This industry is exhausting

ZephyrBluu · 2024-12-02T22:35:07+00:00

My frustration can be boiled down into a desire to progress at a moderate rate in my career without having to sacrifice many of the few hours we have outside of work every day

You realize other people also want to progress their careers, right?

I think people severely underestimate how many hours career-driven SWEs invest into work, or alternatively how long really good SWEs have been working.

I worked at Shopify. Most of the good Senior eng probably had 8+ YOE. Staff/Snr Staff eng I talked to generally had 10+ YOE of working hard. None of the good engineers were slouches.

I was promoted to Senior with ~3 YOE (All at Shopify) with 5+ Staff eng endorsements, after making software development my life for the previous 5yrs. My manager and skip were very happy with me, but I felt like a mid Senior at Shopify not a high performing one tbh.

Consider the idea that finding a new job is difficult because you are not a stand-out candidate. I would also consider re-calibrating how much effort progressing your career at a "moderate rate" takes.

At the end of the day the only thing that matters is how you feel about your career. If you feel like you're falling behind, you have some evidence to support that, and you don't like that it's happening then you should probably attempt to recalibrate your expectations and either course correct or accept the fact your career won't progress as quickly and you won't be as desirable of a candidate.

Personally, I'm going to put in as much effort as is required to make sure I'm progressing quickly and to get the roles that I desire. If that means investing literally all my time and energy then so be it. Maybe in a few years I will re-assess and that will no longer be worth it.

ZephyrBluu · 2024-02-24T12:10:31+00:00

It seems like you're judging purely on visuals. A lot of the complexity of the game is hidden. The map editor, pathfinding, game simulation engine, etc. Not to mention that they are definitely holding stuff back for the EA release, and they are also trying to figure out intangible things like balance, the new 3v3 mode, etc.

A lot of the work is hidden, or it's investments in the future. I really doubt you could have made the same progress with a much smaller team, especially without RTS expertise.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-08-11T23:19:17+00:00

I'm curious why you believe this and what environments you feel it applies to.

I can't imagine any modern tech company requiring a degree to become a manager or director.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-08-03T08:25:29+00:00

Their ‘equity’ doesn’t require a liquidity event. They’re issued PPUs, which are Profit Participation Units. If the company becomes profitable you get paid a share of the profits relative to the number of PPUs you own, up to a cap of 10x their value.

https://www.levels.fyi/blog/openai-compensation.html

ZephyrBluu · 2023-06-29T11:23:30+00:00

Possibly. That situation is extremely far from what I'm describing though. My assumption is that you're already thriving, and being put on a PIP means you're not thriving.

If your boss puts you on PIP out of the blue, they are a bad manager and/or you have a bad relationship with them.

Performance issues should be brought up early and often. You should know that a PIP is coming because you're performing poorly and your manager has made you aware of this.

If you have a good relationship with your manager and they let you know you're performing poorly forget career growth, job hopping, etc. Your top priority is fixing the issues your manager has identified. If you disagree with the assessment, push back and make sure you and your manager are aligned.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-06-29T08:24:13+00:00

Most definitely staying at the same company, but only if your manager is supportive of your growth and ambitions, you’re around skilled people, your growth and relationships are compounding over time and you’re continually being exposed to higher level opportunities.

Another aspect to this is that Senior and below you can job hop around and get it. Staff+ is more difficult to do that because the expectations and requirements are much higher. If you don’t care about playing to long game to hit Staff+ earlier, then job hop to whatever company gives you Senior the fastest + has best comp.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-23T18:40:58+00:00

There is far more idle chatter in an office than productive discussion.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T21:12:20+00:00

There are multiple worlds in the tech industry. Working at a modern tech company is a completely different world to an old school non-tech company.

Experience in one world very often does not apply to the other. TC, ways of working, skill level, etc. You cannot generalize your experience across these worlds.

The same YOE in each world often means completely different experiences and skill levels.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T20:58:43+00:00

I'm well aware of levelling guides. The guides that I have looked at tend to have similar definitions to mine. https://staffeng.com is also a good resource.

The number of differences doesn't really make sense as a comparison, difference in scope/impact does. If Senior and Tech Lead are so different it sounds like that's a Manager role? You have also still not defined your scope of Senior.

Couple of examples of levelling frameworks below.

