Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to succeed at Meta

teamblind.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 211 posts

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#91

Post by yodsanklai »

anameen21 wrote: post #74
yodsanklai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a TC of 250k+ is more than life changing. It doesn't get you that far. Consider tax and cost of life in NYC/SF/London where you won't be able to buy a house anyway, and you're left with 50k to save a year. In other places, you're less likely to get such a TC. Sure, it's a lot of money, but not enough to change your social status. It adds up if you manage to stay long enough there, but considering ageism and burning…

Sometimes I feel like people here mistakenly or purposefully obfuscate TC info for one reason or another (uninformed, can’t/doesn’t want to get into FAANG, etc..) but even with the current market downturn, I’m safely at around the ~500k mark as a ‘senior’ engineer at a FAANG (levels.fyi is your friend). I’m under 30 and have been doing this job at a comfortable pace for over 5 years now so no risk of burnout hopefull…

> Sometimes I feel like people here mistakenly or purposefully obfuscate TC info for one reason or another

So you're at least E6 and less than 30 or/and you join the companies when stocks were low. Don't think your particular case is the same as everyone else. Some people go to FAANG at E5 in their late 30s in Europe/Asia. 200K is more the norm for them, and it's not sure they'll be cruising until 50 in an IC position.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#92

Post by actually_a_dog »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #29

This person is getting a lot of snarky responses, but all of this is relatively true at Amazon also and it was true when I was at Intel 10 years ago. This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase, so it should be no surprise to anyone that's actually worked in a FAANG and doesn't pound down the kool-aid. Interesting how there's comments on this person being concerned solely with "TC" as i…

> There's nothing wrong in working at a FAANG for the money....

That's assuming you have no problem working for FAANG period. I have serious ethical concerns with 4 of the 5 and probably would never work for them for that reason alone.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#93

Post by Apocryphon »

uoaei wrote: post #40
jlarocco wrote: post #21

Hate to burst the ego bubble, but hitting metrics is what you were hired to do.

Put differently: if you were hired for a certain job, and your personal convictions don't align with that job such that you don't identify as someone who wants to "hit those metrics", find another job.

The managers could've been more upfront about that and what those metrics are during the hiring process!

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#94

Post by autokad »

yodsanklai wrote: post #54
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #29

This person is getting a lot of snarky responses, but all of this is relatively true at Amazon also and it was true when I was at Intel 10 years ago. This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase, so it should be no surprise to anyone that's actually worked in a FAANG and doesn't pound down the kool-aid. Interesting how there's comments on this person being concerned solely with "TC" as i…

> I thought we were past the employer loyalty era and more accepting of the harsh reality that everything is profit-driven these days I think this is my biggest disappointment working for a big tech company. I don't feel I'm "part of the family" at all. Very high turnover, people come and go, some are fired, burn out, or move to another job. I'd love to feel I'm part of something, but it's not the case. Plus most pro…

your work is never your family, the sooner in life you figure that out the better off you will be. No matter what employer you have, they will fire you the first instance it is profitable for them to do so. Its a contract, you can take pride in your work, but at the end of the day its a business deal and its about money.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#95

Post by yodsanklai »

djkivi wrote: post #79
sfashset wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you’re completely wrong about both your 5 years comment and your income range. For a more realistic look at physician income see https://www.offerdx.com/

Family medicine $270k. Doesn’t seem that far off.

There are two big differences. Family doctor can work easily until 65. And they don't need to live in the most expensive cities in the world.

For comparaison, there are extremely few SWEs in FAANG over 50 years old.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#97

Post by analyst74 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #54
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #29

This person is getting a lot of snarky responses, but all of this is relatively true at Amazon also and it was true when I was at Intel 10 years ago. This is how large companies operate once they surpass the innovation phase, so it should be no surprise to anyone that's actually worked in a FAANG and doesn't pound down the kool-aid. Interesting how there's comments on this person being concerned solely with "TC" as i…

> I thought we were past the employer loyalty era and more accepting of the harsh reality that everything is profit-driven these days I think this is my biggest disappointment working for a big tech company. I don't feel I'm "part of the family" at all. Very high turnover, people come and go, some are fired, burn out, or move to another job. I'd love to feel I'm part of something, but it's not the case. Plus most pro…

If you feel like a family working for a company, but does not have significant ownership stake, you're being conned.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#98

Post by hnfong »

sfashset wrote: post #62
za3faran wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you think doctors make? Unless they specialize and spend another 5+ years pursuing it, they're in the 100K-250K range anyway depending on location.

Sorry but you’re completely wrong about both your 5 years comment and your income range. For a more realistic look at physician income see https://www.offerdx.com/

Those are income numbers for specialists (cf. GP's comment "Unless they specialize")

The time to acquire a fellowship seems to be a couple years.

During that the time it takes for a doctor to go through med school, residency and specialist training (after which they would have the income numbers you cited), the FAANG careerist would probably have risen through the ranks and have comparable income numbers anyway.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#99

Post by klabb3 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #70
endtime wrote: post #52

People are grouping all FAANGs together in this thread. But this wasn't my experience at Google at all. It's impossible to get promoted past L5 (or even maybe past L4) with a short term-focused approach like this. And, at least at the lower levels (up to L5), you only need to be self-promotional every 6-12 months for perf.

In fact, "long time horizon" is literally in the text of the L6 expectations.

> literally in the text

The ladders contain massive amount of criteria, most of which is not de-facto crucial, is weighed against other goals, and – most importantly – is vague enough to be open to interpretation.

For instance, the "fix something that you broke yourself" can be packaged as "quality assurance work that is part of a long term initiative to leverage force multipliers to increase developer velocity". The promo committee and even your manager won't see through it, unless you make it stupidly obvious. Peers won't complain openly to avoid bad vibes (why should they care), so even if there was time for scrutiny (there isn't), there's virtually no paper trail.

In reality, you are seen as proactive, a fixer, someone who takes care of problems when they come up. A good citizen. Some even do this unconsciously, because they overestimate their abilities and over-engineer things that break because it's infeasible to reason about complexity monsters in the first place.

Re: How to succeed at Meta

#100

Post by hnfong »

yodsanklai wrote: post #95
djkivi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Family medicine $270k. Doesn’t seem that far off.

There are two big differences. Family doctor can work easily until 65. And they don't need to live in the most expensive cities in the world. For comparaison, there are extremely few SWEs in FAANG over 50 years old.

Extremely few? If the company only existed for less than 20 years and founded by a bunch of college dropouts, you wouldn't have many workers over 50.

You're mistaking the exponential growth of the SWE "profession" with Ageism.

Post reply on HN