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Quitting a New Job

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Re: Quitting a New Job

#241

Post by FireBeyond »

st1x7 wrote: post #238
FireBeyond wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My girlfriend is an accountant. Almost universally, if someone ignored her degree, and wanted to run through a skills test, it'd be considered extremely insulting.

She also works in a field that nobody can enter without the necessary education and some additional professional accreditation. Software is a lot more open, without hard requirements for a degree and without oversight bodies. Maybe this is because it's a much newer field, maybe it's because the industry has been consistently growing for the past couple of decades and putting hard barriers to entry would have slowed d…

Not true - you can gain accreditation (i.e. a CPA), and an employer can mandate a level of education, be it an Associate, Bachelor or Master, but (at least in our state) these are not _required_ to be "an accountant".

There are definitely those of us without formal degrees in software engineering, programming, what-have-you, too. But similarly, I can see some of these employers saying "Oh, you have a CS degree from Stanford? That's cool. How do you perform preorder traversal in a given binary tree? Whiteboard is over here."

Re: Quitting a New Job

#242

Post by st1x7 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #241
st1x7 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She also works in a field that nobody can enter without the necessary education and some additional professional accreditation. Software is a lot more open, without hard requirements for a degree and without oversight bodies. Maybe this is because it's a much newer field, maybe it's because the industry has been consistently growing for the past couple of decades and putting hard barriers to entry would have slowed d…

Not true - you can gain accreditation (i.e. a CPA), and an employer can mandate a level of education, be it an Associate, Bachelor or Master, but (at least in our state) these are not _required_ to be "an accountant". There are definitely those of us without formal degrees in software engineering, programming, what-have-you, too. But similarly, I can see some of these employers saying "Oh, you have a CS degree from S…

> But similarly, I can see some of these employers saying "Oh, you have a CS degree from Stanford? That's cool. How do you perform preorder traversal in a given binary tree? Whiteboard is over here."

I'm not sure why you're putting this out there like it's a bad thing. Surely, we want all candidates to be assessed against the same hiring standards and not give some people a pass because of the school they went to.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#243

Post by dvt »

yibg wrote: post #225
dvt wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is it? The post I responded to was saying the company makes 2.5 million a month and they got a pat on the back. Sure, no one is asking for exactly what the company makes, but the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work. I'm just saying that's not how it works.

> the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work

Being proportionally paid with the value you bring isn't even remotely comparable to being paid everything you make. In fact, proportionality of pay is quite common in plenty of industries, e.g., real estate, law, etc.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#244

Post by yibg »

dvt wrote: post #243
yibg wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? The post I responded to was saying the company makes 2.5 million a month and they got a pat on the back. Sure, no one is asking for exactly what the company makes, but the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work. I'm just saying that's not how it works.

> the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work Being proportionally paid with the value you bring isn't even remotely comparable to being paid everything you make. In fact, proportionality of pay is quite common in plenty of industries, e.g., real estate, law, etc.

Real estate also gets very little (nothing?) if no sales are made. Is that what you're proposing? That software developers work on commission and don't get paid if the stuff they build doesn't make the company money? Or should it be like sales folks with a target? Seems like some folks want the best of both worlds. A bit fat salary that's guaranteed regardless, but also a big fat bonus if what they work on makes money.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#245

Post by dvt »

yibg wrote: post #244
dvt wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work Being proportionally paid with the value you bring isn't even remotely comparable to being paid everything you make. In fact, proportionality of pay is quite common in plenty of industries, e.g., real estate, law, etc.

Real estate also gets very little (nothing?) if no sales are made. Is that what you're proposing? That software developers work on commission and don't get paid if the stuff they build doesn't make the company money? Or should it be like sales folks with a target? Seems like some folks want the best of both worlds. A bit fat salary that's guaranteed regardless, but also a big fat bonus if what they work on makes mone…

> Is that what you're proposing?

You are being extremely uncharitable, and are attacking a straw man yet again. I don't think my argument is particularly hard to follow. A degree of proportionality between value generated and compensation isn't some far-fetched kooky idea.

Re: Quitting a New Job

#246

Post by richardwhiuk »

hinkley wrote: post #150
richardwhiuk wrote: post #27

> the upper rungs of Stripe’s engineering individual contributor (IC) ladder put a lot of emphasis on cross-team coordination and other, managerial-like activities that I didn’t enjoy and felt I wasn’t very good at. That's just the reality of senior IC engineering positions. At some point, there's a limit to the amount that you can contribute by sheerly by your own work - to have a bigger impact, you'll need to need…

Not every place is so enlightened. Plenty of places will focus on your individual contributions at review time, essentially devaluing any communication or force multiplication work you've done. Gee it's too bad you saved everyone on the team 8 hours of work a week because you only got 80% as much work done as they did (ie, we're actually punishing you for making everyone else more productive by comparing you to the y…

I can imagine this happens due to malicious-ness, but it seems unlikely.

Individual contributions are necessarily easier to measure and easier to attribute than force-multiplication or communication, so it's going to be easier / less work for managers to pull them out at review time.

Sadly, that means that you need to highlight your own work (in a vaguely PR/Marketing) way that you don't have to for individual contributions.

That means that you both have to communicate well to other engineers "look at this easy way to save 10% of your time", but also communicate the effects of that to management so they'll a) reward you for it and b) invest in making it happen.

None of that is "easy".

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