251–260 of 345 posts
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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.
> 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.
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Biggest dream of mine but almost impossible if you're married. Women hate it out it in the middle of nowhere.
The compromise is an exurb. Some of them are in rural areas but still close to the amenities of big cities (such as Costco).
I'm about 50 miles outside of Boston/Cambridge and have easy access to all the shopping I care about and even driving into the city for theater etc. isn't an undue burden. Between myself and a couple other neighbors we're on about 75 acres and adjacent to conservation land.
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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…
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There is so much interesting to unpack here. He was down-leveled to a first level manager at the company you are at? He accepted this? Why? Do you think he / the new company chose wisely? What ended up happening?
I’m not sure why he accepted it, I never pried too much. It was his first big tech job. It’s very possible he still made more money as a first-level manager, so it might’ve still been a net win for him. He was a great manager, he’s since moved up the ranks but he’s still at the same big tech co. So from both the company’s and his perspective, I suppose everyone’s happy.
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FWIW, I agree that less ink on a resume is usually a higher signal, and I also find that indicators for “ownership”, social trust, autonomy, and proxies thereof are more valuable than number go up narratives. But sometimes people feel like they must play this game to get past the pre-interview loop screen; I’ve interviewed plenty of people with number go up narratives who’ve done exceptionally well. It’s challenging…
> social trust This is an interesting term. (1) Can you define it for me? (2) Can you provide some examples that appear on CVs that project it?
So I don’t take the resume at face value, I trust our experience interviews and reference checks to get a truer measure of these features.
That being said, social trust shows up as being repeatedly given informal leadership roles. Including being trusted to design a system, orchestrate implementation, contribute to roadmapping, or work with non-eng people within the company or customers directly. There are other examples, these just came to mind.
Basically I’m looking for symptoms that their coworkers and managers trust them to do their job independently and with high quality. The theory is that you usually (but not always! which is why you actually interview people) earn this trust by being good at this job.
(Note: my views, not my employers’. I actually don’t make these decisions at my company.)
> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”. That bubble is not the world, I exist outside the ladder and I am legion.
I must say, life is a lot easier as a software engineer outside of Big Tech. It seems like a bit of a pressure cooker to me.
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Funny enough, I got into my one only and hopefully last BigTech company without a single coding interview even though my job description required me to know how to code. It was all behavioral. It was for a cloud application architect position at AWS ProServe (yes direct hire with the standard 4 year structure between base + bonus + RSUs). My current job was also behavioral where I am a staff architect at a 3rd party…
In my experience, by the time you get to do a full round interview your chances are pretty high, about 50% in big tech.
> 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.