the time median and 20% average. That said there does seem to be a push to reemphasize the ‘exemplary practitioner’ aspect and scale back on the high level “architecture” and pseudo PM asp…

Thanks. I really appreciate the reply. It matches with what I thought might be the case. I've taken on a more senior role lately as my career progresses and I'm finding I'm spending only half my time doing direct delivery and the other half doing project management type work and coordinating changes across teams etc. I love the autonomy that comes along with it but I'm so used to the idea of getting paid to cut code…

You’re welcome. My advice would be to keep the development up, but focus your efforts where they make the most difference. When it comes to grinding LOC, and even defining entire components, that’s what you have a team for. Trust them to do the needful, or intentionally lead by example until they can. Spend your dev time discovering/removing the complexity or laying the groundwork for the bulk of development to follow.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#179

Post by achiang »

lordnacho wrote: post #169
achiang wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined Google last year, hired directly as a manager. Germane to this thread, I'm in my early 40s. At Google, the bar is that you are expected to be able to contribute as an equivalently senior IC, but will be expected to use those skills to inform how you do manager stuff. So you will definitely get technical questions, the type of which will vary slightly depending on which level of management you're interviewing…

Can you share a bit more about what management questions you were asked, and perhaps a hint as to how one prepares for them? There seems to be plenty about technical questions, but not so much about management and leadership. Also is the technical bar lower? And do they care at all about having done business school?

They are truly standard behavioral questions that you can't really prepare for, other than thinking about what you did in various scenarios.

"Tell me about a time you had to resolve conflict between two engineers on your team."

And then a bunch of follow-up questions. "What went well/poorly about that", "what would you do differently next time", etc.

This is why I think it'd be hard to go directly from an IC role to a manager as an external hire.

FWIW, I think that hesitation would apply at any company, not just Google. In my last company, I myself was in charge of hiring other engineering managers, and I can tell you that I didn't even consider any resumes unless they called out some sort of lead role.

If they were an actual manager, i could skip directly to the behavioral questions. If they were a tech or project lead of some sort, I did a lot more probing on the exact scope on how much they dealt with people, what they were and were not responsible for, etc. before even getting into the behavioral stuff.

Managers are hugely influential in any org and hiring is an inherently risky activity. You want to minimize risk, not increase it by hiring someone who's never done the actual job before.

Back to Google, I'm not sure the technical bar is lower at all. I got literally the same questions that any senior IC would get, just fewer of them in order to have time for the manager sessions.

No idea whether recruiters care about business school. From my own personal observation, b-school can prepare you to do some analytical stuff, like cash flow analysis or broaden your knowledge base by reading M&A case studies, but nothing in there prepares you to be in charge of running a team with actual humans on it.

Re: Ask HN: Joining Big Tech in One’s 40s

#180

Post by jimmyvalmer »

complianceowl wrote: post #63
jimmyvalmer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to be disrespectful It's okay to be disrespectful. It's not okay to preface that disrespect with an overtly false disclaimer.

It's actually NOT okay to be disrespectful. Saying someone's response was "arrogant" is not disrespectful; calling them stupid for being arrogant - that would be disrespectful. Perceiving my comment to be disrespectful, I think, is a part of the larger societal problem that exists today; namely, of people being overly-sensative. Friend, I will gently invite you to toughen up.

It's precisely because I'm not oversensitive that I see disrespect as a normal and at times productive human response.

You can define "disrespect" however you wish. It matters little to the recipient who undoubtedly feels slighted at the "arrogant" characterization.

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