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How I Left YouTube

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#21

>At one prominent tech company, I underwent 13 separate interviews for a single role. In what insane world does this make any amount of sense?

I went through a loop at Meta that was probably 10-11 rounds. I would have done 100. The compensation is truly life changing and the engineering problems were world-class.

I'm sure OP is correct that this is a signal for a bad org - but from the outside looking in you'll do anything.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#22

Reading this I feel like I live on another planet. I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile. I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L). I am assuming he left…

>Am I that much of an outlier that I need to get with the program?

No! You’re right where you need to be (just not where you want). Many of us have had a ridiculously difficult year.

You’re not alone.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#24
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.

> Take the bits you want (money, skills)

That’s exactly what the author did, and it’s why the leveling piece matters so much.

At big tech companies levels very directly control comp, and less directly control the scope of problems you’re trusted with.

You absolutely can tackle large, high-impact problems as a more junior IC, but it usually means pushing a lot harder to hold onto ownership. Otherwise it’s REAL easy for a more senior IC to step in and quietly take it over.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#25

Reading this I feel like I live on another planet. I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile. I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L). I am assuming he left…

I've been at three FAANGs now and my experience has been that nobody really cares about your level for day-to-day work. The only times it has ever come up for me is when a) I was part of assembling a new team and we needed a mix of juniors and seniors or b) when some dangerous action like deploying during a holiday code freeze needed approval from an L9+ by policy, so you had to go find that person and justify it to them.

Now, your compensation is based entirely on your level, which obviously makes it matter a great deal, but my experience hasn't been that there are mind games around it.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#26

Reading this I feel like I live on another planet. I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile. I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L). I am assuming he left…

Reality is that different resources have different impacts on an eng. org. Some individuals are eng. orgs onto themselves and can own a whole stack (breadth). Some are very specialized in areas that require deep expertise or experience (depth). Some are good engineers, but lack both breadth and depth of knowledge. Leveling let's you delineate comp bands accordingly.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#27

Reading this I feel like I live on another planet. I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile. I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L). I am assuming he left…

> this job search is the hardest I have faced in over 30 years. Just talking to a human is almost impossible.

My advice: Don't apply on platforms that are filled with spam. I think the best choice I've made for work is posting on Hacker News that I'm looking for work rather than bothering with job sites like LinkedIn. Both times I've done this, this last time even after being laid off, I had a new position within the month. I've never even gotten replies on any other platform: not on LinkedIn, not on Indeed, not on Upwork... but commenting on Hacker News has gotten me a job in relatively short order, every time.

My personal hypothesis is that employers look here to find interesting people... or at least that's how I'd go about it. Both companies I've joined from HN have been filled with obviously autistic people.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#29

Tried to read through the article, but couldn't finish. I felt this writing heavily alluded to a ChatGPT generated response. Too many punchlines and paragraph breaks.

It does look LLM-assisted, but I'm fairly sure the experiences shared are genuine.
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