The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech • Hacker News Board

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#41

Post by endtime » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

nkingsy wrote: post #5

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted aga…

> I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted again this cycle.

As a FAANG SWE, what I am reading is "I spent two years cranking out code without doing any design work. My manager and TL never suggested I write a design doc, or didn't give me opportunities to do so."

At least at my employer - where, yes, you typically need to do design work to get promoted - that shouldn't happen. It's a failure of management if it did.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#42

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:01 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #32

nkingsy wrote: post #5

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted aga…

One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day. There are entire weeks where I could have achieved absolutely nothing and I am not sure if it would have been noticed. And that is probably not conducive to promotion as nobody who has power has any idea what I do.

> One of the things I have noticed in both my full time jobs at this point is that my direct managers have had no idea what I do day to day.

FYI: This isn’t normal. It’s not even particularly common in the industry as a whole. It is, however, a hallmark of dysfunctional companies that are headed in the wrong direction.

If you find yourself consistently stuck under clueless managers or working in companies that reward all the wrong things, it might be worth reevaluating your choice of companies and shaking up your career a bit.

It’s not good to be stuck in dysfunctional companies for years. This is how people become disgruntled and cynical.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#43

Post by pram » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

InitialLastName wrote: post #25

rizzaxc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean at the end of the day the title is only to feed your own ego. At family gathering nobody's gonna ask you why you were Principal and now you're Staff. I find no difference between being called a "Director" or a "Manager", because the title alone tells me absolutely nothing Reminds me of American Psycho, where everybody is a damn Vice President (reflective of the time)

> Reminds me of American Psycho, where everybody is a damn Vice President (reflective of the time) My understanding was that this still happens as a way to get around corporate card policies (either from the company or the credit company) that prevent anyone with a lower-than-leadership title from having signature power for purchasing. Want to give someone a corporate card so they can buy their own necessities? Give…

I’m not sure that’s true, I had a company credit card when I worked at Oracle and I was just a grunt sys-admin.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#44

Post by nine_zeros » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

lennoff wrote: post #8

I think the key takeaway is to never believe when someone says "Don't worry, you'll get promoted in no time".

This. Anytime management asks you to do some work, ask them - "How will this play into my promotion?"

If they can't come up with tangible points, don't do the work. You are not risking anything because at this point, the manager has already decided they want to string you along.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#45

Post by dleslie » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

I can attest to this; though I've worked almost exclusively at small companies with only a fleeting amount of time spent at a handful of megacorps.

I've gone from intern, to junior, to mid-level, to lead, to senior, to "engineer" to senior, where I stayed for some time, to self-assigned title "grand poobah of slinging bits at switches."

As can be guessed, I've come to the conclusion that at small companies titles simply don't matter much.

As an aside, at one of the megacorps it looked as though my title ceiling would likely be "Architect" as very few programmers appeared to make the lateral switch into management, even with skills upgrading training on their own time.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#46

Post by angrais » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #35

pcmoney wrote: post #16

“For example, a senior title at Big Tech typically expects more from an engineer than a small developer agency, a non-tech-first company, or a recently founded start-up does” This is simply not true. Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much. Typically have a narrow specialty and a good grasp on how it fits into the larger Org’s strategy etc. Senior engineers at a small shop do EVERYTHING. Front end, b…

I think there's a lot of variability here. I've met Principal Engineers at Amazon who never write a line of code and barely do any mentoring (I don't like those PEs). But I've also worked with Senior and Principal Engineers who do incredible work, mentor, truly lead . They are force multipliers, making adjustments to the course of the organization in ways that have huge benefits and gains. And if you dropped these pe…

Given your emphasis on lead, do you have any recommendations for books or blogs to provide insight into how to be such a good leader?

