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Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

matthewgrohman.substack.com

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Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#21

Post by mablopoule »

Couldn't agree more.

I think it's the reason why the "Joel on Software" blog is still relevant even 20 years later, because it's a tech blog that is at his heart about business, and it's crossover with software engineering.

Like, in this discussion about TDD[1], you can feel business consideration being the source of pragmatism in Joel Spolsky & Jeff Atwood thinking, and as a result avoid dogmatism based on purism.

I've also had the luck of working with a CEO who had business sense, salesmanship, industry knowledge (for Luxury & Fashion), and understanding of the technical limitations and possibilities.

This resulted in smarter technical choices for our product, because it gave a laser focus on what are the important things in our product, and even more importantly what are the features that looked sensible from an engineering point of view, but really had no added value in a business sense, and thus not worth the effort.

[1] https://stackoverflow.fogbugz.com/default.asp?pg=pgWiki&comm...

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#22

Post by WJW »

ilikerashers wrote: post #19

I currently binge on realtor training videos. Cold calling, raw procrastination, it's got it all. I don't think I'd ever want to do it but it's a great place to learn motivation.

DO you have a link? That sounds fascinating.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#23

Post by scarface74 »

nickpeterson wrote: post #17
scarface74 wrote: post #11

Maybe I’m either a cynic or a realist. But in my old age (49) I would tell in CS grad who wanted to optimize their compensation 1. “Grind LeetCode and work for BigTech” (c) r/cscareerquestions 2. Read through the leveling guidelines and figure out the politics of the organization. 3. Get on the right teams so you can show “scope” and “impact” 4. Get good at system design and behavioral interviews while you keep your…

I don’t know anything about SV or big tech hiring so I’m sure it’s reasonable hiring advice, I don’t know. That said, boy it sounds like a recipe for burnout.

Oh it very much is. I’m 49 and joined BigTech at 46. I recognized that a year in and decided not to play the game.

I found out the minimum I had to do to stay at a mid level role working remotely and actively took myself off of that treadmill and used the extra money to reduce my expenses and save so at anytime I could afford to hop.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#24

Post by nickvanw »

scarface74 wrote: post #9
nickvanw wrote: post #5

I would put it even more simply: just knowing Engineering isn't enough if you want to excel past a certain point, unless you're going to go extremely deep and become a subject matter expert in something (storage, hardware, etc). That is something most people are not going to do, because it requires dedication and to be extremely intelligent. Instead, you can go very far by understanding a job one "hop" from your own…

So how much more is someone “worth” who can understand the different parts than someone who made their career knowing how to play the promotion/leetCode/system design/behavioral interview game at any of the large tech companies and position themselves to show “scope” and “impact” by getting on the prime projects? It’s a much more straightforward path and one I would recommend to anyone starting their career today. I…

Well, in my opinion, it remains to be seen whether big tech compensation for this style of work is sustainable long-term. Of course, if you're already pulling 800k/y in TC at Google/Amazon/whatever, great, you did wonderfully. If you're a brand new engineer starting your career, are there going to be a lot of those 800k jobs that offer you free daycare, dry cleaning, lunch and massages? I wouldn't bet on it. I say this as someone that has also not taken this path, but have nothing but respect for people who make a great living that have.

Otherwise, I think this is exactly how big companies succeed - they build career paths, tools and workflows to bring context to large groups of smart people to get them moving in the same direction. Ultimately there still have to be people to create the bridge, but the lever you get is massive when you have 1000s of talented engineers. You can't expect them all to understand how $x works, but you can pepper teams with extremely smart and talented experts and professional managers who collectively get them working on the impactful parts of the problem.

TL;DR there isn't a linear path, my advice is mainly for people thinking about how to be able to build value. If you can do that, you'll always be able to get a job.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#25

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Maybe I’m either a cynic or a realist. But in my old age (49) I would tell in CS grad who wanted to optimize their compensation 1. “Grind LeetCode and work for BigTech” (c) r/cscareerquestions 2. Read through the leveling guidelines and figure out the politics of the organization. 3. Get on the right teams so you can show “scope” and “impact” 4. Get good at system design and behavioral interviews while you keep your…

There's nothing wrong with this list, but if you also (7) Get into a position where Sales & Marketing look at you as someone valuable, you'll end up far more successful than you would otherwise.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#26

Post by scarface74 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #25
scarface74 wrote: post #11

Maybe I’m either a cynic or a realist. But in my old age (49) I would tell in CS grad who wanted to optimize their compensation 1. “Grind LeetCode and work for BigTech” (c) r/cscareerquestions 2. Read through the leveling guidelines and figure out the politics of the organization. 3. Get on the right teams so you can show “scope” and “impact” 4. Get good at system design and behavioral interviews while you keep your…

There's nothing wrong with this list, but if you also (7) Get into a position where Sales & Marketing look at you as someone valuable, you'll end up far more successful than you would otherwise.

You eventually have to do that to show “scope” and “impact”. That’s true.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#27

Post by inanutshellus »

JohnFen wrote: post #15

I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).

I will grant you that "consume" is awkward. I often say "I read -- well -- I listened to [The Sandlot]" and "consume" is too awkward to use colloquially as "I consumed [The Sandlot]".

That said... Unless you've got an overtly superior alternative, time to move on and join the fray. It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#28

Post by kqr »

JohnFen wrote: post #15

I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).

I agree, but for a different reason. I think the really unfair advantage comes when you start producing content for other roles. That's when you'll find out if you really know what you are talking about!

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#29

Post by kqr »

inanutshellus wrote: post #27
JohnFen wrote: post #15

I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).

I will grant you that "consume" is awkward. I often say "I read -- well -- I listened to [The Sandlot]" and "consume" is too awkward to use colloquially as "I consumed [The Sandlot]". That said... Unless you've got an overtly superior alternative, time to move on and join the fray. It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

"I learned from"?

Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles

#30

Post by SassyGrapefruit »

I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of the actual park.

Why do I bring this up? Because this is how most worker's experience their organization. Stay in your lane, get that promotion, best case you get your boss's job. But how did that job come to be? Who setup the training that you took? Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.

It is a tremendous advantage to explore your organization fully. Visit its other offices and learn what your colleagues do and why they do it. Especially as an engineer. You can literally write your own ticket. Last year I was bored and I started to break down our cloud spend. This took me on a little detour. That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.

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