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Career Asymtotes

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Re: Career Asymtotes

#51

Post by dasil003 »

It’s odd to me that someone who reached E9 at Meta seems so unaware of the capriciousness and political aspect of promotions at high levels. These are coveted and extremely rare roles that many talented and ambitious people are earnestly working towards and most will never achieve just by the numbers. I see nothing wrong with ambition but to measure your career by level is a reductive perspective that can undermine the specific accomplishments and relationships you have built.

This obsession with levels is something I see with many junior engineers who have gone through school chasing shibboleths of success. Stanford, MIT, always chasing the well-defined carrot. But often failing to understand there’s a pretty low ceiling to success on the well trod path. Real value comes from solving novel and ambiguous problems without anyone telling you how to do it. You have to realize those levels are meant to capture something about how the most effective technical leaders operate, it’s not a roadmap or a checklist for you to cargo cult. The things that matter are the quality of the work you do and the perception thereof by those in power. “Levels” are just secondary HR structure to manage the masses of employees in large corporations, and if you think too much about them you’re taking your eyes off the ball.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#52

Post by ajkjk »

cortesoft wrote: post #31
ajkjk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the storyline by which "person under the flight limit becomes astronaut" is something like: they become famous and renowned and respected for some kind of science at which they are an expert; in the next twenty years spaceflight changes tremendously; the rules change; they end up on the shortlist for a flight colonizing Mars because they deserve it and rules are made up anyway. So "success" looks like "changing the w…

> Why not? The future can be anything. I don’t think the ability to come up with an implausible scenario where a person could become the thing that seems impossible is the same thing as saying “if you have enough motivation, you can become anything you want”. Both scenarios you described require a lot of things to happen that you are not in control of; space flight changing significantly and colonizing mars aren’t so…

We're kinda talking about different philosophies here. There's "can it be done in any timeline" and "can it be done practically". Of course it can't be done practically. But if that is a 100%-filter on the things you attempt, then things that aren't likely to ever happen will never be attempted. Things go a lot better when people have unrealistic expectations and then end up in places they didn't expect (probably not the place they aimed for...). That's a moral worth nurturing, even if it is not any sort of practical approach that you would stake anything on.

Basically: it is false that you can be anything in particular if you work hard enough. But it is true that the best way to act is as if that were true to some degree, because the outcomes are better for everybody.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#53

Post by cortesoft »

ajkjk wrote: post #52
cortesoft wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not? The future can be anything. I don’t think the ability to come up with an implausible scenario where a person could become the thing that seems impossible is the same thing as saying “if you have enough motivation, you can become anything you want”. Both scenarios you described require a lot of things to happen that you are not in control of; space flight changing significantly and colonizing mars aren’t so…

We're kinda talking about different philosophies here. There's "can it be done in any timeline" and "can it be done practically". Of course it can't be done practically. But if that is a 100%-filter on the things you attempt, then things that aren't likely to ever happen will never be attempted. Things go a lot better when people have unrealistic expectations and then end up in places they didn't expect (probably not…

It sounds like we are actually in agreement, then. You can absolutely achieve more things than seem possible, but you can’t achieve everything. I don’t think it is a bad idea to try things that seem unlikely to succeed, or to believe you can achieve something that is rationally very unlikely. You are right, having some irrational belief in yourself will often lead to more positive outcomes.

I just think you shouldn’t conclude that you just didn’t work hard enough if you don’t achieve every dream. As Captain Picard put it, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life."

Re: Career Asymtotes

#54

Post by cortesoft »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #41
cortesoft wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that you know this isn’t true. You are telling me the only thing keeping a guy in a wheelchair out of the NBA is motivation? As for astronauts, NASA has a height limit of 193cm to be on a flight crew, so no amount of motivation is going to let a 6’6” guy be an astronaut. These are the easy and obvious counters to your assertion that motivation is all it takes to be anything, but it is even true at most things.…

NWBA is a legit basketball league with pro athletes. NASA may limit your astronaut dreams due to height but SpaceX won't. You state easy and obvious concerns, yet they all are self limiting..