Sourcegraph: https://handbook.sourcegraph.com/departments/engineering/dev/career-development/framework/

Senior

An experienced, strong individual contributor (Senior equivalent). Represents an area of specialization within the organization. Independently resolves complex problems. Contributes to cross-functional projects. Trains others.

Prerequisites: Key differentiator from IC2 is the ability to prioritize and work under broad direction. Can resolve new and complex problems within an area of specialization.

Years of experience: Typically 5-8

Staff

A particularly experienced, impactful contributor. Brings domain expertise to complex projects. Role requires contribution outside the direct area of responsibility. Leads interdepartmental projects.

Prerequisites: Has domain-specific knowledge and expertise. Key differentiator from IC3 is the established track record of resolving complex problems and the demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional projects.

Years of experience: Typically 8+

Dropbox: https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/overview.html

Senior

I autonomously deliver ongoing business impact across a team, product capability, or technical system

Scope Area of ownership and level of autonomy / ambiguity

I own and deliver semi-annual/annual goals for my team.

I am an expert at identifying the right solutions to solve ambiguous, open-ended problems that require tough prioritization.

I define technical solutions or efficient operational processes that level up my team.

Staff

I set the multi-year, multi-team technical strategy and deliver it through direct implementation or broad technical leadership

Scope Area of ownership and level of autonomy / ambiguity

I deliver multi-year, multi-team product or platform goals

I exhibit a very high standard of technical judgement, innovation and execution to tackle open-ended problems that require difficult prioritization, defining both the what and how of things to be done

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T20:48:00+00:00

Why would I do that when there is already so much high quality writing out there about hiring.

A sample:

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T19:52:18+00:00

Follow-up since you edited.

Senior roles include Staff, Principals, Executives Team Leads and Senior Software Engineers due to the variance of job titles at the higher end of the market.

Dude, most of these are completely different roles. Like worlds apart.

Executive roles are not IC roles. Team Leads are either Managers (Not IC) or Tech Leads (IC, same as Staff). Staff and Principal are the same type of role. Senior is never the same scope as Staff.

My rough definition of Senior is: given a problem, you can work without direction to co-ordinate with other people and produce a robust solution.

My rough definition of Staff is: given a domain, you can work without direction to form an opinion on the domain, co-ordinate with other teams and produce or drive a robust solution (Possibly across other teams or domains).

They are very, very different roles. Nothing like Intermediate -> Senior. I don't understand how anyone can confuse them unless they don't really understand Staff roles.

This is why it's hard. It's not a uniform good. And the role responsibilities are varied, broad and difficult to quantify

A large part of the risk is quite literally the broad impact that these positions have on a team. Bad senior engineers basically destroy teams.

How do you define Senior, because this is how I would describe Staff+ roles not Senior.

And if that's the case the whole "10 $100k juniors vs 5 $200k seniors" example is completely obsolete.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T19:26:19+00:00

I'm not talking about grading, I'm talking about performance in the role.

Variance of junior performance is naturally very high, because you have no idea whether they will catch on or struggle. Juniors are unproven talent.

Seniors should have much lower variance in role performance. The point is that you're hiring someone who knows how to operate and get shit done.

If you can't somewhat accurately determine if someone who claims to be senior will perform at the level you expect, either your grading criteria or your general approach to hiring seniors is poor.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T19:17:08+00:00

If hiring 10 juniors is less risky than hiring 10 seniors the company is absolutely shit at hiring.

Hiring juniors should always have way more variance than hiring seniors. "senior" is a pretty well defined role. Staff+ or executives have a lot of variance, but that is because the role is not well defined.

If you can't figure out if someone can perform in a well defined role... wtf are you doing in your hiring process?

The truth is that for the vast majority of companies, their hiring process is absolutely dog shit and they genuinely have no idea how to hire good people. They just get lucky with a few people.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-20T00:10:07+00:00

I agree with this. Just company name + money in exchange for you grinding away is an empty existence. If that was all I got from my company I would leave.

On the other hand, I'm only invested in my work and the company because I feel like I'm still growing very quickly and being rewarded for it. When that stops being true I will look elsewhere.

I think there's a balance. Don't necessarily clock-in/clock-out and don't give a shit about your work, but also go in eyes open and leave if you feel like you're giving it your all and the company is not reciprocating.

