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Getting things “done” in large tech companies

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Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#211

Post by esseph »

sokoloff wrote: post #197
bluecheese452 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took home 300k for 10 years then you don’t have to worry about getting a job.

That’s only $3M total gross. You paid over $1M in taxes across fed, state, and FICA. You probably spent over $500K if you lived quite frugally. That leaves maybe $1.25M plus some growth on that. Call it $1.5M. That will give you $60K/yr in income with high likelihood to last 30+ years. Pay taxes on that and you’re living in less than the $50K/yr you were living on before plus you have to buy health insurance. That’s…

The last sentence is completely wrong - that's almost the US median income.

MORE THAN HALF make less, and they are actually working during that timeframe.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#212

Post by johngossman »

nitwit005 wrote: post #188
johngossman wrote: post #57

While I generally agree with this, I’d add one thing: to understand what your managers want, you really need to understand the business. At the highest level, how does your company make money, or at least think it’s going to make money? What other things does the company value? It’s surprising how often I find developers who don’t know, either because they aren’t curious, are too busy to learn, or (surprisingly commo…

> to understand what your managers want, you really need to understand the business. That assumes your manager, and the managers above them, understand the business, and care. This is often not the case.

True. And it’s really good if you can figure out if they do or not. This is one of the questions I always ask hiring managers when I’m interviewing: “How does your group make money?” (Or contribute to company goals or whatever as appropriate). It’s a red flag if they don’t know.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#213

Post by p_v_doom »

conrs wrote: post #144
whstl wrote: post #3

I don't disagree with the article, but after working in big tech, two HN startups, a couple unicorns and others, in two continents, I don't really find this too actionable. In the last ten years (and even in the 20-people HN startups), the day to day work of engineers has become so incredibly specialised and divorced from the needs of decision-makers and the customers that there is almost nothing I can do to influenc…

I've had a very hard time with the Product Manager discipline. From the books and podcasts like Lenny's, it all makes perfect sense, but it seems like in practice it is as you described - they've inserted themselves in between and often don't represent either side well. It's lead me to develop product management skills myself, which are honestly incredibly useful in avoiding wasted effort. But it does make me wonder…

IMO a lot of the product managers inserting themselves and being useless is good old school project managers pivoting to the new thing and doing the same old stuff. Likewise I do think product management should be part of the senior engineers skillset. Its incredibly useful. Conversely, there are also tons of engineers that dont have this mindset and want a PM to tell them what to do and a barrier from the rest of the organization... which boggles my mind to be fair

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#214

Post by p_v_doom »

everdrive wrote: post #76
theK wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, fire the Product Managers?

I left the government for corporate work, and we didn't have project managers as a specific role. Of course, people were managing projects, but it was nothing like it was in the government. In my short experience, project managers: - Have no understanding of the technology they're "building." - Don't understand who is responsible for what. - Would have NO idea if things were set up incorrectly. - Are solely working t…

> It's pretty maddening, and self-evidently stupid. I really cannot fathom why my company and other companies fail to understand what a waste of time and money this is.

Tell me about it. I think its because of established common sense and practice that are deeply entrenched on one hand, people that dont really question or think it through on the other and inertia on the third. I work in a project company and the level of useless tools and stuff that gets in the way is crazy. Its like an artifact of the 60s or something.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#215

Post by whstl »

anon84873628 wrote: post #193
whstl wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes me think. I never really worked with a PM that was good at preventing wasted effort. Or even mediocre at it. Most assumptions I saw them making were incorrect, unless it was a VERY SIMPLE product. To me this is something that engineering should be doing, just like splitting tasks and double-checking designs. Of course not every engineer can do it, but some of us have been doing it, negotiating deadlines an…

On the other hand, I've seen engineers make unilateral decisions that had completely unacceptable UX or ops impacts, that didn't align to the original design spec, and that they didn't think to tell anyone about until way down the road. Everyone needs a counterpart to "trust but verify". At my company, engineering managers are ultimately responsible for the deadlines and deliverables. It's an anti-pattern for PMs to…

Sure, but my point is that certain tasks that people believe to be the responsibility of PMs is better done by engineers, IME.

