Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

review.firstround.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 164 posts

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#11

Post by CommieBobDole »

Racing0461 wrote: post #5
mertd wrote: post #3

The article does mention this but worth noting that riding two rocket ships back to back is not going to be a typical career experience for majority of people. So this doesn't strike me as a typical career growth story.

Agreed. Make sure you get on apollo 11 and not the challenger.

Statistically you're more likely to end up in a 1986 Chevy van with "Spase Rokit" painted on the side.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#12

Post by pcmaffey »

ramesh31 wrote: post #2

After ten years of reading these articles and imagining what it would be like to reach that level, I now find myself there and asking "what next?". What is the path for a staff level IC maxed out on the payscale? Seeking principal is a political battle I have no interest in. And management simply isn't in my skillset. Am I stuck just slinging Javascript into retirement? Are there any other lateral moves that could pr…

The answer is always some form of “share your knowledge.” But that’s the point where the well-trodden career path ends and you either hang out at the depot at the end of the road with the other lifers or you set out bushwhacking on your own to figure things out. There’s no pay-scale signposts. You become slightly unrecognizable. And everything becomes new again, which is extra challenging to your old-ass self, because you’re pretty comfortable in your ways. But, if you persist with it, I believe (I’m not there yet), there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing your knowledge sprout into a forest.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#13

Post by lolinder »

candiddevmike wrote: post #10
ramesh31 wrote: post #2

After ten years of reading these articles and imagining what it would be like to reach that level, I now find myself there and asking "what next?". What is the path for a staff level IC maxed out on the payscale? Seeking principal is a political battle I have no interest in. And management simply isn't in my skillset. Am I stuck just slinging Javascript into retirement? Are there any other lateral moves that could pr…

This is where we as an industry need to embrace unions and let folks like you mentor and train younger developers.

I'm curious if you are relating these two ideas or if you're treating them as separate. Is there a connection between unions and mentorship?

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#14

Post by strikelaserclaw »

mertd wrote: post #3

The article does mention this but worth noting that riding two rocket ships back to back is not going to be a typical career experience for majority of people. So this doesn't strike me as a typical career growth story.

I don't think its about absolute career growth, everyone has limits to what they can achieve (determined by innate ability and luck) and understanding some good philosophical principles can be a good guide in how to approach your personal limit. Theres a lot of good advice in the article.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#15

Post by darth_avocado »

mertd wrote: post #3

The article does mention this but worth noting that riding two rocket ships back to back is not going to be a typical career experience for majority of people. So this doesn't strike me as a typical career growth story.

And that not every work environment is the same. The advice that works in a specific work setting cannot be generalized for every work environment that exists.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#17

Post by koreth1 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #10
ramesh31 wrote: post #2

After ten years of reading these articles and imagining what it would be like to reach that level, I now find myself there and asking "what next?". What is the path for a staff level IC maxed out on the payscale? Seeking principal is a political battle I have no interest in. And management simply isn't in my skillset. Am I stuck just slinging Javascript into retirement? Are there any other lateral moves that could pr…

This is where we as an industry need to embrace unions and let folks like you mentor and train younger developers.

“Let” assumes they want to do mentoring and training. Which a lot of people do, but not everyone.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#18

Post by choppaface »

mertd wrote: post #3

The article does mention this but worth noting that riding two rocket ships back to back is not going to be a typical career experience for majority of people. So this doesn't strike me as a typical career growth story.

One rocketship bias of this article appears to be lack of "focus on the customer" versus "strive to be the most valuable, but least critical." The latter can be good core advice anywhere ("pager duty" stuff at any company causes burnout for ICs and EMs) but customer traction is only really given to you on a plate at a rocketship (e.g. after Series A/B). Most of the piece is about scaling rather than understanding the user / customer and evolving the product ... a more balanced advice essay is going to talk more about gaining, keeping, losing, and re-gaining traction versus just scaling a sprawling org.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#19

Post by satvikpendem »

candiddevmike wrote: post #10
ramesh31 wrote: post #2

After ten years of reading these articles and imagining what it would be like to reach that level, I now find myself there and asking "what next?". What is the path for a staff level IC maxed out on the payscale? Seeking principal is a political battle I have no interest in. And management simply isn't in my skillset. Am I stuck just slinging Javascript into retirement? Are there any other lateral moves that could pr…

This is where we as an industry need to embrace unions and let folks like you mentor and train younger developers.

They can do that without unions, not sure why those are a necessary condition for mentorship.

Re: Engineer’s guide to career growth: Advice from my time at Stripe and Facebook

#20

Post by cogogo »

Not a dig but it’s always better to be lucky than good. I’ve had an extremely lucky career but nothing like that. Two of the biggest brand blue chips then 3 really well funded startups that have been positive experiences but financially there is zero doubt I would have been better off at the big listed not faang companies.
Post reply on HN