171–180 of 215 posts
I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…
FAANG isn't looking for experience at all. They want smart fresh college grads - better schools first. They have a large army of middle management ready to grind them until they either quit or promote up to middle management. They put a lot of time and money into this well oiled machine. Taking on senior devs is a waste of their time, they don't have the processes or culture to integrate them - and seniors have an ab…
It probably is true that new grads are preferred and are more malleable into the company culture.
It feels to me that hiring from competitors is less about harming other companies and more about the signal that people know how to deal with the various ways big companies may work.
If the median(?) age at Google is 29, isn’t that a combination of (a) growing a lot and (b) hiring a lot of new grads? Then it’s mostly a function of the average % of the size of the company you hire each year at 22 years old.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you speculating that orzig meant to say "a Master's degree in CS" instead of "even Masters program into science"? Are they somebody you know personally?
> In my experience, an MS degree has been one of the strongest indicators of poor technical interview performance. > Whereas MS degrees used to be a means for departments to begin vetting future PhD students, I believe that the purpose has, in some ways, shifted to be a cash cow for the university in question. > Part of the problem is that CS fundamentals instruction tends to happen in undergrad computer science cour…
I notice you haven't answered either of the questions I asked you in my comment, which seems like a pretty hostile attitude to me.
Any advice on up-leveling here? I'm a generalist backend dev that's bounced around startups for a while and am now pushing 40 and have been thinking about how to specialize before it's too late
It's hard to work just for money, that's usually not where love lies
I'm experiencing this now and it's taking some energy to not become disillusioned with the industry. Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less valuable than specialists. For any given technology or stack right now, some company out there is doing something cool with it, and they only want to hire people who are already familiar with their particular configuration. The couple of tech interviews I've…
> Generalists, or people with a "wide T", are also a lot less valuable than specialists I actually disagree with this. Speaking anecdotally but also someone who works at a FAANG-esque co, full stack or “wide stack” (front, back, infra, sre) are the most desirable due to their versatility and knowledge of the interworkings of various parts of the stack.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most people really do have to pivot up through some more average jobs first before landing the Big Tech jobs with huge paychecks. But the assertion here is that too many “pivoting up” jobs are a negative indicator. (An “upper class” programmer wouldn’t spend time in the “lower” classes.) Not saying I agree or disagree with this, but the existence of a class system in tech jobs is the OP’s central point. Edit: The O…
"Wrong kind of experience is worse than no experience" is an interesting concept. It implies that the people thinking like this think that people aren't mutable. With no experience, you're a tabula rasa, but once you've been carved, that's it, fixed in stone. Which may be true for some people, but I'm fairly certain that humans are known for their adaptability, their willingness to learn. At least that's why they get…
I mean, if you work in a company/team with bad practices, then that's likely to rub off onto you and affect your further employment prospects, because it will be hard to unlearn being okay with untestable code, no documentation and even the code itself not being self-documenting where possible, the code being not scalable, having N+1 problems and so on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
generalists tend to get stuck with all the most tedious work from every department that simply no one wants to do someone has to do it, and if the pay is adequate, it's a matter of attitude. not getting credit (appropriate $ compensation) for your influence i don't understand this part. you already have your salary, as negotiated. are you saying that such a positions are always underpaid? and if such a position reall…
IME from doing general work at 3 companies in different industries (which might not be fully representative): Also sorry, turns out i ended up venting >someone has to do it, and if the pay is adequate, it's a matter of attitude. the pay is adequate for the value of the work (which is low), and it eats up your time which actually lowers the average value of your work to the company. it isnt anything other people cant…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Colleges are less impactful for trendy tech companies than they are for finance or whatever. I went to a no-name state school and could get into these things. If you really did an internship programming at Walgreens, it's easy enough to omit it from your resume.
Is the "state degree" vs. "Ivy League degree" thing that common in US society? I ask because I've just joined an American company, and a person mentioned that they'd been hired and given a chance to excel "despite only having a state degree, much to my Mom's disgust", which surprised me. In my country, there's not much difference between the respective universities in terms of 'prestige'.
I've worked with quite a few MIT graduates and overall they've all been very good at what they do. So, sample size of one in the case of Harvard but I think Ivy leagues are not all created equal for a given major.
I generally enjoy Dan Luu’s advice, but IMO it’s best approached with the understanding that his professional and social network is somewhat of a bubble that doesn’t reflect the average person. Specifically, he cites a statistic that 50% of the people with “no experience” he knows are getting ML and other such jobs at Big Tech companies. In this case, I think he’s likely pre-filtering his sample set to people with si…
FAANG isn't looking for experience at all. They want smart fresh college grads - better schools first. They have a large army of middle management ready to grind them until they either quit or promote up to middle management. They put a lot of time and money into this well oiled machine. Taking on senior devs is a waste of their time, they don't have the processes or culture to integrate them - and seniors have an ab…
I've gotten offers to onsite at Google and other big tech cos but didn't follow through due to not wanting to grind LC
These places seem to be hiring like crazy.