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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

#191

Post by lhorie »

scarface74 wrote: post #115
lhorie wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you joined big tech at the peak of the pandemic boom, when it was completely fair game to for recruiters to be poaching even foreigners due to the outsized growth outlooks. You should be aware that the economic environment has basically taken a 180 since then, and your experience might be very different from someone joining the workforce today with no work experience. To counter the "cram LC" thing, the issue is…

Is my impression wrong that the major tech companies will give anyone a chance to do the initial online assessment with a pulse?

OAs aren't super widespread in "elite" companies for a variety of reasons.

One is that sourcing recruiters are not equipped to handle technical screening logistics. They can't tell, for example, if a solution works but has O(n^2) complexity, or if the candidate failed because the tool was being stupid in some way or the question was phrased ambiguously.

Another is that OAs can be gamed much more easily than face-to-face phone screen sessions (see, for example, reports of indian "study" groups).

Another issue is that the evaluation criteria for OAs is often so coarse that it does not provide a reasonable level of filtering, compared to having a combo of a good sourcing team + an engineer "guarding the gate" so to speak via the phone screen session. An engineer's technical screening skill is considered non-automatable enough that companies would fly them into school fairs to vet internship candidates.

Teams may not even trust OAs that they didn't devise themselves, nor have the actual inclination to develop/maintain their own OAs.

OAs also tend to gravitate towards trivia-style quizzes that are often associated w/ "lesser" companies.

There may also be concerns about being respectful of candidates' time.

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

#192

Post by fortituded0002 »

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…

This is all solid advice but seems to be unrelated to gaining an unfair advantage.

I interpret "unfair advantage" to be more about employability and how valuable you are in the field (starting with inside the business you are in) and not about putting more money in your pocket.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #190
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…

> Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too. It’s a unique organisation that’s both complacent and willing to change that fact. More likely you’ll find resistance at every step along the way.

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by Zetice »

giantg2 wrote: post #169
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…

"because it requires dedication and to be extremely intelligent." I'm a dumb-dumb. Being a dumb-dumb in two domains isn't very helpful either. Everyone wants experts.

Totally disagree; if you can be a dumb-dumb in two domains, you're going to do a lot better, overall, than just being a dumb-dumb in one domain.

Wanna know why? Cuz you're not actually a dumb-dumb. <3

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

#195

Post by giantg2 »

Zetice wrote: post #194
giantg2 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because it requires dedication and to be extremely intelligent." I'm a dumb-dumb. Being a dumb-dumb in two domains isn't very helpful either. Everyone wants experts.

Totally disagree; if you can be a dumb-dumb in two domains, you're going to do a lot better, overall, than just being a dumb-dumb in one domain. Wanna know why? Cuz you're not actually a dumb-dumb. <3

I'm pretty sure I am. I've even had a manager tell me in a 1-on-1 "not everyone has the potential to be more than a mid level". Here I am 10 years into my career and still a midlevel.

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

#196

Post by akst »

I largely agree with the advice, it gives you more context on the root of the problem when other specialities & you get a better idea of their priorities and what they value in their specialty.

It’s also more interesting than you realise sometimes.

——————————

But for a bit I got hung up on the “unfair” part of the title… I was telling myself “this doesn’t mean what unfair means! there’s nothing unfair about this, it’s perfectly reasonable! What they really mean is it’s a low hanging fruit and of great advantage for ppl to do this!!”

Then it occurred to me, in spite of that — I still understood what they meant. So is my criticism really true? I mean they effectively communicated the point that it is of great advantage. I guess this is just a colloquial meaning of the word unfair.

And with that, I’ve made peace with click bait headlines

Edit: various typos

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

#197

Post by giantg2 »

cyrusatjam wrote: post #178
giantg2 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"because it requires dedication and to be extremely intelligent." I'm a dumb-dumb. Being a dumb-dumb in two domains isn't very helpful either. Everyone wants experts.

I see a stronger argument in a similar vein: "instead of spreading your knowledge thin, focus on your improving your ability in the domain you're paid to be good at." But I'd counter that this doesn't mean you must permanently focus on one domain. On the contrary, every area of focus has a learning curve. And as many jaded HN commentors will point out, being exceptionally good at CS does not translate to being paid w…

"Nobody wants experts, people just want someone who can get the job done."

Yet most of the time they select for those people who can get it done by looking for expert qualifications on resumes.

"Having an understanding of multiple domains helps you bridge that gap and communicate at eye-level with other stakeholders."

At least my experience in finance is that the blocker isn't communicating but rather bias. I once had some questions about a story related to an accrual. The title was for a daily accrual yet the acceptance criteria was for a monthly accrual with a daily snapshot. I brought this up and the PO told me "build it the way I say". Three weeks later I was showing my code to a consultant and he was like "why is it working this way". I told him. So then the PO listened to him after we wasted a sprint on the initial implementation.

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

#198

Post by scarface74 »

fortituded0002 wrote: post #192
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…

This is all solid advice but seems to be unrelated to gaining an unfair advantage. I interpret "unfair advantage" to be more about employability and how valuable you are in the field (starting with inside the business you are in) and not about putting more money in your pocket.

My value to my last company - - a 60 person startup where I was a senior software engineer /the de facto “cloud architect” - was much greater than it is at the second largest employer in the US.

But, if your goal is to exchange your labor for as much money as you can, you optimize for what can get you the highest compensation based on your skillset and path dependencies - family obligations, desires, etc

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

#199

Post by scarface74 »

lhorie wrote: post #191
scarface74 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is my impression wrong that the major tech companies will give anyone a chance to do the initial online assessment with a pulse?

OAs aren't super widespread in "elite" companies for a variety of reasons. One is that sourcing recruiters are not equipped to handle technical screening logistics. They can't tell, for example, if a solution works but has O(n^2) complexity, or if the candidate failed because the tool was being stupid in some way or the question was phrased ambiguously. Another is that OAs can be gamed much more easily than face-to-f…

My impression came from the lack of discernment with the BigTech recruiters I encountered over the past few years. I thought they would give anyone a chance to do at least the initial screening for an SWE role that applied.

- my very light LinkedIn profile showed nothing but a history of working at no name companies and doing CRUD work before 2020 yet I had recruiters reach out to me from Facebook, Apple, Google, MS and I believe Netflix

- I’ve had two internal recruiters reach out to me about “exciting opportunities at Amazon” while my LinkedIn profile clearly showed I worked at AWS.

- I’ve had a recruiter from Facebook reach out to me about a senior engineer position repeatedly even though my LinkedIn byline doesn’t say anything about my being a current software engineer (“cloud consultant specializing in application modernization”)

- I’ve had a recruiter from Google reach out to me about an “engineering manager” position even though I have never managed anyone in my life.

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

#200

Post by avalys »

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?

I don't think that's what he was saying, but if he was, are you suggesting there's a problem with that?
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