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How I Left YouTube

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#231

Post by qweiopqweiop »

marcyb5st wrote: post #188

Currently in a similar situation. Stuck at L5 and failed the L6 transition due to: "The trajectory is good, but there is not enough evidence showing that you are consistently performing at L6". It's ok. I am in Zurich and an L5 Google employee gets a ton of money so I am happy anyway. I decided that the personal sacrifice to get to L6 is not worth it and I am happy to cruise along for as long as they let me

Yes, you're out earning most SWEs, certainly almost all in Europe. Congrats. I'd be optimizing for a lack of stress and working on interesting things, but also my personal life to bring progression and accomplishment.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#233

Post by ralferoo »

ryandrake wrote: post #128
blobbers wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having received a counter offer more than once, and accepting it once, I'd say that it's better at that point to just leave.

If you're already at the point of having decided to resign, you've already done a lot of soul searching (well, unless it was an easy design to leave) and weighed everything up and decided to leave. Even if the financials were an important factor in making that decision to leave, by the time you've convinced yourself it's the right choice, you'll have looked into all the other areas of the job that really annoy you. Even if you take the extra money, those things will eat away at you, and you'll probably always second guess yourself about how much better life might have been at the place you had lined up and then turned down for the payoff.

In other words, once you've made the decision to resign, there's part of you that has already mentally checked out of the job, and that will never be satisfied staying in the job, even with more money.

The counter offer I accepted was fairly early on in my career, adding about 25% to my pitifully low salary at the time. In relative terms it was massive, and most importantly allowed me to get a mortgage (at the time mortgage companies in the UK were very strict about not lending more than 4x your annual salary). However, the discontentment I had with the job remained and within 6 months I decided I still had to leave because I was still unhappy there even despite the extra money. Sure enough, the next job was much more fun because I was working on something new.

I've not been on the other side, but just from my own experiences, I don't think it'd ever be worth making a counter offer unless you knew they were chronically underpaid compared to the cost of hiring someone new AND you new that even when they were unhappy at work they'd still bring enough revenue to more than justify the extra spending knowing that it's likely to just be a short term fix.

TLDR: Once you've decided to leave a job, just do it. If an employee wants to leave a job, just and wish them well and let them leave.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#234

Post by elektrontamer »

wopwops wrote: post #209
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.

I said "F-this" 20 years ago, moved to the middle of nowhere, paid cash for my property and live on next to nothing. Best decision ever.

Biggest dream of mine but almost impossible if you're married. Women hate it out it in the middle of nowhere.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#235

Post by [deleted] »

elektrontamer wrote: post #234
wopwops wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "F-this" 20 years ago, moved to the middle of nowhere, paid cash for my property and live on next to nothing. Best decision ever.

Biggest dream of mine but almost impossible if you're married. Women hate it out it in the middle of nowhere.

[deleted]

Re: How I Left YouTube

#236

Post by [deleted] »

wiseowise wrote: post #210
paganel wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a salary that pays rent/mortgage and puts food on the table doesn't always have to be about being in a rat race (which is what the "laddering" bs really means), to the contrary.

People generally have different needs. Some want expensive Porsche with their mortgage and food on the table.

[deleted]

Re: How I Left YouTube

#237

Post by paganel »

venturecruelty wrote: post #225
paganel wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a salary that pays rent/mortgage and puts food on the table doesn't always have to be about being in a rat race (which is what the "laddering" bs really means), to the contrary.

How much does food and electricity cost for you right now?

A lot more compared to 3-4 years ago, still not reason enough to sell my soul and trying to re-enter the rat race.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#238

Post by mgaunard »

BoxFour wrote: post #69
mgaunard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well of course, if you were CTO of a company of 10, you can't expect to be hired as CTO of Google.

My first manager at a big tech co was the CTO of a 500 person company. He was down-leveled to being a first-level manager.

It is quite common for CTOs of smaller companies to be hired as team leaders into bigger companies; nothing wrong with that.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#239

Post by ralferoo »

ralferoo wrote: post #233
ryandrake wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having received a counter offer more than once, and accepting it once, I'd say that it's better at that point to just leave. If you're already at the point of having decided to resign, you've already done a lot of soul searching (well, unless it was an easy design to leave) and weighed everything up and decided to leave. Even if the financials were an important factor in making that decision to leave, by the time you…

Also, one thing I forgot to mention that I think is really important...

If the company is prepared to offer you a big enough raise to tempt you to stay, and able to organise that raise at short notice, why didn't they value you enough to give you that raise before then?

Re: How I Left YouTube

#240

Post by mgaunard »

torben-friis wrote: post #77
mgaunard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be nicer to go work for startups, acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack, then get hired at a high responsibility position. Though most people into entrepreneurship never go back to big corporations usually.

>acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack This is not usually how it works. In fact in my experience, the moment a company becomes a scaleup and brings new leadership in to handle growth, those people start getting rid of the hacky jack of all trades profiles. Larger companies usually value specialized profiles. They don’t benefit from someone half assing 20 roles, they hav…

There are times where a big company needs to build something new (albeit within a constrained ecosystem and a very narrow swimming lane).

To do so, one good way is to hire the experts of that domain that have built it before. That can mean acquiring a small specialized company, or simply hiring its top talent.

You could also repurpose your existing staff, but a big company is unlikely to have a lot of "builders", as most of its staff is just iterating and maintaining things others have built a decade ago. You probably still want to have some of those people in the team anyway, for integration purposes.

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