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Ask HN: Is it just me?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#71

Post by dilyevsky »

matai_kolila wrote: post #2

No relationship ends successfully, nothing wrong with spending 3-5 years at an org, learning what you can, then moving on. Knowing this, maybe it’s worth resetting your goals at the next role to take i to account how this cycle tends to go. Set “end” criteria for when you should move on and reevaluate those goals regularly.

> No relationship ends successfully

Uhh pretty sure that’s furthest thing from the truth. I had lots of managers that I’d absolutely work with again and companies that I’d definitely consider going back to. Then there are ones that I’d never work with if I can. Sometimes (a lot of times?) work stream just peters out…

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#72

Post by echelon »

dilyevsky wrote: post #67
echelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people move every two years In SF. In Atlanta we have 90+% retention at a five year mark.

The whole point of staying in sfba rat race (at least to me) is getting exposed to a lot of different things working with a lot of different people/companies

I got to have a lot of internal transfers to further my learning.

I got to build active-active systems that handled user sessions and core business APIs to the tune of 80,000+ queries per second. Caching layers, hand-optimized replication, eventual consistency algorithms, etc. Outages would cost millions of dollars an hour.

I worked on one of the teams responsible for building a migration path from on-prem to cloud, getting workloads from bespoke containerization onto k8s, securing clusters, and developing automation around CI/CD.

I joined an ML team to build product, did various frontend work, maintained important developer platform pieces... It's hard to enumerate it all.

You can have a full tour of tech inside most big companies. And you can continue getting promoted and working up the comp ladder.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#73

Post by dilyevsky »

echelon wrote: post #72
dilyevsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of staying in sfba rat race (at least to me) is getting exposed to a lot of different things working with a lot of different people/companies

I got to have a lot of internal transfers to further my learning. I got to build active-active systems that handled user sessions and core business APIs to the tune of 80,000+ queries per second. Caching layers, hand-optimized replication, eventual consistency algorithms, etc. Outages would cost millions of dollars an hour. I worked on one of the teams responsible for building a migration path from on-prem to cloud,…

That’s same thing that OP is doing except without associated pay raise bc you’re trapped within one company. A lot of people move projects every 2 years at faangs. I don’t see much difference between that and switching companies entirely personally

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#74

Post by shallichange »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #66

Eng mgr at a FANG, was IC previously. The following is assuming the senior folks (managers or senior ICs) around you are acting in good faith. If you actually have toxic senior people, that's a whole different scenario. Managers have to balance two priorities, which are sometimes competing: promoting engineering excellence on their teams, and delivering value for the business. The most common example of a conflict be…

Same boat but in big financial institution. How do you handle missed deadlines committed by higher ranks depending on your team’s delivery? In one word: failure? Hard to just “accept and move on” when the failure is not acknowledged and managed and plans are not changed in the company. I find myself trapped in that situation, and it follows me home. It sucks

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#75

Post by neweroldguy »

serjester wrote: post #24
comboy wrote: post #3

Sounds like you may need to improve your social skills. Good employer should understand than nobody is amazing at everything, but such is the world today that marketing wins everywhere (on personal level too). Or you think you are better than you are, not possible to tell from the post (but I'd say unlikely given some introspection that went into making it).

As the old saying goes - "If someone's a prick, they're a prick. But if everyone's a prick, you're probably the prick". I hope this doesn't come off harsh but I would strongly encourage the OP to look inward. Did you actively build a relationship with your boss? Did you actively solicit feedback from all the stakeholders in a given project? Did you ask earnest questions to try to understand people you disagreed with?…

It’s tough because at scale you can always find some poor schmuck that’s a perfectly decent sort and has run into pricks over and over. “Maybe it’s me?” the poor fucker opines. And well-meaning folks like you or me will suggest the “asshole rule” — if everyone’s an asshole, you’re the asshole — and we’ll be right in general but not in this one unfortunate case.

But you just can’t tell which is which from where we’re sitting.

So, OP… probably you’re the asshole, but maybe not.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#76

Post by bitwize »

It's called office politics, corporate bullshit, whatever you want to call it. Dealing with it, or turning it to your benefit, is the most important skill you can cultivate in the corporate world -- even more so than your actual job. Kiss the right asses and you'll be on the fast track to senior level, management, or beyond.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#77

Post by echelon »

dilyevsky wrote: post #73
echelon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got to have a lot of internal transfers to further my learning. I got to build active-active systems that handled user sessions and core business APIs to the tune of 80,000+ queries per second. Caching layers, hand-optimized replication, eventual consistency algorithms, etc. Outages would cost millions of dollars an hour. I worked on one of the teams responsible for building a migration path from on-prem to cloud,…

That’s same thing that OP is doing except without associated pay raise bc you’re trapped within one company. A lot of people move projects every 2 years at faangs. I don’t see much difference between that and switching companies entirely personally

If you know more of a company's stack, you're worth more to them [1].

I was getting $400-$500k total comp in Atlanta. None of us were seeing a compelling reason to leave, at least anecdotally in our limited sample size observations.

In any case, I left to pursue my own startup ambitions. I added one to the count.

[1] Granted, some problems require fresh blood, new ideas, killing internal weirdware, questioning assumptions, new domain experts, new leadership, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#78

Post by jussy »

The trough of disillusionment. I suggest you get a coach, if you've never made a way through it before.

Additionally and anecdotally as you've said, around that time is when promotion is offered often without the difficulty level/growth opportunity changing in role responsibility.

Lastly, it's a team sport.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#79

Post by matai_kolila »

JohnFen wrote: post #27
matai_kolila wrote: post #2

No relationship ends successfully, nothing wrong with spending 3-5 years at an org, learning what you can, then moving on. Knowing this, maybe it’s worth resetting your goals at the next role to take i to account how this cycle tends to go. Set “end” criteria for when you should move on and reevaluate those goals regularly.

> No relationship ends successfully I disagree. I was recently hired at a company that I worked for years ago. I left because I tired of the project, but left on very good terms. Good enough that both the company and myself are looking forward to another run together. That was a relationship that ended successfully.

I meant with the company as a whole, not an individual.

By ending your relationship with the company, you're declaring that relationship necessarily deficient in some way. My advice is to define those deficiencies deliberately, rather than in an ad hoc way.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me?

#80

Post by pixelat3d »

dilyevsky wrote: post #33
zubspace wrote: post #16

I've been working more than 11 years at my current small company. There are often times where things do not work the way I want. Bad communication, new strategies I don't like, different opinions on how do something, bad or sloppy code I need to cleanup, crappy processes, etc... etc... But still, after all those years, I don't feel bad about it. That's life and life is a mess sometimes. There are things you can chang…

This is easier said than done. How do you “try your best” and also disengage when there are things you don’t think are correct, just, etc. For me personally I haven’t been able to find a foolproof solution unless I’m working a contract with very scoped deliverables

How do you handle different opinions from yours and disagreements in general?

This seems like you're asking a question about basic social skills, and it's only tangentially related to development. I'm not saying that to dunk on you, but it seems like maybe you're framing the entire issue incorrectly?

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