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How I Left YouTube

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#271

Post by [deleted] »

whymauri wrote: post #117
nilkn wrote: post #101

Multiple denied promo applications. Warm, caring language but no attempt at retention on resignation. Other companies unsure of hiring candidate even after 10+ interviews. The simplest explanation of these datapoints is simply that this person is not operating at the staff level in a way that is fairly obvious to others, yet hard to articulate in a way that this person can emotionally receive and accept. None of this…

Have you worked at BigCo before? This was 1:1 my experience at a large company and within months they were asking for a +1 leveled boomerang. You can't take denied promos at face value, honestly.

[deleted]

Re: How I Left YouTube

#272

Post by bossyTeacher »

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.

>Career is a made up game.

And yet we know techies love games and structured process. It is a clever way to make them do what you want to. Techies could have so much more power in the job market and yet they give it all up sadly.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#273

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

mgaunard wrote: post #43
BoxFour wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the bits you want (money, skills) That’s exactly what the author did, and it’s why the leveling piece matters so much. At big tech companies levels very directly control comp, and less directly control the scope of problems you’re trusted with. You absolutely can tackle large, high-impact problems as a more junior IC, but it usually means pushing a lot harder to hold onto ownership. Otherwise it’s REAL easy fo…

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.

It doesn’t work like that. An “architect” at a small startup will get you maybe to a mid level position at BigTech if you pass the coding interview. The scale is completely different.

And those “entrepreneurs” usually make less than a senior enterprise dev working in a 2nd tier city or a new grad at BigTech.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#274

Post by Lord-Jobo »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #152
neilv wrote: post #149

> The strain comes from context switching. From 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, I had to care deeply about our quarterly goals and production stability. Then, from 6:00 PM to midnight, I had to care about inverting binary trees and system architecture design. We really need to stop the tech interview nonsense. Here is an experienced, practicing software engineer, who can't get a job without drilling for and performing frat hazin…

So exactly what kind of interviews do you suggest that a company do at scale to hire people who will make $300K+ a year? Just talk them?

Interviews tuned properly for the position are almost always 95% talking with a decent trial/probation period. If they have the general credentials and can talk competently about the detail work, there is no benefit for either party doing these asinine code challenges.

The problems that spawn these leetcode barriers are WAY better solved at the source.

Prob 1: the interviewer doesn’t know shit about the actual role. I know it’s an uncommon opinion, but this should just not happen ever. I would gladly sit in on a speaking interview for my would-be coworkers, with the hiring manager, to check this. And the actual manager should be present and knowledgeable too. But 3 employees doing something is too much $ I guess.

Prob 2: credentials and high degrees are prolific, super mandatory, but also treated like they are meaningless. Experience is borderline ignored entirely. Worked with a software deeply for 10 years, but your cert is out of date? You won’t even get past the computerized HR filter. But because this is so openly stupid, companies tack on leetcode as another filter instead of rethinking the value of experience and relying on probation and bullshit detectors.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#275

Post by amazingman »

nubg wrote: post #120
amazingman wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some version of this comment shows up in just about every HN comment thread on a blog post. It must be LLM-generated.

His criticism is valid. Not his fault most blog posts are AI slop these days.

Overzealous pattern matching is not criticism.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#276

Post by Lord-Jobo »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #175

This is an interesting contrast to the "don't become the machine" article. The mouse wheel this guy has been running in, both working for YouTube and preparing for interviews to work elsewhere, just sounds like an intentionally created psychology-breaking torture machine designed to eat youthful enthusiasm and ambition and spit out the dried up shell once the juice has dwindled to an arbitrary low yield. Jumping from…

> psychology-breaking torture machine designed to eat youthful enthusiasm and ambition and spit out the dried up shell once the juice has dwindled to an arbitrary low yield.

And it shows through in the product. YouTube’s website is one of the 7 Wonders of UX Feces and they are climbing the ranks at a steady rate.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#277

Post by sifar »

teacpde wrote: post #252
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 am at the stage of life where I appreciate this wisdom and desire the practice of it, but lack the will power to not get caught up “trying to win the game”. Once a while I get anxious about leveling and compensation, overwhelmed by comparison with peers. For people who had the similar struggles but managed to overcome, what worked for you?

By telling yourself it is ok to feel this way and going back to things you are good at, things that you love and people you care about and enjoy being with. Also exercise - that works.

There is nothing to overcome. These feelings rise up sporadically. Acknowledge and move on.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#278

Post by QuiEgo »

TrackerFF wrote: post #89
huug156 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do live in a different, underprivileged world. Many Google engineers have never not heard back from a job app. I will never understand people who refuse to work at a big company yet complain about money of all things. For reference my last job at Google paid $450k+. It seems like it would behoove you to enter the other world.

If you want a serious answer: Most software engineers are not status-seekers, and are not driven by prestige or a big paycheck. Big tech companies attract the same type of software developers that investment banks do to finance majors, or MBB management consulting firms do to business majors. Of course, I'm not saying that those are the people that FAANG-companies get exclusively, far from, but you have to...immerse…

> are not driven by prestige or a big paycheck.

I'm not sure I agree with this one, I think a lot of people are drawn to software because of the money in the same way people are drawn to being a doctor or lawyer - the job itself overlaps with their innate skills and interests __enough__, and there's the promise of good pay on top of that. I think a lot of software engineers would be in other fields if it paid badly.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#280

Post by ghaff »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #263
motbus3 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Except for the economics part, it is much more fulfilling to work for a smaller company.

Except for the money - the entire reason most people work everyday… I’m 51, worked at two F10 at the time companies out of my ten jobs and hated them both - GE and 8 years later Amazon. I purposefully made the choice of pursuing a smaller company and ignoring constant outreach from Google (GCP consulting division). But let’s not dismiss the close to $100K diference I could be making than what I make now. Also a 25 ye…

Money is a factor.

I went from, if not scraping by, never really recovered from dot-bomb to a pretty good job at a medium-size public company latterly. It was "mostly" good. But the difference in money set me up in a way that I previously really wasn't (even if not top tech levels).

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