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

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

#101

Post by piva00 »

idontwantthis wrote: post #92
coffeebeqn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing worthwhile. I just turned down a L+1 jump to management because I certainly don’t want to stress/deal with any of that business BS when I could do my fairly easy IC job and take the kids to the park or go to the gym at lunch since my calendar is mostly empty

I’d probably make the same choice, but I haven’t had the offer yet. I’m curious what do you expect to happen to your salary over the years if you stay at the same level? Or are you able to be promoted and remain an IC?

Over time I got more relaxed about promotion and compensation. As software engineers our salaries are already in the top 5-10% of most countries, of course as humans we are always unsatisfied and wanting more but... Is it worth it? To keep on the treadmill, battling out in the ever-increasing political games one needs to play when growing inside a big org career to achieve another 10% increase in salary?

I'm also privileged to live in a society where even with half of my salary it'd be entirely possible to live a comfortable and fulfilling life, where my kids won't need my money to be secure in their education and healthcare. The career game was more interesting when I was in my 20s, now it's just a bunch of bullshit that I can choose to care about or not, and not caring about it is absurdly liberating.

To each their own, of course, personally I came to realise that I don't value the career stuff so much, I'm already pretty comfortable (and many times more than any of my ancestors or close family were). There's so much more to life than playing corporate-bullshit, stressing over how to please a business to etch another salary bump. Corporations that deep down don't care about individuals, values, etc., it's just about shareholder value, I prefer to focus my attention on individuals and things that bring joy, love, and interesting experiences in life.

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

#102

Post by jabradoodle »

astrange wrote: post #44
giantg2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at job applications. Some ask if you've ever been arrested or charged with a crime - not convicted even. Guess what, you answer yes for some stupid summary offense like having a dog off a leash and your application is in the garbage. I see tons of bias in hiring too. What about people that take a break from working due to childcare, medical issues, etc? They struggle. There's a never ending amount of those stori…

> It seems like many places in Europe have better options for second chances from the legal perspective. Perhaps better from a financial standpoint with the support programs too. One reason Europe doesn't have startups is that it's so shameful for your company to fail that nobody would ever consider risking it.

I think you made that up

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

#103

Post by piva00 »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #80
wryyy wrote: post #42

Based on all these sorts of articles, it feels like the only way to advance your career in the US is to get into management at some point. In the EU, and Finland where I'm from, there's nothing wrong and there's a path for being a more senior IC long term, working on more and more complex tasks. The culture is different though, there is not always the same kind of hierarchy as in the US either. I guess in the US a si…

It’s becoming more common. Staff and principal are fairly common roles and they’re well respected in the US. All the fancier roles like “Architect” have been merged into those now

My impression is that Staff and Principal are basically a different make-up on what Architect used to be. A bit less ivory tower dictators but still working in the role of overviewing larger systems, coming up with novel solutions (usually proof of concepts later developed into production by other teams), bridging technical gaps, and dictating broader guidelines on how the larger system should behave.

Just an iteration on the Architect role to be a bit more hands-on.

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

#104

Post by piva00 »

cebert wrote: post #70
ditonal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, moving from an engineering role to a management role is not "career progression", it's a lateral career switch. Secondly, you don't have to explain anything. Smart hiring managers will understand that you focused your career mastering a craft and that you're still working on that craft you mastered. As for the dumb hiring managers, it's best if you can avoid working for them. One thing you'll learn as you get…

You don’t think not even progressing to a senior engineering role or lead engineer role after two decades in the profession would be a red flag? These are still IC roles, just more senior. I would sure have a lot of questions at least.

That's your personal bias showing, I'd never be questioning anyone who decided they found a good role where they feel competent and secure about their job and craft, much the contrary as Peter's Principle usually apply very quickly to the careerists.

Senior engineer is usually where a lot of competent folks stop, the role of Staff/Principal starts to become quite different, some people just want to be good at helping the business to build things. A good senior will be the necessary glue between team and the larger org (including the Staff/Principal layer), facilitating a lot of stuff that isn't immediately visible but is definitely felt when you miss it.

On top of that, there's not even close to enough positions to promote every single senior engineer to a higher level in most companies. Not everyone wants to play the career game.

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

#105

Post by astrange »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #62
astrange wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like many places in Europe have better options for second chances from the legal perspective. Perhaps better from a financial standpoint with the support programs too. One reason Europe doesn't have startups is that it's so shameful for your company to fail that nobody would ever consider risking it.

Europe has startups

How many people start another after the first one goes bankrupt?

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

#106

Post by molsongolden »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #85

> The best engineers and managers are great at adding value, getting the most out of the people around them, and helping the team see around corners even when they’re not there. People keep repeating this dangerous advice. The truth is actual value is created by few people: new tech, new features, new markets. It usually starts off as an experiment, a hackathon etc and grows from there. The rest of the people exist t…

This take and the quoted section don’t seem at odds. A great manager is a blocker and enabler for the “people creating the actual value”. The manager adds value, gets the most out of, helps the team, by protecting the builders’ time, maintaining clear prioritization, watching for bumps in the road and mitigating risks as they arise.

If you are hacking on whatever future greatness but are unable to say no to one-off requests (whether due to power within the org or personal communication style) then you’ll never complete your project. Various people will put tasks on your plate, there’s always more to do, someone up the chain will inevitably come up with a new flavor of the week. The manager who tells those people you are fully allocated and working on your top priority is the only reason you’ll complete your groundbreaking work (in most companies).

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

#108

Post by j7ake »

siliconc0w wrote: post #29

I feel like you have a choose your own adventure at these companies: * climb the ladder - try to be 'in the room' with L+1&2. Get assigned high visibility work, define and deliver some intermediate milestone, declare success, groom perception, etc. * get hired at a competitor at L+1. * start a side hustle/lifestyle/real estate business. Subscribe to the FIRE subreddit/podcasts. * have kids, develop increasingly esote…

Crazy how having kids is lumped in with esoteric personal hobbies.

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

#109

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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 think it's more useful if you read it from the perspective of "how do I hang onto this rocket ship and survive?". Of course, then the advice applies to very few people but it does become more useful.

Not really convinced either way though. Much of this feels like backwards-facing advice, things that only make sense when you already know what you're doing, and very surface level.

The "tying it all together" section really demonstrates this.

The truth is, all the most valuable skills she's picked up are likely to have been implicit from being in an incredible environment in a company growing really fast around other great people. Very hard to distill that into useful information for other people unless you're very introspective and dedicate a lot of time to reflecting on what actually moved the needle.

Though in fairness, I think that >99% of people cannot articulate their growth path or process and strategy and they would not be believable even if they could, so in that regard, she is par for the course.

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

#110

Post by braza »

I really distaste those articles because it most of the time generalize based on exception cases.

Not all companies have the resources and/or opportunities like Stripe and Facebook. Coming from the SME/laggard industries those posts sound completely out of touch with the reality of a lot of SWEs that are not in this demographic pool.

One of the biggest disappointments with the SWE was the fact that when I started my career I really enjoyed working with a lot of eager-to-learn young folks at the same time had time to be mentored by a lot of seasoned engineers with 25, 30 years of experience and how those folks liked the technical/development part.

Fast forward a couple decades we're most of the time in my demographic in an environment that has a phobia of age, the craft is not a big deal anymore, a lot of young folks fall short due to lack of mentoring, senior folks do not want to mentor anymore due to cynicism provoked by this same work environment; and everything consists in self-marketing, corporate politics, mimic-big-tech cultures.

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