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How I Left YouTube

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#121

Post by zhach »

nilkn wrote: post #101

Multiple denied promo applications. Warm, caring language but no attempt at retention on resignation. Other companies unsure of hiring candidate even after 10+ interviews. The simplest explanation of these datapoints is simply that this person is not operating at the staff level in a way that is fairly obvious to others, yet hard to articulate in a way that this person can emotionally receive and accept. None of this…

Author here. I do agree to an extent. But getting datpoints from the other people in the company at those higher positions is important. Asking what can you do to improve and what you can do to make better impact. For my situation, many people did agree that they agreed that I should be up leveled. Some people did say I could work on different projects but they have seen people get up leveled for way less. Some of it is luck as well.

It's also a horrible swe job market out there. Haha

But the biggest is to never feel like it's a disfavor. You are worth it and there is always room to grow, I just didn't know how else to grow at the company anymore

Re: How I Left YouTube

#122

Post by ryandrake »

lbrito wrote: post #60
paulcole wrote: post #10

Love how he’s critical of the 13-interview hiring process despite having done all 13 of those interviews. “Nobody drives there anymore. There’s too much traffic.” These companies can do 13 interviews because people will put up with them. The little place I work does phone screen, work sample, final interview, reference check. We can be done in a week. Nobody wants to work with me bad enough to sit through 13 intervie…

Even more so for such a great engineer that in the words of his colleagues is "indispensable for the company". If you're such a rockstar you can probably get shortened loops in good companies through referrals

I’ve never seen someone skip the interview process or get it shortened through a referral. At best it will move your resume to the top of the big pile, which is very helpful, but I don’t think they help much more than that.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#123

Post by zhach »

omoikane wrote: post #37

> I was leaving because I had outgrown the pot I was planted in I wonder if the author had attempted to transfer to a different part of the company first, since a different organization might have more room to grow. It might not be possible to do a transfer plus a promotion simultaneously, but it's likely a less stressful option than leaving the company.

Author here. I debated this, but the state of Google and YouTube together and certain things internally led me to just look for external opportunities.

Probably would've been less stressful. Lol.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#124

Post by cyberax »

tyii888 wrote: post #95
cyberax wrote: post #33

> Do say: "I optimized a high-throughput distributed system to prioritize user retention metrics, reducing latency by 150ms through a custom caching layer." Ugh. Pain. I'm hiring, and I've been filtering out resumes that are heavy on these kinds of metrics. Because I literally get thousands of entries with these kinds of wording. Often with excessively precise numbers, like "by 23.5%". My problem is that it's hard to…

There's no such thing as a " hands-on leading developer" on a "large-scale refactor" at Google, it'd be like saying you were the hands-on leading mechanic on building the 787 dreamliner.

I mean something like "spent a significant time as an individual contributor".

Re: How I Left YouTube

#125

Post by zhach »

shomp wrote: post #59

...did you find a new job before leaving YT?

Author here. I did! :)

But I was really about to quit with a job lined up. I gave myself to the end of 2025 to get a new job. I had savings enough to hold me off, but it was one of those things where I was ready to even do freelance or contract. Putting more time in searching and portfolios. I'd rather get more time making code that was publicly available on GitHub to show my prowness than just talking about it to people.

And I had an incredible support system from my partner. I wouldn't feel comfortable taking this leap without her. :)

Re: How I Left YouTube

#126

Post by gct »

zhach wrote: post #97
conqrr wrote: post #16

> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”. Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. Nobody will care or remember what you did or what level you were given enough timespan. Take the bits that you want (money, skills etc) to live life, but don't get too caught up trying to win the game.

Very much so. Author here. I wanted to do so much more than the box they allocated me in. Once I knew they were not going to let me grow from my box, then I left. Not the level I was worried about, but it's a language most people can understand

The Box is very frustrating, especially when there's no one handling the other things, yet you're still not allowed to do them because it'd make the wrong people look bad.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#127

Post by rufo »

whymauri wrote: post #117
nilkn wrote: post #101

Multiple denied promo applications. Warm, caring language but no attempt at retention on resignation. Other companies unsure of hiring candidate even after 10+ interviews. The simplest explanation of these datapoints is simply that this person is not operating at the staff level in a way that is fairly obvious to others, yet hard to articulate in a way that this person can emotionally receive and accept. None of this…

Have you worked at BigCo before? This was 1:1 my experience at a large company and within months they were asking for a +1 leveled boomerang. You can't take denied promos at face value, honestly.

> You can't take denied promos at face value, honestly.

This was my experience as well.

Maybe your manager didn't push hard enough for you at the level calibration meeting. Maybe your director didn't like the project you were on as much as the one another manager's engineers worked on, so they weren't inclined to listen to your manager push for you. Maybe the leadership team decided to hire a new ML/AI team this fiscal year, so they told the rest of the engineering org that they only have the budget for half as many promos as the year before.

And these are the things I've heard about on the _low_ end of the spectrum of corporate/political bullshit.

There is an argument to be made that playing the game is part of the job. Perhaps, but you still get to decide to what degree you want to play at any given company, and are allowed to leave and get a different set of rules. And even so, there will always be a lot of elements that are completely outside of your control.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#128

Post by ryandrake »

blobbers wrote: post #119
zhach wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. My manager and I discussed lengths about the capabilities they do, and it is just like this. It's not his fault at all. It's a game at the end of the day, and it's your choice whether or not you want to keep on playing

Do you think retrospectively your manager may not have been as supportive of you as you had thought? You missed promo 3 times, and when you left he didn't try to counter you. Is it possible s/he might have been blocking you?

I think counter offers in general are pretty rare, especially in a bad job market. Like unicorn rare. In almost 30 years I’ve never left a company where it was even mentioned during the resignation. The company just says “Well, bye.” Like the Tombstone meme.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#129

Post by atherton94027 »

blobbers wrote: post #119
zhach wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. My manager and I discussed lengths about the capabilities they do, and it is just like this. It's not his fault at all. It's a game at the end of the day, and it's your choice whether or not you want to keep on playing

Do you think retrospectively your manager may not have been as supportive of you as you had thought? You missed promo 3 times, and when you left he didn't try to counter you. Is it possible s/he might have been blocking you?

Yeah it honestly feels like the problem here – it's a common pattern where someone tries several times at a promo, then transfers to another team and gets promoted immediately.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#130

Post by supriyo-biswas »

tacker2000 wrote: post #39
lukevp wrote: post #8

And??? Where did you go? Did you get L5/L6? Or did you just leave and not get another job? What a wild article to have the interviews so prominently featured but not have a conclusion.

Yea I was also looking for this info. But his Linkedin says he is still at Google. So is this some weird cliffhanger now?

People in my experience usually don’t post about their new employer until they’re settled in for one or two months in order to not bad mouth a new employer which didn’t work out as expected.
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