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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

#41

Post by glitchc »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

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 th…

It depends on the organization's hierarchy. In flat structures, this is treated as a good thing, encouraged and will lead to promotions. In a strictly hierarchical organization, this may backfire. Other managers will not be supportive and your manager will be annoyed with your behaviour, leading instead to detailed task assignment and micro-management.

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

#42

Post by geph2021 »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

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 th…

   Most people can't even describe where the money in their business comes from.
I find this quite remarkable, and does not match my experience. Every company I've worked for, from startups to Fortune 500, it was very clear what products the engineers contributed to, and what that product portfolio revenue stream looked like, and what it meant to the business (right down to the product margins). For startups, pre-revenue, at least the "TAM" (total available market) that the product was targeting, and/or expected revenue projections were openly/regularly discussed.

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

#43

Post by tabtab »

Many colleagues of mine have expressed frustration that domain expertise is under-rewarded. Knowing IT and the organization should get one a double knowledge bonus, but most agree it doesn't in practice; they are still perceived as a replaceable cog.

Part of it is that IT people don't know how to sell their successes. Companies are use to blowhards showing off their alleged grand deeds such that if somebody doesn't, nobody notices. It's why Magic Johnson got a statue long before Kareem, despite being the very top scorer ever (until LeBron). Note that Magic is not a "blowhard", but has more charisma.

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

#44

Post by unethical_ban »

This is why I think remote work will have as serious negative consequence for career growth and "generalist" thinking in tech.

Working in an office allowed me to meet people from related teams. When I worked in operations, I met the network team, the call center team, the server teams, the datacenter teams. In infosec running firewalls, I met the SOC, IAM, audit and governance people. Not only in meetings, but they were approachable. We would banter about common gripes, we would talk about how each other's work impacted the other. And we learned from each other! It made me a better security professional.

Doing that remotely is really tough. I think young people coming into tech to remote jobs will miss that low-friction learning opportunity.

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

#46

Post by forbiddenvoid »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #10
nottorp wrote: post #7

How about learning about other roles instead of consuming content? Seems faster and more efficient.

These things don’t seem orthogonal to me - to learn, one must consume some kind of content.

I don't think that's necessarily true. The article even mentions just talking to people about their role (that's not content), and then highlights why content consumption might be more efficient.

You could also learn about a role by observation - but that feels even more inefficient.

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

#47

Post by the_jeremy »

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 think that learning about other roles is a way to significantly mitigate the luck inherently involved in getting "on the right team to show scope and impact".

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

#48

Post by throwawaysleep »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

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 th…

> I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization.

And your reward for that was? Were you rewarded? Did they give you 30K as a bonus? Or was it just the weasel words of "this will be considered favourably at performance review time."

I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job hopping where I am), so it is not worth it to even write a ticket for it.

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

#49

Post by NegativeK »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #48
SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

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 th…

> I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. And your reward for that was? Were you rewarded? Did they give you 30K as a bonus? Or was it just the weasel words of "this will be considered favourably at performance review time." I am aware of about a 50K a year in cloud waste. But in my org, I know I won't get anything for reporting it as I am not going for a promo (promos pay a lot less than job…

That whole situation is gross.

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

#50

Post by foolswisdom »

operatingthetan wrote: post #40
SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #30

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 th…

>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. Hold on a sec, are you saying you found dead weight and then got leadership to terminate their employment?

It sounded to me more like they figured out a more efficient way to do their "process" that was a whole lot cheaper.
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