What are the salaries for these positions?
I'm not sure how accurate: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/dropbox/salaries/software-e...
Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
51–60 of 136 posts
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Senior who doesn't deliver (write code) is not a senior. Beating about the bush in meetings is easy, executing the stuff isn't.
Writing code is easy when you have a spec to work to. It more or less writes itself - see Getting that spec is damned hard. What do i mean by spec? Basically are you going to build the right thing. A hard problem - if you think it’s easy, it more than likely means you didn’t understand the problem. The reason pinning down a spec is so hard is because at the macro level, there are very few actual solutions - mostly on…
Sorry, I think that's delusional and if anything maybe only applicable to the very narrow and simple problem space. Nobody writes out the "spec" for the next best inference engine or the next best distributed database.
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I remember correctly, Dropbox was one of the first big tech companies to publish its career framework openly, a lot of organizations (especially smaller ones) based their careers on the Dropbox’s one
Dropbox has 2,693 employees. 37signals has ~80. I can't see Dropbox having a product/sales that is ~30 times as complex. However, I can easily see an organization that has become overly political. Dropbox should be run as a small company and not run it as "big tech". What are all these people doing besides political games?
This sums up the original HN post where several people made fun of Dropbox.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
They’ve done many acquisitions to expand functionality, tons of integrations, APIs, search and they do a very good job when they integrate those acquisitions too.
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#54What are the salaries for these positions?
[deleted]
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I remember correctly, Dropbox was one of the first big tech companies to publish its career framework openly, a lot of organizations (especially smaller ones) based their careers on the Dropbox’s one
Dropbox has 2,693 employees. 37signals has ~80. I can't see Dropbox having a product/sales that is ~30 times as complex. However, I can easily see an organization that has become overly political. Dropbox should be run as a small company and not run it as "big tech". What are all these people doing besides political games?
[deleted]
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#56It could be that I’m getting old, became a parent and working remotely from the middle of nowhere, but do I need to get to the next level? I really wouldn’t mind keeping my current salary, adjust it for inflation and I’m good. I don’t care about my title, I don’t want to manage people, I don’t want to work harder than I need to. I just want to pay off my mortgage, have some leftover money for vacations, have time for…
These frameworks serve 3 purposes. The first purpose is to have something concrete to point at so your employees don't sue you over unfair practices - they create a paper trail for management to operate and build evidence that what they are doing follows a meritocratic process (whether that's true or not is irrelevant, it's purely a legal concern). The second purpose is to motivate employees who want progression by s…
I've worked in companies with similar frameworks both as a dev and as manager, and it was great. Everything has issues, but the framework gave useful guidance.
Sorry you've worked for such terrible companies.
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#57Just skimmed through it, but it seems extremely similar to what is done at other big tech companies.
Have they all reached the same conclusion independently or are they just copying each other's homework?
At some level you need engineers to roughly accomplish the sane things.
I looked at the definition at Principal which is where I siy now at another firm.. and I've held at other firms... and it lines up. that's what I expect to do.
Work with director+ managers, show the way by being the way, etc. Very standard. I'd expect a bit higher tech bar... But bot hugely, it helps to convince people when you are stronger technically, it also helps with technical vision. You have to understand the details and own 'em. One small detail can turn your architecture upside down.... (Making push/pull choices is a classic issue, often with no good answer... but a bad one is possible, depending on constraints.)
.... I find it nice to see "Yup, that's what I'd sign up for." basically.
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Senior who doesn't deliver (write code) is not a senior. Beating about the bush in meetings is easy, executing the stuff isn't.
Writing code is easy when you have a spec to work to. It more or less writes itself - see Getting that spec is damned hard. What do i mean by spec? Basically are you going to build the right thing. A hard problem - if you think it’s easy, it more than likely means you didn’t understand the problem. The reason pinning down a spec is so hard is because at the macro level, there are very few actual solutions - mostly on…
>Writing code is easy when you have a spec to work to.
In my forty year career I never saw a spec that was anywhere near accurate or complete.
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#59It could be that I’m getting old, became a parent and working remotely from the middle of nowhere, but do I need to get to the next level? I really wouldn’t mind keeping my current salary, adjust it for inflation and I’m good. I don’t care about my title, I don’t want to manage people, I don’t want to work harder than I need to. I just want to pay off my mortgage, have some leftover money for vacations, have time for…
That’s because “impact” is generally code for making other people rich. If you’re in a small enough company for your impact to matter, chances are your stock options are still chips, which you might never get to cash in. If the company is post IPO then chances are your impact will never move the needle materially for yourself. Income is really the only thing that matters. When you do the same job and aren’t getting i…
I don't understand the shallow cynicism. Isn't everything we do at a company in order to make the owner and shareholders richer?
Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework
#60It could be that I’m getting old, became a parent and working remotely from the middle of nowhere, but do I need to get to the next level? I really wouldn’t mind keeping my current salary, adjust it for inflation and I’m good. I don’t care about my title, I don’t want to manage people, I don’t want to work harder than I need to. I just want to pay off my mortgage, have some leftover money for vacations, have time for…
I'm in the UK and since buying a house, I really feel no need to keep going higher. Property pricing in the UK is extremely damaging. If I found a job at a higher level that I thought I'd really enjoy and that I'd be good at, I'll be interested, but otherwise I'm content.
Well, you could think about making more money for retirement. Not saying you need to get crazy about it, though.
I am not sure how the hell we will be able to manage that (retirement) with the lifestyle we got today. Not that I am rich, far from it, but I am not sure I want to ask my kids for help... and that seems more and more the direction we're moving in.