Ew. "Consume Content" just sounds gross.
I agree with the thesis of the article, though.
Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
31–40 of 259 posts
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#32I wish role rotation was a common thing in tech. Learning what our teammates need, what they do, and how they work makes it so much easier to work together and make each others’ lives easier. So many ideas we work on are low ROI and caused by lack of visibility outside of our little silos at the IC level.
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#33I currently binge on realtor training videos. Cold calling, raw procrastination, it's got it all. I don't think I'd ever want to do it but it's a great place to learn motivation.
DO you have a link? That sounds fascinating.
This guy is very good: https://youtu.be/52cLUwDSQ6Y
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how much more is someone “worth” who can understand the different parts than someone who made their career knowing how to play the promotion/leetCode/system design/behavioral interview game at any of the large tech companies and position themselves to show “scope” and “impact” by getting on the prime projects? It’s a much more straightforward path and one I would recommend to anyone starting their career today. I…
Well, in my opinion, it remains to be seen whether big tech compensation for this style of work is sustainable long-term. Of course, if you're already pulling 800k/y in TC at Google/Amazon/whatever, great, you did wonderfully. If you're a brand new engineer starting your career, are there going to be a lot of those 800k jobs that offer you free daycare, dry cleaning, lunch and massages? I wouldn't bet on it. I say th…
I spent most of my career on the “enterprise dev” side of the bimodal distribution of tech compensation. I only landed on the BigTech side by doing a slight pivot (cloud consulting).
I don’t see the day coming anytime soon that the divide narrows where it does make sense to be on the “enterprise dev” side (where most developers are) over the $BigTech side.
I’m objectively good enough at all of the areas that the article lists - I have to be to succeed in true “consulting” (as opposed to staff augmentation). But that wouldn’t have mattered unless I jumped ship to the $BigTech side.
Most outside consulting companies aren’t paying their top employees what I make as a mid level employee at my current job.
I have one or two connections I could probably leverage on the enterprise dev side that would allow me to make more if I jumped ship. But that’s only because I have $BigTech experience on my resume.
I’m not disagreeing with you. Even before working at $BigTech, I could throw my resume up in the air and get a job as a developer without doing the leetCode monkey dance because I had the skills you listed and I spoke directly to CxOs and Directors at small companies based on my network.
I haven’t done a coding interview in over a decade.
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#35It is hard to find good content on other verticals though. I saw ask for something like HN for different other industriesmany times here, but never saw any relevant answer
Which vertical do you want?
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#36I don't "consume content". I read, watch, and listen to a wide variety of things, though, and highly recommend that practice. My apologies. "Consume content" has become a pet peeve of mine. It's a dehumanizing and overly reductionist phrase, and isn't even technically correct (the best kind of correct).
I will grant you that "consume" is awkward. I often say "I read -- well -- I listened to [The Sandlot]" and "consume" is too awkward to use colloquially as "I consumed [The Sandlot]". That said... Unless you've got an overtly superior alternative, time to move on and join the fray. It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.
> It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.
It's barely tolerable when used in that sense, but typically it's not used in that sense. The problem is the widespread abuse of the term. When I first started hearing it used, it was weird but didn't irritate me because it was usually used in the sense you're saying here. But then it started being used all over the place, even when speaking of a single sort of media.
I'm not saying this is right, but it has become a bit of a "red flag" word to me these days, indicating to me that the the piece where it's being used is not of great quality.
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know anything about SV or big tech hiring so I’m sure it’s reasonable hiring advice, I don’t know. That said, boy it sounds like a recipe for burnout.
Oh it very much is. I’m 49 and joined BigTech at 46. I recognized that a year in and decided not to play the game. I found out the minimum I had to do to stay at a mid level role working remotely and actively took myself off of that treadmill and used the extra money to reduce my expenses and save so at anytime I could afford to hop.
Then you joined big tech at the peak of the pandemic boom, when it was completely fair game to for recruiters to be poaching even foreigners due to the outsized growth outlooks. You should be aware that the economic environment has basically taken a 180 since then, and your experience might be very different from someone joining the workforce today with no work experience.
To counter the "cram LC" thing, the issue is that there are plenty of new grads doing exactly that who don't even get past ATS screening. You just don't hear about it much because places like cscq are echo chambers w/ high degrees of survivorship bias and there's qualitative levels of difference to "cramming leetcode" that can't really be captured in online discussions.
Ultimately the generalization seems to be "don't pigeonhole yourself, set yourself apart in some way", which is, IMHO, not exactly a super insightful revelation. That has always been the "smart" way to play the game.
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#38I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of th…
But just like at state parks, tread lightly.
I've gotten in trouble before while exploring and then being accused of putting my nose where it shouldn't be. It can look like you're wasting your time looking for distractions, or trying to dig up dirt. Not everyone in all parts of your company is going to like you poking around. You also risk picking up new responsibilities if people catch wind that you might be offering help. This can be the start to a promotion and also a good way to just make your days longer for no additional compensation. Not all managers will respond to the leverage of cross department work you took on yourself, though they probably should.
That said, if you do it well, which is an art of it's own. I agree, the potential benefits outweigh the risks.
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh it very much is. I’m 49 and joined BigTech at 46. I recognized that a year in and decided not to play the game. I found out the minimum I had to do to stay at a mid level role working remotely and actively took myself off of that treadmill and used the extra money to reduce my expenses and save so at anytime I could afford to hop.
Then you joined big tech at the peak of the pandemic boom, when it was completely fair game to for recruiters to be poaching even foreigners due to the outsized growth outlooks. You should be aware that the economic environment has basically taken a 180 since then, and your experience might be very different from someone joining the workforce today with no work experience. To counter the "cram LC" thing, the issue is…
My title is not “software engineer”. I pivoted into “cloud consulting” to get into BigTech. I fell into that role because I do have the combination of skills that the article author spoke of - and I’m an MBA drop out.
But my route was very circuitous and I would never recommend it.
As someone who considers himself a student of organizational behavior and being on the inside informs my viewpoint.
Being that I’m billable. There is a direct line between my work and revenue I generate.
Re: Want an unfair advantage in your tech career? Consume content for other roles
#40I travelled to Yellowstone National Park. I wandered into the back country office and spoke with the ranger. She was super friendly and informative. One interesting fact she shared is that Yellowstone is almost 4,000 sq. miles and receives 5 million visitors a year. 99.9% of those visitors never travel more than 50 feet from the main road. This means that most of those visitors experience less than 1/10th of 1% of th…
>That detour involved a team that was following a process I could not understand. Turns out they didn't understand it either. I little reorganization yielded a $385,000/yr cost optimization. It took me just a couple days. Chances are you swim in a sea of complacency too.
Hold on a sec, are you saying you found dead weight and then got leadership to terminate their employment?