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#47

Post by PragmaticPulp » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

pcmoney wrote: post #16

“For example, a senior title at Big Tech typically expects more from an engineer than a small developer agency, a non-tech-first company, or a recently founded start-up does” This is simply not true. Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much. Typically have a narrow specialty and a good grasp on how it fits into the larger Org’s strategy etc. Senior engineers at a small shop do EVERYTHING. Front end, b…

> This is simply not true. Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much.

I don’t know where this myth came from, but it’s not true. Aside from the isolated stories about mismanaged FAANG departments that don’t have many responsibilities, FAANG jobs tend to have high standards and high expectations.

FAANG companies don’t pay the highest salaries without expecting high output. The engineers may not be spread thin across many domains like in a startup, but they are expected to have both broad and deep knowledge within their speciality, and to deliver work that meets the highest standards.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#48

Post by e1g » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

azdle wrote: post #21

nkingsy wrote: post #5

I got down leveled when I moved to big tech. Spent two years completely remaking the product I was tasked to work on, while the two other engineers on my team, both a level above me, cheered me on and didn’t do much. I turned our product from a total waste about to be cancelled into a promising tech with some momentum, but I spent all my time coding instead of writing about coding, and I likely won’t get promoted aga…

Are you me? I spent the last 3 years completely redeveloping the foundation of our platform which will save the company millions of dollars a year. I didn't do it alone or anything. But I started the project, was the only one to work on it full time throughout the whole project, defined the underlying architecture, and implemented most of the lowest layers. I poured all my energy into the project. We launched beginni…

It's a signal from the market ("employer") that what you currently offer is not what they currently value. If you desire greater rewards/ recognition, you need to discover what they value and decide if you want to offer that.

Developers expect that work such as "refactoring", "platform architecture", "R&D", "investing into the future" has some intrinsic value to the business. At the company level, work such as "knowledge sharing", "upskilling the team", "fixing bugs for revenue-generating products", "reassuring management" can be more impactful given their current values and roadmap. You must choose whether to spend your energy working on your priorities or their priorities. Generally, you make more money if you help other people solve their problems rather than your problems.

Or find new partnerships where the two sets overlap, but the highest-earning consultants can fall in love with solving the problems they do have, not the problems they wish they had.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#49

Post by itronitron » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

sponaugle wrote: post #19

geoffjentry wrote: post #7

The thing that many folks don't understand is that it's not that "Titles don't matter", it's that "Titles don't matter when compared across companies". There's not a universal definition of say, "senior software engineer", so comparing titles across companies will always be an apples/oranges exercise. Titles do matter, but only when in the proper context.

One area that was not discussed at length was the transition from a high tier to a medium tier. In that case the HR at the medium tier often put a lot of weight into the title. I have seen HR teams say thing like "That person was not a principal engineer in their previous job" so they need to come in at a lower level here. They (HR) often don't recognized tiers within the industry, and use titles as a proxy for skill…

At one of my previous employers I noticed that a few of my coworkers had created/inflated their job titles on their business cards, so I asked my manager (without naming names) if that was allowed, to which they said it was fine as long as you don't claim to be CEO.

Re: The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

#50

Post by caturopath » Wed, Sep 01, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

romanhn wrote: post #37

pcmoney wrote: post #16

“For example, a senior title at Big Tech typically expects more from an engineer than a small developer agency, a non-tech-first company, or a recently founded start-up does” This is simply not true. Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much. Typically have a narrow specialty and a good grasp on how it fits into the larger Org’s strategy etc. Senior engineers at a small shop do EVERYTHING. Front end, b…

Have you worked at a FAANG? I'm sure it depends on company/team, but it was pretty common for externally hired senior engineers to struggle (and sometimes flame out) due to consistently high and enforced expectations, different mode of work (extremely cross-org and cross-functional) and very high ambiguity (which can also come with low handholding in fast growing areas).

I have worked at a FAANG company and my experience was very much like the poster's. Everyone around me seemed to really heavily weight the expectations placed on folks at each level going up, but nothing was like the actual responsibility levels people had in the orgs I'd worked in before.