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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

#211

Post by flangola7 »

nly wrote: post #188
flangola7 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is strange that the people doing the actual work don't automatically get most/all of the profits. If 10 of my friends were to dig, plant, and maintain a garden and then I gave them only them a small portion of its fruits and kept the rest for myself they would rightly be very upset with me.

You're literally describing business. That's how all businesses work. The gardeners get the market rate for being a gardener regardless of whether they're working on a residential masterpiece or somewhere mundane

Ok? I'm not sure what your point is. I said that it's strange and clearly unfair and something that's rational to criticize and want to change. Not that it doesn't exist.

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

#212

Post by flangola7 »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #180
flangola7 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is strange that the people doing the actual work don't automatically get most/all of the profits. If 10 of my friends were to dig, plant, and maintain a garden and then I gave them only them a small portion of its fruits and kept the rest for myself they would rightly be very upset with me.

I think you just described capitalism. Or feudalism.

I mean, yeah. That's what it is.

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

#213

Post by lhorie »

scarface74 wrote: post #199
lhorie wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't speak for every company, but the impression I get is that recruiters at the FAANGs of the world seem to search for various coarse rubrics that may or may not correlate with whatever they are looking for, be it a high number of years of experience as a potential correlation to seniority or certain keywords as correlation for expertise in some subject matter. "Cloud" and derivative keywords are probably the ones landing your linkedin profile in the search results of these recruiters.

Not everyone is getting recruiter spam because not all keywords are created equal and not all profiles look promising, but those of us who do get spammed, get a fair amount of it.

The Amazon recruiter spam in particular is bad enough to be a running joke.

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

#214

Post by giantg2 »

Zetice wrote: post #210
giantg2 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I ignore them, it's hard to ignore the facts.

Like the fact that you’re incredibly insistent that a random stranger believes you’re dumb?

More like all those "random strangers" that have been my managers.

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

#215

Post by Zetice »

giantg2 wrote: post #214
Zetice wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the fact that you’re incredibly insistent that a random stranger believes you’re dumb?

More like all those "random strangers" that have been my managers.

This screams “low self esteem”, you really ought to see a professional about it.

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

#216

Post by flangola7 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #183
flangola7 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is strange that the people doing the actual work don't automatically get most/all of the profits. If 10 of my friends were to dig, plant, and maintain a garden and then I gave them only them a small portion of its fruits and kept the rest for myself they would rightly be very upset with me.

If you provided the tools, land, plants, etc (I.e. the ability to create a garden in the first place) then you could argue it's fair that you keep most of the profits.

"Providing land" really doesn't fundamentally even mean anything, humans didn't create the surface of the Earth. Providing means making or doing something, like making a meal or providing medical care; "providing" land just means someone marked off a square on the Earth and so generously offers not to shoot others for making use of it. (Thinking about it - there would probably be a fiction of "providing" atmosphere and sunlight too, if there was an easy way of gatekeeping it like land area.)

In a broader context, if you mean preparation of an area for development by landscaping it and running utilities and roads to it, that's done by other workers, not owners.

The owners aren't providing tools and plants either, those are being assembled, grown, and transported by other workers, who again should be receiving most/all of the profit. Obviously you need other workers to organize all of this which requires both finesse and significant self-responsibility, much like a heart surgeon or a civil engineer, but much like heart surgeons and civil engineers I don't see a reason for them to make more than 5-20x as much as the person with the easiest job.

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

#218

Post by HWR_14 »

megablast wrote: post #204
HWR_14 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend got fired from his job for sticking his nose in other departments. Which is very strange because his boss told him to look at transferring into another department because he would have to transfer in the next six months or get fired. And the department he stuck his nose into offered him a lateral job. But because he failed to keep the bosses of each department apprised of where he was in the process, he tro…

> My friend got fired from his job for sticking his nose in other departments. This is way too little information to be meaningful. Was he walking around talking to people in different departments about what they need, was he stealing paper from people's desks at night time when wandering around the building. Who knows.

I mean, I had hoped the context made it apparent by explaining that he messed up the politics. He actively talked with people in other departments about what they needed during the work day, tried to help them and later inquired about lateral transfers into their departments.

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

#220

Post by rgavuliak »

I have done this quite a bit. I am originally a Lead Data Scientist that got a bit into product and recently I became an Engineering manager for a fully cross-functional team that also has Data Science in it.

It works out great and I have never been able to build Data Science products so easily and meaningfully before as I am in this role.

At the same time when I interview for Data Science manager roles the companies tend to pass saying that I am not focused on Data Science anymore and most Engineering Managers don't manage Data Science because these teams sit in a bit of a silo usually. It's a double edged sword.

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