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The Seniority Roller Coaster and Down-Leveling in Tech

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

#91

Post by BizarroLand »

asimpletune wrote: post #77
e1g wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "knowl…

I agree with this 100%. Also, perhaps the work you did was super valuable, but the company is simply not equipped to understand things like this. A much more realistic understanding of how the company "sees" and "feels" is through its managers. Unfortunately, they are often detached from what actually matters to the company, or discouraged from swimming outside of their lane. So, in the end, it is unfortunately very…

To me it's like having no problem paying $40,000 to the carpenters who assembled your house but cursing the world when you have to pay the architect $10,000 for designing it.

Shortsighted managers act like the 12 carpenters are doing all the "work" so they don't understand why 1 architect should get paid as much as 3 carpenters, never realizing the 12 carpenters wouldn't have a job without the architect.

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

#92

Post by bluGill »

MattGaiser wrote: post #66
DamnYuppie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a somewhat seasoned developer and former executive I can, sadly, state that raises and rewards are rarely tied to your output or how much it brings to the company. If your manager and executive leadership team are not actively marketing/hyping what your team is doing there is little to no hope of getting what you deserve. I get that this sounds "unfair" but there are some reasonable reasons for this. A company is…

How does one effectively do this self promotion?

I transferred to a different position. Suddenly they discovered all the little things I did had value and wanted me back. (I didn't want to go back, but the reorg told me go back or find a new job...)

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

#93

Post by PeterisP »

whoknowswhat11 wrote: post #54
e1g wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "knowl…

If you have a champion in mgmt things like "refactoring" or "platform architecture" can pay off. Please refactor this app off our oracle DB so we can say $10M - you will be fine and they may start slotting you into key business areas. If you are toiling doing platform, refactoring on a product without a ton of love - then yeah - that may be pretty low visibility for most folks.

Be the change you want to see the world - in quite a few big organizations, if you really believe that a major refactoring of a major project is needed, the only way that's going to happen is if you switch over from development to management and become that champion, enabling other people to implement it, and without that you'll never see it happen.

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

#94

Post by anonuser123456 »

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…

Don't get bitter or passive aggressive; that will only hurt your career and mental health long term. Find a new team internally, sell them on what you did and move on. Or move to a new company.

If the product was failing when you arrived, you're already in a poorly managed group anyway. No point in sticking around.

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

#95

Post by hinkley »

rmk wrote: post #87
e1g wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "knowl…

This is true from anecdotal experience. However, what confuses things is that the "employer" simply doesn't know what it wants. The "employer" in this case is your immediate manager and, perhaps, a promotion committee that may include your peers. This set can have quite a bit of turnover in a company without good direction. The only constants that get recognized no matter the people (who may not have the ability or i…

One of the relentlessly positive leads, the one who keeps calling me out for being pessimistic, has been swinging from his own petard for the ~year for rushing out changes we can’t really reason about a priori and getting smacked with obscure-to-us corner cases and regressions that are customer visible. I don’t think he’s absorbed yet how much political capital he’s burned through. Both his own and the team’s. People are frustrated. But of course he wouldn’t notice, he’s an optimist and they don’t think about things like that.

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

#96

Post by dahart »

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…

> Seniors at FAANG type companies simply dont do that much.

I initially mis-interpreted this sentence to be talking about quantity rather than roles, it seems like others here got the same impression. It’s important to recognize the part you quoted was talking about quantity and not role, and what you’re talking about is role and not quantity. It’s also important to recognize that engineers with a lot of experience are biased toward working at stable companies and not startups. From experience, I would agree with the article that the common expectation in startups very much is that you have to make do with junior developers when hiring, and if you get high quality senior engineers with a lot of experience, you’re pretty lucky.

While there’s some truth to startup roles sometimes being more broad (less focused) and big-company roles being more deep (more focused), might it be best to stick to personal experience rather than claim what a broad group of other people’s experiences is without really knowing?

As a founder with a partner in an initially 2-person company, I did only front-end while my partner did only back-end. Our dev roles were more focused than by previous big-company jobs, but we both had to do non-dev work too, of course.

As a sr/principal in a FAANG-type company, I’m doing more mentoring of juniors, more sales and support calls, and also more math & research, than I was doing with my startup. I’m also involved in product coding, algorithms, and design prototyping.

So, speaking personally, I can’t exactly confirm your view that startups are broad and big-company roles are narrow. For me, the difference is that with a startup there were some tasks that I just don’t have at a big company, like doing taxes. The other main difference is that my own company was mine, and big-company work is structured around the organization. It’s not so much a difference in the amount or the type of work, but a difference in the ownership and motivations and what success and failure looks like at any given time.

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

#97

Post by bluGill »

nostrademons wrote: post #89
MattGaiser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one effectively do this self promotion?

Also alignment with upper executives is pretty critical. Pay careful attention to what they say at All-Hands and which teams they're spending their time with, and try to get on those teams. Try to be in the room when major decisions are made; understand the thought process that went into these decisions. If you can simulate your VP's thought process and predict what they're going to value next, you're at a huge advan…

Try to be ahead of that - figure out what project they will care about next and be the leader of that one. Sometimes you need to risk a couple years on an unknown project before it breaks out to get the attention. Just be careful, it is a risk: if it works you are aren't just on it, you are the leader of it, but if it fails you are the leader of a project they never cared about.

An even better way to figure out what project is going to be important, sabotage it on a way that you can pull an 80 hour week at the last minute to rescue it. (I strongly encourage leaders to NEVER reward someone on a project for pulling long hours at the last minute - an outsider who steps in fine, but someone who was on the project should have prevented it in the first place. I've never seen a leader pay attention to this)

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

#98

Post by mvc »

vbtemp wrote: post #2

I made a fairly popular reddit post recently on how I down-leveled my career in recent years. Each time I down-level, I get a raise in salary -- it's pretty great. What that permitted me to learn about myself is that - at the end of the day - I just like solving interesting and challenging problems, working with colleagues as equals, and creating products and solutions that I'm proud of. I have utterly no interest an…

Haha, I tried to do this and it was working great until I got sacked.

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

#99

Post by bluGill »

hinkley wrote: post #86
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’m in a similar spot, except I’m also the guy people come to for weird problems they don’t understand. The work I did day one is arguably one level above mine, and my first boss was on track to promote me but the little fucker quit a month before the annual review cycle and the next guy promoted way fewer people than he should have. Now it’s been going on for so long that I’m not entirely sure how I will react if/wh…

You often do need to leave to get a promotion. If you are not willing to leave they assume you are satisfied where you are, which is more money they don't have to pay you.

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

#100

Post by bluGill »

kodah wrote: post #76
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…

Working in big tech has been incredibly disappointing. I'm a mix of a Software Engineer and a Systems Engineer, so finding jobs (and not getting downleveled) is fairly easy. That said, after nearly a decade in tech, and staying at one firm for over three years I have never been promoted without leaving a company. It's not like I don't have major accomplishments either; but politics is a blood sport and either you or…

Some big companies are starting to figure out they need a plan to get people promoted before they leave. If so read that closely: it is your roadmap. Often what the map says isn't be a great coder, so put your time into the things on the map.
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