And your example is also a good one, I totally agree, PMs managing deadlines is also not a good idea.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#216

Post by whstl »

p_v_doom wrote: post #213
conrs wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a very hard time with the Product Manager discipline. From the books and podcasts like Lenny's, it all makes perfect sense, but it seems like in practice it is as you described - they've inserted themselves in between and often don't represent either side well. It's lead me to develop product management skills myself, which are honestly incredibly useful in avoiding wasted effort. But it does make me wonder…

IMO a lot of the product managers inserting themselves and being useless is good old school project managers pivoting to the new thing and doing the same old stuff. Likewise I do think product management should be part of the senior engineers skillset. Its incredibly useful. Conversely, there are also tons of engineers that dont have this mindset and want a PM to tell them what to do and a barrier from the rest of th…

That's an interesting observation. After some thinking, I agree. It was quite hard to get the PM that replaced me out of the "project management" mindset when she joined.

Also agree about engineering needing to have the PM skillset. Especially in startups.

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#217

Post by whstl »

codingbot3000 wrote: post #210
whstl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. Mostly politics, I guess? The CTO was about to be fired, so I had nobody to fight for me. The Chief of Product didn't like the optics of a non-PM being more successful than a PM in delivering work. (EDIT: As I said, I delivered from start-to-finish 3 projects that other teams had considered "impossible", mostly because of bad specifications and overengineering, often caused by PM miscommunication. The…

Sad to hear this. There seems to be, at least in more enlightened companies, a slight momentum away from the current "classic" org structure of having separate Product and Tech departments staff dysfunctional Scrum teams. Going towards smaller delivery teams and managers who cover product as well as people leadership. The Basecamp folks have been doing this for a while, apparently. This might open another chance for…

Thanks!!! :D

I ended up leaving the big enterprise I was and joined a YC startup, now I'm back in my element a bit more. I'm still afraid of it growing too much, but maybe it will be the push I need to try my luck being a founder.

I agree with what you said about builders, I really wish there was a path that goes from engineering to engineering+product+business that isn't "founding CTO"! :(

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#218

Post by whstl »

jamesfinlayson wrote: post #207
whstl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience, IME founders make amazing PMs, because they care about the company and they care about people not wasting their time. Not OP, but I can answer: They're ok with ideas coming from someone else, check the ego at the door and listen to both engineers and customers. They make engineers work less and produce more value. Most important, they don't have a "vision", they help organize the team so the team has…

> They're not competing with the engineering manager or lead developer for some sort of leadership. Yep. Most of the managers that I've had that have been promoted from engineering have felt that their role is also tech lead, and have been poor at both being a tech lead and a product manager.

Definitely agree.

I worked one of those in the past, and the attempts at micromanagement were not only absurd but very disruptive.

I now prefer "non-technical" PMs to "half-technical".

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#219

Post by bluecheese452 »

sokoloff wrote: post #197
bluecheese452 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took home 300k for 10 years then you don’t have to worry about getting a job.

That’s only $3M total gross. You paid over $1M in taxes across fed, state, and FICA. You probably spent over $500K if you lived quite frugally. That leaves maybe $1.25M plus some growth on that. Call it $1.5M. That will give you $60K/yr in income with high likelihood to last 30+ years. Pay taxes on that and you’re living in less than the $50K/yr you were living on before plus you have to buy health insurance. That’s…

You spent 50k a year if you lived quite frugally?

Re: Getting things “done” in large tech companies

#220

Post by chipsrafferty »

spacemadness wrote: post #175
johnnyanmac wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you bring home say $300k/yr. You don't live in a HCOL Oh, I didn't know we were fantasizing about 2022. > you can still say you spent 10 years working at MS or Google and that would get you red carpet treatment just about anywhere. well, not in 2025. Market is rough and it's all topsy tuvrvy out there, with lots of companies pretending to hire but not. >If I was at one of these big tech companies and someone told me…

I don't think this world exists anymore. A lot of people I know are stressed out of their minds for the last few years by being way overworked and under constant threat of a layoff. I'm not talking about startups, I'm talking about Big Tech Corp. But I guess the mythical coasting engineer making a big tech salary that everyone talks about will never go out of style.

It definitely exists, but it's in the $120,000-$170,000 range
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