Sure, if you modify your goal to a more realistic version of the goal, you can achieve it. That is different than saying you can achieve any specific goal you want if you work hard enough.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#55

Post by d13z »

jebarker wrote: post #10

I think about this plateauing question quite a bit. I'm 44 and around the E6 level. I think it is very challenging for me to progress much further up the ladder. I'm not confident I have the skillset required and trying to develop those (leadership and strategic) skills feels very hard to me. But I don't find that at all disappointing since I'm fairly confident I can continue to progress sideways. Maybe it's naive or…

The same is happening to me. I live in Europe and I'm a staff engineer with almost 40 y/o but I have to be honest and I think I'm not going to be able to grow on the corporate track. Whatever comes next will come from other sources, maybe consulting, maybe teaching, but I don't see an option moving forward, and I'm kind of fine with it.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#56

Post by xp84 »

dmoy wrote: post #21
almostgotcaught wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Measuring oneself as an engineer by the title of the salary band you're in is a disservice. It's really not that deep - people do this because both a title and salary are effectively money you can bank and that's the only thing that matters - we don't work grueling, stressful, tedious, jobs just the sake of "a hard day's work". > Not when I was promoted from Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer, but rather the after-h…

> are effectively money you can bank and that's the only thing that matters We may have to agree to disagree here. Not even just talking about the case where someone's worked in the tech industry long enough with a low enough expense lifestyle that money literally does not matter to them anymore ... A lot of people will work specific jobs not because they're trying to optimize for the most possible money.

I hope you’re not feeling superior to others because you’re able to have a “low expense lifestyle.” That tends to go right out the window if you have a spouse who doesn’t work in tech, and especially with children. Though I could just be a little biased because for a special needs child, basically take your expected ‘child expenses’ and square that number.

Note: all of the above was my own choice, so I can’t complain. I only just want to point out that you can really only keep a true low-expense lifestyle as a single person, or as a childless couple if both of you share that frugality passion.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#57

Post by xp84 »

sokoloff wrote: post #11
roncesvalles wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's relatively straightforward to get to E5 even if just by being hired as one. A good number, I want to say a majority but don't have the data, of externally hired E5 at FAANG were E4 in their previous role. Getting E5 to E6 seems to be the great filter. But if you know what it takes to go from E5 to E6, I think going from E6 to E9 is smooth sailing (provided you find wind in your sails). But by then the ma…

> But by then the marginal utility of a promotion starts dropping sharply. If you're already earning upwards of $450k as an E5, $550k or even $800k isn't that attractive. Going from $450K/yr to $800K/yr probably triples or quadruples the amount you can save per year without feeling like you’re constantly scrimping. That drives down the time to F-you money, which is appealing and gives substantial psychological safety…

I’d agree with you too. I’m working to get to retirement. Savings rate is huge. Assuming I can get to that point, after I have no reason to need more money from employment I’ll be working on one-person startups that I don’t ever need to make money to scratch all my hacker itches rather than working to make some VC guys richer.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#58

Post by Supermancho »

cheepin wrote: post #37
Supermancho wrote: post #6

Don't confuse arbitrary career ranking (which varies org to org) with earning potential. I have a relatively low effort remote job with fantastic compensation in a very large company. The responsibility is low, the opportunities to move about are many and often appear. I get job offers all the time and think: Yeah, it's more money, but will it be better conditions? This is the longest I've ever worked at a company (o…

That’s a pretty solid endorsement. Where do you work?

I can say confidently, not JPMC.

Re: Career Asymtotes

#59

Post by sushisource »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #43
sushisource wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's just obviously, objectively, not true. If you're born with 12-inch legs you are _not_ going to be an elite marathon runner. Heck, even if you're born with average genetics, you're not going to be an elite runner. What would make us think the same thing isn't true of mental activities? Obviously there's a lot more noise in the signal, and it's a lot more subjective, but there's pretty much 0% chance that…

>I mean that's just obviously, objectively, not true. If you're born with 12-inch legs you are _not_ going to be an elite marathon runner My empiric objection is simply to watch this video. Everything here is objectively true: https://youtu.be/cEItmb_a20M

That's super duper cool, but, it doesn't refute my statement. If what you're saying is "you can do anything you want at a level that will challenge you". Yeah, sure, but not at a level comparable to the best of the best.
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