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How I Left YouTube

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Re: How I Left YouTube

#81

Post by jtokoph »

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. (1): It can really depend on what they did before and during school. While in school, one could have real internships, real personal projects, open-source contributions, working for the university, contract gigs, etc.

Personal anecdata: I was solo building software projects in highschool that earned income (real product, creating real value, some of which were acquired) and worked on the school district websites. During college I contracted with startups part time while also building projects of my own.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#82

Post by lisbbb »

conqrr wrote: post #16

> In the software engineering world, we exist on a ladder. We call this ”Leveling”. Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase. Nobody will care or remember what you did or what level you were given enough timespan. Take the bits that you want (money, skills etc) to live life, but don't get too caught up trying to win the game.

See? That's his first problem--he bought into all that corpo bs that is placed there to steal your attention and keep you in their box. If they had liked the guy and he was truly talented, he would have gazzelled right up the org chart. I guess smart people think they're smart about everything?

Re: How I Left YouTube

#84

Post by lisbbb »

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…

I would go further and say that the entire system is designed to not promote people. It is there as a barrier to promotion and upward potential. The upward moves are saved completely for the in-crowd people. I'm sure at places like Google it is brutally difficult to move up the ladder at all.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#85

Post by paulcole »

mgaunard wrote: post #55
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…

13 interviews suggests he was interviewing for multiple roles within the same company; in which case it's not that shocking. In many places every team runs their own interviews.

Lord I would hope so lol

Re: How I Left YouTube

#88

Post by ehnto »

torben-friis wrote: post #77
mgaunard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

Smaller companies necessarily have a small team stretched across broad responsibilities, that usually describes startups. If it's scaling up then yeah, that changes. You want to join small teams for broad experience, startup or regular business.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#89

Post by TrackerFF »

huug156 wrote: post #75
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.

If you want a serious answer:

Most software engineers are not status-seekers, and are not driven by prestige or a big paycheck.

Big tech companies attract the same type of software developers that investment banks do to finance majors, or MBB management consulting firms do to business majors.

Of course, I'm not saying that those are the people that FAANG-companies get exclusively, far from, but you have to...immerse yourself, and drink some kool aid, before you enter that rat race.

Most people will look at leetcode marathons, infinite interview rounds, relocation, etc. and think "absolutely not".

Of course some people are just really sharp, and can almost stumble into these jobs, but most will have to put some real effort into it, and jump through the flaming hoops.

Re: How I Left YouTube

#90

Post by scuff3d »

webdevver wrote: post #76
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…

If you look at my comment again you'll see I said "work hard enough to get noticed... And make sure the right people know". I'm saying the same thing you are. You also don't have to be a Tyrion Lanister level political manipulator to get ahead. You mostly just have to make sure a few key people are aware of you and like you.

The comment about working in your own projects was to say that if you are so passionate you want to keep working behind what you need to put in to your job, work on something important to you.

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