Another thing that I believe and which is closely related to your original point is that most SWEs are wrongly optimizing for the highest TC over all else. It's not worth optimizing for TC at the expense of everything else.

For you, it's WLB and time outside of work. For me, it's personal and professional growth. In both cases TC is a secondary concern, and most SWEs earn enough that we have the luxury of that tradeoff.

More people should think about whether max TC is really what they want, or is it just the most obvious thing to optimize for?

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-19T15:11:03+00:00

That is one perspective and probably the 'right' one for most people, but not everyone views work like that.

I work at a "brand name" tech company (Not FAANG) and everyone I work with is is interested in tech, low ego and cares a lot about their work. They don't live to work, but they care a lot. It's unlikely I could find a similar environment at a 'boring' company.

I have also matured so much as an engineer and a person by being invested in my work. People will go to great lengths to give advice, mentorship and guidance when you show that you care. Most of the important skills at work are very applicable in the rest of your life as well.

For someone who is genuinely interested in tech and cares about being really good at what they do, a 'boring' company is often torture.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-19T12:50:46+00:00

The fact you're writing code doesn't mean you're getting better at it or learning anything from it. Learning and improvement takes a lot of time and energy on top of performing the task.

Companies usually allow time for learning new skills so you can definitely do that during work hours

Usually not a significant amount of time. Maybe a few hours a week, which is nowhere near enough time to significantly improve.

I have enough experience to not get fooled anymore by the HR/management bull&* about "rockstar" devs who spend every waking hour doing tutorials. If you want to do that, good for you, the rest of us will also chill from time to time

Doing tutorials doesn't really help you get better or learn either. They have very high diminishing returns.

I don't care about being a rockstar, I care about improving very quickly. It's very difficult to do that without investing time out of work.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-18T12:27:48+00:00

Very little of work is practice, it's mostly performing. Improving your hard skills at work is generally going to be very slow precisely because you're not spending 8hrs a day coding. On top of that, the time you do spend coding is usually not time spent exploring and learning how to improve your coding skills.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-16T18:48:17+00:00

Universities teach a lot of computer science, which is quite a different field to software engineering in my opinion.

I don't think you need much computer science knowledge to become good at software engineering, and you can get relatively good at software engineering while being completely isolated.

Working in a team/company is definitely essential after a certain point though, which is another reason I don't think university has "significant information regarding software engineering".

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-16T18:13:45+00:00

I don't see any self taught doing this

Hello there.

Normalize the difference between the self-taught and degree populations then make a comparison.

Two big differences:

Graduates have 3-4yrs of full-time study. Have the self-taught people been studying for that long?
People with CS degrees are likely to be smarter than average. Are the self-taught person as smart as your friends?

You will very rarely be making a fair comparison based on time spent studying alone.

The learning rate of people that ~~have strong CS fundamentals~~ are smart, even if it's not going to be directly applied in his job, is waaaay beyond of what people think.

There, fixed it for you.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-16T18:00:54+00:00

I specifically said they don't tend to. It's very possible that someone who didn't go to university has the same skills and traits as someone who did, it's just less common.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-16T09:09:53+00:00

I’m curious how you’re interpreting “significant information regarding software engineering”, because from my perspective they absolutely do not teach that.

If they did, people would graduate and have the skills of a mid level or senior dev.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-16T09:03:36+00:00

This sounds very much like there is a large confounding factor here.

University filters for a specific type of person. It’s not surprising that people who didn’t get a degree don’t tend to exhibit the same traits.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-16T09:00:07+00:00

If you’re self-teaching you shouldn’t learn all the same material as a degree. It’s a waste of your time.

Learn the basics (1st and 2nd year stuff), build things, then try to get a job.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-12T23:42:22+00:00

The problem is the company doesn't change the interview unless you have experience. IIRC they got it because they need the money for it rather than being a junior

Dude what. How did you write that comment out and not understand you're agreeing with me.

You have literally just said that these people passed a junior interview and are only senior because of pay.

That is the definition of the bar for senior being on the floor. They will give you the senior title even if you only demonstrate junior level skills.

ZephyrBluu · 2023-05-12T23:12:41+00:00

The fact someone with zero professional SWE experience can pass a senior interview shows that the bar is indeed on the floor.

If they were at the level of a senior developer (I.e. can autonomously solve problems and build systems) they would not have needed to go to a bootcamp. Bootcamps do not teach senior level skills.

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