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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

#111

Post by Salgat »

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 have a backlog of tickets and limited time for my family and personal life and interests. This isn't happening unless my manager is willing to lower my other workload.

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

#113

Post by serjester »

nixpulvis wrote: post #38
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…

But just like at state parks, tread lightly. I've gotten in trouble before while exploring and then being accused of putting my nose where it shouldn't be. It can look like you're wasting your time looking for distractions, or trying to dig up dirt. Not everyone in all parts of your company is going to like you poking around. You also risk picking up new responsibilities if people catch wind that you might be offerin…

I think this far more likely is influenced by your demeanor going into it. If you come off as arrogant or condescending people will rightfully be skeptical of your intentions. They'll assume you're trying to micro manage them and obviously you'll get pushback.

On the other hand if you come off as genuinely interested in what other people are doing with no ulterior motives, 95% of the time you'll get warm feedback. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone that'd react confrontationally to a middle schooler asking about their job. Why? Because their intentions are innocent.

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

#114

Post by coffeebeqn »

vinayan3 wrote: post #76
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…

> 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 the actual park. I'd say that's a win. We should be preserving as much as we can which really means most of us shouldn't be exploring more of the park which is mostly off trail. I do get your point that people are coming to Yosemite and are not even taking advantage…

I don’t think the tradeoff really exists at most companies. Sure I could make our data departments life more difficult by pointing out they do a few dumb things but what is the outcome to me and my fellow engineers? I’ll at best get a pat on the back and have the data team be at least somewhat pissed off at me. Some random executive might get a bonus.. but why do I care?

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

#115

Post by scarface74 »

lhorie wrote: post #37
scarface74 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it very much is. I’m 49 and joined BigTech at 46. I recognized that a year in and decided not to play the game. I found out the minimum I had to do to stay at a mid level role working remotely and actively took myself off of that treadmill and used the extra money to reduce my expenses and save so at anytime I could afford to hop.

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?

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

#116

Post by KineticLensman »

geph2021 wrote: post #42
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…

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

I joined a company that was a privatised spin-off from a large civil service organization. A new CEO interviewed each department head, asking them how their accruals were doing this FY. A couple, allegedly, said 'Our what?' and were immediately shown the door.

The next CEO, by the way, asked 'how many engineers do we have?'. The inability to answer that also led to some corporate soul-searching and eventually some major re-orgs.

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

#117

Post by atorodius »

KineticLensman wrote: post #116
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 I joined a company that was a privatised spin-off from a large civil service organization. A new CEO interviewed each department head, asking them how their accruals were doing this FY. A couple, allegedly, said 'Our what?' and were immediately shown the door. The next CEO, by the way, asked 'ho…

Out of curiosity, what are accurals and FY?

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

#118

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

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…

It's fun being a sysadmin sometimes. I tripped over a similar cost savings and instead of opening up a ticket I just spent 30 sweeping up the unneeded resources.

Later I ran the numbers and realized this alone covered about half my total cost to the company. You don't often get feedback that direct about your impact on the bottom line.

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

#119

Post by ghaff »

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…

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 almost certainly true is that a lot of engineers as well as people in a lot of other groups can't conceive of why the company needs all those people in digital marketing or finance or partner management or ...

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

#120

Post by BeetleB »

SassyGrapefruit wrote: post #64
throwawaysleep wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't know how your company works but at mine we have a profit target associated with our annual bonus. By eliminating that waste I am helping to ensure we hit that target so I get paid. Imagine if I let it slip and we missed our target by $200,000 that would be dollars coming right out my pocket.

It's an effort vs benefit calculation. Can you say how much of that savings will translate to dollars in your pocket? In most large companies, we can't. And when you're in a company making tens of billions, a saving of $200K is rounding error.

Then there's the psychology of it: If enough other people work extra long hours to get those savings, they're not getting a larger bonus than me who isn't. When you scale this kind of reward incentive, what you'll get is most employees not bothering - they'll get the bonus anyway.

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