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Quitting a New Job

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Re: Quitting a New Job

#121

Post by jacurtis »

tayo42 wrote: post #22

I haven't had success switching teams at all. I had a few that wanted to still interview me. I had a vp say he won't let me switch. The only time I ever switched teams, I had that decision made for me, worked out fortunately. Having another internal team still want to do a technical interview was ridiculous to hear though.

I have a friend at Microsoft that decided to switch teams. He absolutely regretted it. This isn't to say Microsoft is bad (he had plenty of good things to say about it) but he said that switching teams gets really messy. The people on the previous team feel betrayed, the people on the new team feel like you are an opportunist, and unless you are running away from a specific department manager there is likely going to be very little change between the teams. He also complained that he feels like he started a new job, is starting on the bottom of the new team, but without the benefits of new job title or salary.

He regretted switching to the new team, when he expressed his disastisfaction to the new team manager the team manager felt like he simply wasn't a good fit and transferred him to a third team. Now he is the guy who has been on 3 teams in 6 months and he feels all the same problems as before, but with the label of being a "team switcher" whenever something doesn't go right.

Over Christmas he told me he plans to start applying for new jobs outside of the company at the start of the year.

As a manager, I have personally moved employees from other teams to my team twice and neither time did it work out well. There is often a reason that the previous team wasn't working out. Many people see switching teams as an easy and secure way to get a new job. But it is a lateral move and not a job switch. I haven't seen it work out well in either of the two times I have allowed it. Both employees lasted less than 6 months after switching teams.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#122

Post by ex_amazon_sde »

filoleg wrote: post #63
whitepaint wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reply that I posted to another comment: Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so they whine in…

>I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. Because they think that the employer should recognize their greatness by just looking at their resume and having a simple conversation with them, instead of assessing them on some skill that they have to brush up on. After being on the interviewer side myself recently, I think those people just don't realize how hiring actually works. I've seen some people with impre…

Leetcode focused on tricks and memorizing algorithms.

I've rejected a good bunch of candidates that can pass coding tests while not having any good understanding of theory, hardware, OS, networking, security

Re: Quitting a New Job

#123

Post by kickout »

dvt wrote: post #86
jfk13 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value. That doesn't necessarily mean engineers are woefully underpaid. It may just be that your finance friends are obscenely overpaid. Though whether all/most engineers provide "orders of…

> Some of the highest-paid engineers, AIUI, devote their considerable expertise to optimising ad click rates. I worked on an ad product with a team of 10 or so data scientists + engineers. I'd wager most of us made between 100k-175k + some tiny bonuses here and there. The product we built was making the company $2.5 million a month . But hey we all got some cool jackets and a pat on the back. Give me a break. Money t…

Double your teams salary to get the cost to the company including benefits like health insurance (which are very real).

Re: Quitting a New Job

#124

Post by jdmichal »

ashtonkem wrote: post #85
bigiain wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cynical response: Because thats what the people already at the big company had to put up with during hiring, and damned if they’re gonna let any prospective newbies off with an easier recruiting process, no matter how broken and pointless it is...

Or, nobody has a better idea, at least not one that’s possible to administer cheaply.

> Or, nobody has a better idea...

No...

> at least not one that’s possible to administer cheaply.

Ah, yes. AFAIK, Behavioural interviewing works, but it does require training and thoughtfulness. You have to know what you're looking for, and ask questions specifically targeting that. You definitely cannot just throw a random employee into an interview with a list of questions and expect it to work.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#125

Post by imoverclocked »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #73
whitepaint wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective. Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn n…

Because it's like hiring an industrial petrolium chemist based on how many party tricks he can do with fireworks.

To be fair, I would probably give the candidate with the most party tricks extra points. It demonstrates an interest in the subject matter as well as an ability to demonstrate it in an exciting way. Also, how fun would that interview process be? Just sayin...

Re: Quitting a New Job

#126

Post by hinkley »

munchbunny wrote: post #15
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

> As I noted in a previous post, switching teams is a lot easier than switching jobs. I didn’t do this before I left Stripe because there weren’t any other teams that I was super enthusiastic about at the time. But, in retrospect, I probably should have given this a try before quitting. A few years ago, I was looking for a new job after being laid off. I had two competing companies to choose from, and chose the one t…

They knew the reasons I was feeling frustrated, and felt confident that those issues were either not a problem on their team, or were at least being worked on. I still kind of wonder how true that was, and what would have happened if I'd made the switch internally, instead. That's always a judgement call on your part. Were your problems just with your part of the management tree, or were they more systematic with the…

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

What people say they will do for you after you've already said goodbye and what they'll do when you just ask for change are often very different things.

It's one of the reasons they say not to take the counter-offer. Because one day while you're brushing your teeth you realize that if they could cough up that much money or control when you tried to quit, why hadn't they factored that into your previous review, when half as much might have prevented the situation in the first place?

Re: Quitting a New Job

#127

Post by [deleted] »

corytheboyd wrote: post #43

On the point of returning to a company you previously left for good reasons... don’t. I made this mistake, and things of course boiled to a breaking point for me after another year. Chances are nothing has changed, listen to that gut feeling. This probably isn’t everyone’s experience I don’t know, but it’s my experience for what it’s worth to anyone reading this.

[deleted]

Re: Quitting a New Job

#128

Post by _9omd »

I'm about a month into a new FAANG job, and I hate it so far. I can't decide if it's better to quit sooner as to not waste the companies time (and avoid suffering more), or if I should give it some more time. My team's work seems super boring, I'm not interested in the tech we use, the setup process has been a shit-show, and I'm feeling zero motivation.

I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the past, but I decided I'd try to do things differently by cramming leetcode and chasing that fat FAANG pay check. Now I'm kicking myself, this is what happens when you follow money over passion. The silly thing is I'm fine financially, yet I lusted after a job with technology I'm not interested in working on just for the lure of the almighty dollar.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#129

Post by vorpalhex »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #88
jfk13 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value. That doesn't necessarily mean engineers are woefully underpaid. It may just be that your finance friends are obscenely overpaid. Though whether all/most engineers provide "orders of…

Well, we have this myth of meritocracy, but some proffessions are systemically underpaid like teachers - millions of future earnings depend on them, but noone ambitious wants to become a teacher, so our schooling kida sucks

It's a supply and demand problem. There are a lot of folks who are willing and able to be teachers for a low amount of pay, but it turns out you can't live off discount engineers or finance people.

I assure you, if SV could get away paying $12 an hour to engineers or finance, they would.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#130

Post by hinkley »

whitepaint wrote: post #13
0x445442 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, but I'm getting the feeling a developer's best option these days for maximizing pay increases is to spend their free time on Leetcode. Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective.

> Which in my opinion is a problem from an industry perspective. Why? If a person can learn bunch of algorithms and apply them to custom problems they probably can do quite a bit with computers. And it shows that they probably can learn new stuff rapidly as well. I don't get why so many developers hate Leetcode. I love it personally, I think it's great. And also, I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn n…

I think people who think software development is about 'do[ing] quite a bit with computers' have blinded themselves to the fact that you mostly need to do quite a bit with people. They didn't know that was going to be the case when they signed up for college classes and now they rationalize as hard as they can that they can actually treat the profession that way.

I think people are just lazy and don't want to learn new stuff so they whine instead.

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