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Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

dropbox.github.io

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Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#61

Post by LtWorf »

rockyj wrote: post #44
serial_dev wrote: post #27

It 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 am in the same boat. Specially after delivering multiple high impact systems and still getting the talk - "This is great, but not enough for the next promotion". So after a while I just realized that these levels are artificial and meaningless to a large extent.

If they just don't promote it can be ok (if they give inflation raises), if they promote every other slacker but you I'd start being resentful.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#62

Post by LtWorf »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #46
menaerus wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

Mostly the spec is crap and must be rewritten so…

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#63

Post by tonyedgecombe »

ecmascript wrote: post #20

Every senior role is always very arbitrary while the junior ones are very practical. I feel that this is why big companies fail because you can never actually tell if the senior employees fulfill their expectations because it comes down to personal preference. Stuff like this only shows that it's not worth making too much of an effort since it's not really recognized anyway. The only time effort and monetary benefits…

I think a lot of it stems from the fact that it's difficult if not impossible to measure programmer productivity. Once people realise this they start playing political games rather than focussing on their own output.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#65

Post by 0xEF »

LittleTimothy wrote: post #30
serial_dev wrote: post #27

It 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'm also in the same boat as both of you, but I'm not sure I agree with the idea that I need to do a bunch of extra work to prove some nebulous concept like "impact at the next level" or whatever buzzwoo we want to say in place of that. If the manager wants to develop my talent, then they need to get off their over-priced rear ends and do so.

I feel like making everyone at the lower levels shoulder all of the accountability is the exact opposite of what we need to do when it comes to improving operations across the board.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#66

Post by dewey »

Hamuko wrote: post #6
yodsanklai wrote: post #3

Just 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?

Makes sense to be somewhat comparable as people switch between these companies a lot.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#67

Post by lucianbr »

anelson wrote: post #41

When reading BigTech career ladders like this one, I immediately fall into the trap of projecting myself onto the ladder, and getting upset when the level I've chosen for myself is described as something that sounds far removed from what I want to do. I must remind myself to frame this as how Dropbox describes the things that they value in each position. An L7 SWE is the most valuable SWE in Dropbox, as measured by t…

> instead should attend a lot of meetings, craft long-term visions, influence strategies, and probably cross-functionally synergize paradigms or something

I never understand how this is supposed to happen. As an employee of a company, no matter the level, don't I need to do the tasks that are assigned to me by the higher level? Be they "write code" or "attend meetings" or "write an architecture document" or whatever? If I am at L4 and whish to grow, can I just skip my coding tasks and instead join meetings uninvited, high-level ones? How can I "influence other teams" if I am not already empowered to influence other teams? As a team member, would I do what some external "influencer" says, or what my team leader / manager says?

It sounds to me like for most advancement, the actual requirement that can be read between the lines is "know how to navigate the rules and people to do what you want instead of what you are told to do". I would guess you would find plenty of people with this skill at NASA right before the Challenger disaster. People who knew how to "make things happen" despite lowly engineers telling them there are problems. Acknowledging problems isn't anywhere in the career ladder document.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#68

Post by jerrygenser »

sabellito wrote: post #59
SirHound wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In capitalism, that's how it's designed, yes. Everything else is "religion" to distract from this fact.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#69

Post by silvestrov »

brightball wrote: post #53
silvestrov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first post says "this shouldn't be a product at all".

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it should be a small focused company like FastMail or 37signals.

Re: Dropbox Engineering Career Framework

#70

Post by lcedp »

serial_dev wrote: post #27

It 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…

> do I need to get to the next level?

It depends on the company. A few companies have a terminal level that is approximately equivalent to Dropbox's IC3/IC4. This level does not involve managing people, but it does require owning projects that can span across several teams.

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