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How I Left YouTube

zhach.news

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#321

Post by danny_codes »

vkou wrote: post #206
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I’ve worked at everything from small to medium lifestyle companies, startups, Big Enterprise, BigTech, and now Í am a staff consultant at a third party AWS consulting firm across 10 jobs. In all of those jobs, I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless. At the jobs where I was responsible for strategy, one of my conditions for employment was I would be reporting directly to a director…

> I have found line level managers absolutely useless and powerless. They are doing exactly what they are paid to, which is communicate decisions made above them to the people doing the work. You are correct - that is a powerless position. That's by design. Work isn't a democracy.

Depends on the effectiveness of your union

Re: How I Left YouTube

#322

Post by irishcoffee »

chihuahua wrote: post #171
irishcoffee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh gosh, I didn’t mean to imply it was poor decision making, I was just curious. You’re a better person than me for putting up with the interview process. I absolutely refuse to grind leetcode problems. My TC at the moment is probably a lot less than what you’ve made though. Always tradeoffs.

No worries, I didn't sense any criticism. I've just become more critical of my own decisions, now that I have some perspective and it seems to me that most of what I did was poorly considered. Getting through the interview process used to be so easy back then. I probably applied to 2-3 jobs to get an offer. That has changed drastically since 2023.

Do you wish you’d have gained tenure at one company longer?

Re: How I Left YouTube

#323

Post by fsckboy »

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. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase.

not sure what you are getting at. Football is a made up game. People who play it well earn fame and fortune. yeah, don't beat yourself up for not being able to play it well, but don't pretend there is nothing there.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#324

Post by tourmalinetaco »

fsckboy wrote: post #323
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. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. not sure what you are getting at. Football is a made up game. People who play it well earn fame and fortune. yeah, don't beat yourself up for not being able to play it well, but don't pretend there is nothing there.

I mean, there really isn’t for the majority. Fame and fortune are fleeting; fame has a short half life (hence the phrase “15 minutes” of it) and fortunes can be lost as quickly as they’re made (80% of NFL players face financial distress after retirement). Not to mention that for every pro athlete there’s at least 100 that don’t make the cut.

The same is true in every field to varying degrees. For the average individual who can provide for themselves and their families, more money and fame only sounds good on paper. In reality, it invites more stress than anything else.

Veritasium made an excellent video on that: https://www.veritasium.com/videos/2024/1/15/what-the-longest...

Re: How I Left YouTube

#325

Post by Palmik »

aeyes wrote: post #93

I 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…

Hard disagree.

At Google, in most orgs, manager can influence the chance of success significantly:

- Making sure their team works on what the org leads find "impactful"

- Facilitating cross team collaborations, which will lead to good peer reviews for your report

- Helping your report write the promo packet

- Presenting the promo case effectively during the calibration meeting and being prepared to advocate for the report and respond to criticism from other managers at the meeting

- etc.

There are many managers that do very few if any of these things, and it shows.

Yes, there are quotas, but nonetheless the manager plays a big role in whether their report makes the cut.

There is no harm in saying that you are quitting because you do not feel valued / rewarded enough. Hopefully it will effect change in the manager. Of course it's best to keep it polite and not burn any bridges in the process.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#326

Post by shermantanktop »

zhach wrote: post #109
shermantanktop wrote: post #40

>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. >This duality is exhausting. It forces you to lie by omission to people you respect. You can't tell your team, "I can't take that ticket because I need to study dynamic prog…

Author here. At the new job and yes, context switching has helped me a lot! Lol

We geeks often like to go deep, and engineers who persist with shallow understanding of tech hit limits. But as you get more responsibility, getting quickly oriented to project/task/business stuff is extremely valuable. And tbh, doing the same for tech topics is valuable but harder to do.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#327

Post by wiseowise »

saghm wrote: post #265
wiseowise wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet, how many people are actually happier with that extra $500k? A hella lot people, are you seriously that dense? If there were gladiator fights for 500k, I would be a fucking janitor cleaning up the bloody mess, because of how many people would die for a chance to make 500k extra.

I think you're overestimating how much making $800k versus $300k would actually make most people happier. You're welcome to disagree with me, but there's plenty of research indicating this might be the case (from a quick Google for "happiness self reported by income" this is the first result: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-g... ). If you think that everyone is the would either agrees with…

Here you go https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120

Re: How I Left YouTube

#328

Post by venturecruelty »

wiseowise wrote: post #245
venturecruelty wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some want luxuries like insulin.

Sure, what's your point though? How much % do you donate out of your salary to fix global poverty?

Because context is hard, I guess, my point is that "exiting the rat race" is generally something that only people with Mountain View addresses and opinions like "400k TC really isn't THAT much, if you think about it" tend to be able to do.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#329

Post by venturecruelty »

paganel wrote: post #237
venturecruelty wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does food and electricity cost for you right now?

A lot more compared to 3-4 years ago, still not reason enough to sell my soul and trying to re-enter the rat race.

"Just exit the rat race", says someone not facing repossession and foreclosure.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#330

Post by venturecruelty »

CrossVR wrote: post #177
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a system is what it does. If the org truly cared about under-leveled employees, it would get fixed rapidly. But they don’t. I’ve seen enough people glossed over repeatedly and then when enough people leave and the org is in a less leveraged position, then the promos are no longer an issue. Such BS.

You have to realize that a company is always optimizing for efficiency and salaries are no different. Giving out promotions when people are already working at the level they'd be promoted to is simply a waste of money. This is the author's biggest mistake. If you voluntarily work on tasks above your pay grade you are signaling to the company that you don't need a promotion.

Why are people so determined to just shill for companies? Do you know how many people are unemployed for Christmas today, while you're out here tasting shoe leather for these organizations with more money than God?

They're not going to take pity on you, you know, no matter how much you grovel and beg.

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