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Quitting a New Job

yolken.net

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Re: Quitting a New Job

#211

Post by specialist »

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…

How much time do you expect to spend dancing in your future marriage? Less than 1%?

Now imagine your dance skills accounted for 99% of your score during the courtship (hazing) ritual.

Leetcode is even less relevant. I can google algorithms. Dancing's an actual skill.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#212

Post by shuckles »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #204
shuckles wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really great teachers could probably find a way to make huge incomes. I tutored competition math on the side to rich families’ kids for nearly $500/hr.

The whole point of my post was that we need the best teachers in the classrooms, not tutoring a few select rich kids.

Your original claim was that the teaching profession is systematically underpaid but in fact you’re talking about a very specific set of public sector employees whose compensation is more complex than just annual salary.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#213

Post by imranq »

Honestly the best perk in a job is a short commute. I would take a huge paycut for a shorter commute. Anything over a twenty minute drive is a no go for me. A five minute bike ride is ideal.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#214

Post by ClumsyPilot »

shuckles wrote: post #212
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of my post was that we need the best teachers in the classrooms, not tutoring a few select rich kids.

Your original claim was that the teaching profession is systematically underpaid but in fact you’re talking about a very specific set of public sector employees whose compensation is more complex than just annual salary.

This 'very spesific set' is like 90% of all teachers.

The argument was -you cannot get away underpaying developers, you get crap develipers and crap code. But compare teaching outcomes, and you will see that countries with better paid teachera have better outcomes in primary education, so we are suffering the consequences in both cases. Its just that we've chosen different tradeoffs

Re: Quitting a New Job

#215

Post by bhyolken »

Animats wrote: post #34

At Stripe and each of my jobs before that, I had had a short commute to a beautiful office, and got to experience the instant gratification associated with developing purely software-based products. Now, I was stuck taking a crowded train to a dark office littered with hardware parts, working on a product that would take many years to reach mass-market adoption due to pesky little things like manufacturing and road s…

Author here. Just a few clarifications:

1. I have a ton of respect for people who do robotics work. I was trying to be a little humorous/cheeky in my descriptions here. Apologies if it comes across as flippant, that was not what I intended.

2. My undergrad was in EECS, so I know a little about the hardware side of the world (although, to be fair, I've never done it for work).

3. There's a bit more to the story than what I wrote about in my post. For reasons around confidentiality, etc. I had to focus on the things that were safe to talk about openly, some of which I agree are kind of petty. Ditto for the reasons about leaving Stripe.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#217

Post by gautamdivgi »

bartread wrote: post #120
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…

I have a habit of slogging through difficult patches that has, for the most part and with only perhaps two notable exceptions, served me well. However, I want to tell the story of one of these exceptions as a counterpoint to other comments here. A few years ago I started a job where, within the first week or two, I had serious enough doubts about whether or not it was going to work that I spoke to my manager and said…

About the commute.

If you have a 45 minute commute which is allegedly "normal". It's an hour and a half. I would add another hour to that to make that a true door-to-door figure, i.e. from the time you decide to get ready (past breakfast/morning coffee) to when you're actually productive at your desk. Same in the evening from the time you shut work to when you're back home.

If you sleep 7 hours a day, you have 21 waking hours. You're spending 15% of your time (2.5 hours) on a commute. That in my opinion is a lot of waste.

My point being most people seriously underestimate the cost of the commute. It's almost like saying you have to work at least 2.5 more hours a day but you won't be paid for it.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#218

Post by war1025 »

jtonz wrote: post #203
war1025 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've mostly worked for startup to mid sized companies in the past I saw an anecdote a few years ago about a hiring manager basically saying, "If you worked happily for a small startup, you will most likely be unable to put up with the bureaucracy of a large enterprise from now on" I've often wondered how much truth there was to that statement.

Personally I have found it to be quite accurate. The smaller the company you work for the likelihood of 'flexibility' in your role increases. Those companies just don't have the headcount to have a full suite of engineers so rely on people dipping their toes in other tasks to keep the machine ticking along (e.g. frontend devs handling deployment). With a larger company you will typically find they have already hired…

This is something that has made me a bit nervous to switch jobs. I don't live on the coasts, so prospects are already a bit more limited. I've spent the past decade more or less on a team of ~5 engineers as part of a ~10 person company.

I did interview at a different startup a couple years ago, which was I think around 100 employees at that point. They claimed to be very lean and quick on their feet, but I got the feeling that we were talking about different levels of volatility.

I suppose the thing that actually keeps me where I am is I have both a very long leash and a high degree of influence. Hard to level-set that against other positions I see listed.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#219

Post by dvt »

yibg wrote: post #202
dvt wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

every time engineering salary discussions come up something like this gets posted. We made the company $xx millions and we only get a tiny fraction of it in pay. As if the company should pay engineers whatever they make. What about: 1) All the other things that goes into making that money. Like sales, marketing, HR, etc. 2) Supply and demand. Doesn't matter if you made the company $xx millions, what's your market val…

> As if the company should pay engineers whatever they make.

You're attacking a strawman, no one in this thread is arguing that the company should pay engineers whatever they make.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#220

Post by syndacks »

crandycodes wrote: post #78
austinl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can appreciate this — I stayed with my previous company for 5 years, which seems like an eternity to most folks I talk to, but I worked on 3 very different teams during that time period. It felt like joining a brand new company each time with new challenges and things to learn. I'd recommend exploring that route before leaving if it's open to you.

I've done this as well. Been at MSFT for 7 years, been on 5 different teams, and switched between PM and Dev a few times. It's been great from a quality of life perspective, I think. I've got a lot of experience I wouldn't have had if I stayed on the same team and work has stayed pretty interesting. I've also got a pretty large network of folks I know, which is helpful for a variety of reasons. Biggest downside is ec…

Maybe find a team you think you can really impact with your PM+Dev skills, deliver an impactful project, then use that as leverage to get promoted within this team and/or a fleet of teams. I like what you have to say r.e. learning and enjoyment, but don't sell yourself short. You're probably a lot more valuable to the group/division than you realize.
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