To the author: was there an open process to move to another role within your previous company? That could be another path to finding a better environment where one could grow in salary and responsibility?
How I Left YouTube
291–300 of 345 posts
Re: How I Left YouTube
#292> Hunting for a job is a full-time occupation. Doing so while maintaining high performance at a demanding job like YouTube is a recipe for cognitive fracture.
You don't need to maintain it that high, just enough not to get fired within the expected time to find a new one?
> From a critical perspective, this signals organizational dysfunction.
Indeed, but since you understand it, you also don't have to waste your time 13 times?
Re: How I Left YouTube
#293I have seen this from the manager side at these kinds of companies, explaining to your manager that you are quitting because your level does not match your work is a waste of energy. Their hands are usually tied. Promotion decisions are made by committees which are 1-2 levels above your manager, your manager presents the candidates. They round up a pot of multiple teams which are discussed at once and there are usual…
If only there were some sort of way employees could get together and like... I don't know, use their labo- I mean, work energy as lever- I mean, to convince management to recognize their uni- I mean, get their boss to pay them more.
I have worked several union jobs, collective contracts usually don't touch the promotion process. If they do they often give automatic promotions after X years where X is still a fairly high number. And obviously this is not a great strategy for many reasons.
Negotiations about yearly pay raises are common but these are in the 2-5% range. Even non unionized big tech companies usually still give these yearly adjustments but its nothing compared to the 20-30% you can get when you level up.
Re: How I Left YouTube
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That bubble is not the world Hence the author's "In the software engineering world". Nothing in author's write-up led me to think he doesn't understand that.
Yeah, no. Most companies do not have that exact hierarchy. Maybe at FAMGA etc, but most engineering jobs are not there.
levels.fyi makes it seem otherwise
Re: How I Left YouTube
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all women. I'm married and have four children.
When you have children, your life is mostly about the kids. It really doesn’t matter if you live in rural America. As empty nesters, at 51 and 50, there is nothing interesting about rural America. I’m in South GA now visiting my parents with my wife. They spend all of the their time between yard work doing things around the house and church. My cousins who still live here and their lives are just as boring - unless t…
> They spend all of the their time between yard work
I do find it a tiny bit offensive the idea that kind of thing is boring because it's not your hobby. I live semi rural (not America) and gardening became a hobby, there are garden shows etc.
Everyone has the same amount of time to fill every day. When it comes to "things to do" I don't really see one optional lifestyle as more fulfilling or hollow than another. I could live in a city, which would open more options, more than I could possibly consume, but at the same time it would also constrain my resources so I wouldn't be able to do as much of one thing.. or have a big garden and a studio for painting.
Re: How I Left YouTube
#296> 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.
The amount of bits that we want is directly connected to where we are in the game.
There are extremes like "Ryan works his ass off for puny $50k/year" but generally you get what you give.
Re: How I Left YouTube
#297Optimising YouTube viewing time is a terrible goal to devote your life to in my opinion. I'm not sure if OP ever thought too deeply about what he was working on, but addicting people to a screen is not one I consider a value to society.
I can’t wrap my mind around those goals, because (IMHO) the number one thing that would improve viewership is entirety outside of YouTube’s hand: content quality. So the author can only ever move needles that are thrice removed (i.e.: improving backend tools -> creators have more time -> creators create better content) or are statistical coincidences (we made the buttons round -> viewership went up 0.2%).
Re: How I Left YouTube
#298Earlier 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…
Ditto. From all the places that I’ve quit, the only counter offer I’d accept would be “we’ll implement this structure/process change that is slowly killing your will to work here”.
Re: How I Left YouTube
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
- Surround yourself with friends who also aren’t playing the game. - Get really clear about what your actual financial goals are, not what they’d need to be in order to maintain status among game-players. - Get compensated in ways other than money. For me, working four days a week instead of five, and working remote from anywhere, is worth a whole lot of money. And working at a smaller company is a hell of a lot more…
Are you working from Europe or have unlimited PTO?
That much time off at a small company sounds rare.
Re: How I Left YouTube
#300> 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.
The worst part about this is that the level is largely made up. Its a social construct. for example a "senior engineer" at a FAANG has more "value" than lead engineer at a no-name startup. However the skill gap between a lead engineer of a team of 6 vs a "senior engineer" at FAANG is massive. a "Senior Engineer" (ie [e|l]5/6 at a faang) makes almost no product decisions. There is a team that makes the GUI, product, m…
L5 at FAANG makes almost no decisions on their own but has to schedule a dozen meetings and pester a dozen people from various teams to "get alignment".
We still have to do the work to get the decision made without the fun part of just making the decision ourselves.