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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

#141

Post by HWR_14 »

ghaff wrote: post #124
atorodius wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what are accurals and FY?

FY = fiscal year accruals: Larger companies especially do accounting on an accrual basis. So what most matters is when the service was delivered or the product sold--not when the cash was received. (Large companies care about cash flow too but cash is king at small companies.) Basically what's being asked is "In what ways does our cash balance not reflect our income and expenses?" Perhaps more common would be ask abo…

Is it asking for the discrepancy between cash and accrual accounting (which seems to be what you stated) or is it asking what they are booking in accrual revenue?

This is one of those annoying things where I can talk about either concept, but don't know the language that serves as a proof of competency.

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

#142

Post by scarface74 »

dayvid wrote: post #109
scarface74 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even in those companies at the higher level you need additional skills to figure out impact and opportunities (opportunity sizing, XFN alignment, communication, good writing, etc.). Interviewing mainly gets your foot in the door. There are some genius ICs who can just code and not be concerned about these things, but more often the higher levels are people who are good at their skill along with business, data analysi…

I agree with this completely and honestly didn’t think about this.

In my department in BigTech (consulting) your first paragraph is expected from an L5.

Good written and verbal communication skills and being able to work with customers is the expectation of an L4/new college grad.

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I have met an L5 SDE that I would let have anything to do with my customers directly. But I’m equally sure they wouldn’t let anyone in my department push code to core services (even though I have found a bug in the code of a core service and worked with an SDE to fix it).

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

#143

Post by ghaff »

mediaman wrote: post #132
ghaff wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be a bit surprised if a sizable portion of engineers at a public company didn't have at least a rough notion of how their companies make money. It's right there in the quarterly and annual earnings reports. (And while reading SEC filings at a very detailed level is a skill you need to learn, the basics are pretty straightforward.) But maybe a lot of engineers just can't be bothered by any of that stuff. What is a…

My experience (not specifically with engineers) is that very, very few people read the 10K, 10Q or other public statements of the company they work for. A friend of mine used to be a management consultant for one of the big firms. On one memorable project she worked with senior executives of a large ($1b + revenue) non-tech company that had retained the consulting firm, to do an operational diagnostic. It became incr…

And admittedly the company I work for has monthly company meetings including quarterly ones that coincide with earnings. Certainly not everyone attends or watches the recording but they lay out results in a very digestible (and not tailored for external audiences) way.

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

#144

Post by ghaff »

HWR_14 wrote: post #141
ghaff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FY = fiscal year accruals: Larger companies especially do accounting on an accrual basis. So what most matters is when the service was delivered or the product sold--not when the cash was received. (Large companies care about cash flow too but cash is king at small companies.) Basically what's being asked is "In what ways does our cash balance not reflect our income and expenses?" Perhaps more common would be ask abo…

Is it asking for the discrepancy between cash and accrual accounting (which seems to be what you stated) or is it asking what they are booking in accrual revenue? This is one of those annoying things where I can talk about either concept, but don't know the language that serves as a proof of competency.

It probably requires some context based on the metrics that matter to a specific business. I'm not sure someone would ask the question that way where I am. (Not in finance, so may be wrong, but have been at numerous business reviews.)

Purely from the outside, I'd guess that yes they're asking for the discrepancy. Maybe they're asking for accrual revenue but I'm not sure I've ever heard the term used that way. I would expect someone would ask for bookings if that's what they wanted. (Which can get even more complicated for multi-year subscription deals.)

ADDED: It's been a long time since I got my MBA but, with all the data in front of me, if someone asked me that question, I'd have to ask what they actually wanted and, if they fired me a result, so be it.

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

#145

Post by hinkley »

mindcrime wrote: post #58
geph2021 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-revenu…

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). This sounds quite remarkable to me, and definitely does not match my experience. I've found that most engineers have an incredibly vague notion - at best - of how the…

Or it's just damned uncomfortable.

I don't think Microsoft could just make Windows and Office and survive this long. So if you're not on those teams your chances of actually making money directly instead of being expensive advertising dollars are negligible.

Similarly if you're not working on adtech at Google. Your job doesn't actually make money. If you think about it too much you might not be that happy with how your life is going.

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

#146

Post by zeruch »

That's been my MO for years, and it's been mostly fruitful. Where it hasn't been that (which is rare, as usually one should have the skill of accreting stuff into a systemic whole), it's been interesting (because i like learning new things anyway)

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

#147

Post by steponlego »

savanaly wrote: post #138
steponlego wrote: post #112

Consume content? Roles? What kind of marketing speak is this? I just can’t even get inspired to click a link to this content, and consume it. It sounds so bland and dull. Hellish 1984-esque corporate neospeak.

It's really not.

It really is, almost to the point that it reads like a parody.

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

#149

Post by tengbretson »

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…

Do you find value in having a good reputation?

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

#150

Post by SassyGrapefruit »

hinkley wrote: post #139
geph2021 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-revenu…

I feel like I have to disagree, on the grounds that many companies mistakenly label indirect profit centers as 'cost centers' and end up cutting off their noses to spite their faces. They strangle R&D and get outclassed in the market. They strangle infrastructure and get nasty surprises that tarnish their reputation. And then there's mistaking users for customers. If you're a McDonald's customer you might think their…

This is exactly what I'm talking about. It can surprising why a business actually exists. It can be counterintuitive(i.e. the mcdonald's is actually a real estate company conundrum). Even the "Product Engineer" guy who can probably talk up a storm about the financials of what he is doing, but in a Fortune 500 business does he really understand how that rolls up to the company's strategy? Is it a side line, is the landscape in transition and this is a existential hail mary? At one point facebook made no money, then they made all their money from placement ads, last I checked they made it from video interstitials. Of their 50,000 employees how many really know the revenue breakdown and how it has changed over time
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