Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Left YouTube

zhach.news

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–345 of 345 posts

Re: How I Left YouTube

#341

Post by einpoklum »

Google is a company which spies on its users, and manipulates search results and recommendations against user interests to further external and internal-corporate interests. This manipulation happens specifically on YouTube. On that platform it also executed the "adpocalypse" in 2017, and other measures.

The intrepid author, however, has not a word to say about any of that. "I just work(ed) here" is the implicit statement. He's preoccupied with his leveling and his personal advancement.

Is that typical of Google software engineers? I wonder.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#342

Post by NetOpWibby »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #300
KaiserPro wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Man, I really thought I’d be doing Cool Things at FAANG but startups are a lot more interesting and a lot less backstabby.

Sigh

Re: How I Left YouTube

#343

Post by hdjrudni »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #342
8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Man, I really thought I’d be doing Cool Things at FAANG but startups are a lot more interesting and a lot less backstabby. Sigh

Yep. I've done both now. Pay and perks are better at FAANG but the work itself is way more boring/annoying

Re: How I Left YouTube

#344

Post by zelphirkalt »

qingcharles wrote: post #156
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hiring developers is half lottery, half dark art. Best guy I ever hired was when I was tech lead for a large streamer. I hired a guy at essentially minimum wage to write some very basic HTML pages. Within weeks he was writing code. Within a couple of years he was a much better dev than I'll ever be. I'd almost be down by literally hiring devs by picking resumes out of a hat and just having them on probation. The shee…

It becomes less of a dark art, if you take a look at the applicant's portfolio. What side projects have they built? What interests them? What technologies did they use in those side projects?

There is something like that for jobs in design and art sector. Checking what kind of projects someone already did. Checking their website. How does that look? Is it well designed? What are they showing on their website about what they have done?

But the issue with these ideas is, that apparently these days there is zero time planned for actually checking candidate background properly like that. That's why hiring a dev can feel like a lottery. Hiring people work with utterly incomplete knowledge.

Post reply on HN