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How I Left YouTube

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#71

Post by hibikir »

sixspeedengine wrote: post #35

> The results of that meeting? The same from the previous promotion decisions; “it’s unfortunately a no. You don’t have enough impact.” Promotion at Google, as in many places, is tough. Status is allocated partially on level, so it sucks to not see that growth. Sometimes lack of promotion can be not having the right opportunities. It's fair to leave a company for whatever reason. For any other L4->L5s, or anyone want…

The problems of lack of independence are rarely the kind of thing you decide in a big leveling meeting though: Someone working in near the project has to be providing the feedback regarding the employee needing more supervision. If that's the reason someone fails to uplevel, the manager and the dev lead are failing you, or outright saying something different for your packet than they say to your face.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#72

Post by jpollock »

sixspeedengine wrote: post #35

> The results of that meeting? The same from the previous promotion decisions; “it’s unfortunately a no. You don’t have enough impact.” Promotion at Google, as in many places, is tough. Status is allocated partially on level, so it sucks to not see that growth. Sometimes lack of promotion can be not having the right opportunities. It's fair to leave a company for whatever reason. For any other L4->L5s, or anyone want…

It's also important to understand the makeup of the existing team, and headcount the team has.

If the team is already full of lvl5's/6's, there's not going to be enough senior eng work for a new one, particularly when headcount is being reduced.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#73

Post by paulcole »

foxheadman wrote: post #15
paulcole wrote: post #10

Love how he’s critical of the 13-interview hiring process despite having done all 13 of those interviews. “Nobody drives there anymore. There’s too much traffic.” These companies can do 13 interviews because people will put up with them. The little place I work does phone screen, work sample, final interview, reference check. We can be done in a week. Nobody wants to work with me bad enough to sit through 13 intervie…

You manage to live a life where if you don't like something, you can just avoid it?

Yes. With some limitations. This is true for everyone though.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#74

Post by userbinator »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #13

>At one prominent tech company, I underwent 13 separate interviews for a single role. In what insane world does this make any amount of sense?

I see that as a manifestation of Buridan's Ass --- when they're very indecisive about it, they will naturally try to measure more.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#75

Post by huug156 »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #14

Reading this I feel like I live on another planet. I recognize this guy seems to only be dealing with FAANG type companies, but the disconnect from my own reality is so vast it’s hard to reconcile. I have never worked anywhere with the L4/L5/whatever crap. No one I have worked with has either. It sounds downright dystopian that people are reduced to a basically a number (if you leave out the L). I am assuming he left…

You do live in a different, underprivileged world. Many Google engineers have never not heard back from a job app.

I will never understand people who refuse to work at a big company yet complain about money of all things. For reference my last job at Google paid $450k+. It seems like it would behoove you to enter the other world.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#76

Post by webdevver »

scuff3d wrote: post #45

This is why it's honestly not worth working that hard. Work hard enough to get noticed, spend the rest of the time making sure the right people know what you're doing. After a certain point it just doesn't matter anymore. The company has quarterlies to hit, and they aren't going to budge from whatever they have allowed for salary. And they're going to take the money they won't pay you and put it in an exec bonus pack…

i would like to push back a bit on this and say, it is worth working hard, but i would argue a lot of programmers get hindered by the illusion that programming is important, or even delivering results. unfortunately in software this is exacerbated by the very real world-wide impact that programming actually does have, but: it will always be subjugated by the most important job...

the most important job, that has ever existed, and that will ever exist, is politics. moving up the career ladder you have to start thinking in terms of people, or maybe even in terms of mammals and mammalian group dynamics, cos thats who youre "programming" now, not computers. and most programmers aren't cut out for that, just as most regular people aren't cut out for programming. its hard to say why, but thats the on-the-ground data i see again and again.

i also would like to push back on the "personal projects" mindset - the sentiment often being "just live in your own little world" (not saying it is here, but this is what it often implies.) if youre going to admit defeat and retreat, be honest about what youre doing. dont dress it up as a 'win'. ceding financial/social/political agency is never a victory, but sometimes a neccesity. quitting a mag7 like google is objectively a step down whichever way you slice it. you can count on two hands the number of companies that have the level of resouces that google does - it might be worth to swallow ones pride and slog it out.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#77

Post by torben-friis »

mgaunard wrote: post #43
BoxFour wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take the bits you want (money, skills) That’s exactly what the author did, and it’s why the leveling piece matters so much. At big tech companies levels very directly control comp, and less directly control the scope of problems you’re trusted with. You absolutely can tackle large, high-impact problems as a more junior IC, but it usually means pushing a lot harder to hold onto ownership. Otherwise it’s REAL easy fo…

It might be nicer to go work for startups, acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack, then get hired at a high responsibility position. Though most people into entrepreneurship never go back to big corporations usually.

>acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack

This is not usually how it works. In fact in my experience, the moment a company becomes a scaleup and brings new leadership in to handle growth, those people start getting rid of the hacky jack of all trades profiles.

Larger companies usually value specialized profiles. They don’t benefit from someone half assing 20 roles, they have the budget to get 20 experts to whole ass one role each.

Career paths in large companies usually have some variation of “I’m the go-to expert for a specific area” as a bullet point somewhere.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#78

Post by piskov »

Two questions:

1. Is it normal for someone who graduated in 2018 tell “with over 13 years” of experience?

2. He quit Google but not got hired anywhere else?

Re: How I Left YouTube

#79

Post by dylan604 »

mgaunard wrote: post #56
BoxFour wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech companies are also notorious for down-leveling if you’re not coming from another big company, so it might not actually be that good of a move.

Well of course, if you were CTO of a company of 10, you can't expect to be hired as CTO of Google.

This is why titles on biz cards are funny.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#80

Post by dylan604 »

piskov wrote: post #78

Two questions: 1. Is it normal for someone who graduated in 2018 tell “with over 13 years” of experience? 2. He quit Google but not got hired anywhere else?

Re 2), this reminds me of those situations where people are given the opportunity to resign rather than being fired. They get to save face on their next job interview, but it does the next hiring company a disservice. It might be something that comes up later in the hiring process, but nothing that would be identifiable at the start of that process
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