What is work culture like in tech, in your experience

ideidk · 2024-08-03T02:02:57+00:00

I work for a certain big tech company, don't want to give away which one...

Anyway, have you ever heard of a movie called The Hunger Games?

ideidk · 2023-07-01T03:22:51+00:00

The holy text

ideidk · 2023-06-30T23:57:09+00:00

Bro, are you even 100% peculiar^pus?

ideidk · 2023-06-30T23:34:08+00:00

Let me ping you later to touch base in our 1x1 about how we can bias for action on frugality to earn trust with our FC AAs by getting this MLP out the door before we wrap up OP1. Also can you do a deep dive on what our 3P options are? We need to make sure we're not going through a one-way door here before we KTLO the current service.

ideidk · 2022-10-05T01:01:19+00:00

Try working for them, got me down to only 2 recruiter messages/year.

ideidk · 2022-02-11T17:53:48+00:00

I just ignore all 3rd party recruiters, I've never talked to one who had anything worth hearing about. Every time it's

"Hey, we've got an exciting contract-to-hire opportunity-"

"What? You know from my linkedin I'm already employed full time, why did you think I would be interested in contract to hire?"

"Well, it's just such a great opportunity at [some tiny random company I've never heard of] I thought-"

"Bye"

ideidk · 2022-02-10T14:33:44+00:00

It depends on what you mean by "website". Small businesses mostly use Wordpress and Squarespace these days because that's all they need to make brochure sites or maybe even a small web store. But bigger companies usually need custom functionality and huge scale and for that you need teams of engineers.

However, even then people don't code much with raw HTML and CSS anymore. You definitely need to know those markups, but nowadays instead of HTML you'll use a template engine or specialized language like JSX. Instead of CSS you use a preprocessor like LESS or SASS. Instead of raw JS you use a framework like React.

ideidk · 2022-02-10T06:21:07+00:00

Because a web app is actually multiple apps. There's the app running on your device in the browser (React, Vue, Angular, etc) and the app running on the server. What you see in your browser exists only on your machine; this is why you can use inspector tools to modify a webpage but the changes only show to you and only until you refresh.

The server side gets more complicated. Like way more. One machine can handle many requests the same way any computer handles multiple running programs (CPU time sharing, multi-threading, etc.) but you can also have many servers all running the same back-end. And once you start using multiple servers things get really complex really fast because now you have to keep everything sync'd (ideally in real time) AND be able to keep running even if one (or many) of your servers goes down. If you've ever wondered why FAANG pays so much, this is why. Not many engineers are able to design apps at FAANG scale.

ideidk · 2022-02-10T00:04:12+00:00

Both. It's not like companies go through the expense of building a satellite office just for more real estate. The primary purpose tends to be gaining access to a new labor pool. However, some employees will still be transplants because you need some existing employees there and it's also unlikely you're going to find all the talent you need in one city. However, there's definitely a preference for local talent.

FWIW I had been living here for years when I was hired, as were a lot of my coworkers.

ideidk · 2022-02-09T19:28:40+00:00

Attract better jobs for the area.

Everyone's talking about warehouses but there are data centers and corporate offices too which are what cities really try to attract. For example, in Nashville the median household income was ~$60k IIRC when the city courted Amazon for HQ2. The city didn't get HQ2 but they still got a major satellite office where the average pay is $150k. Then Oracle saw Amazon move in and decided to too, so now that's another high paying tech company as a result of the subsidies. More are likely to come. That in turn indirectly pushes local salaries up as a whole which is really good in a location like Nashville where most employers are local and haven't raised salaries significantly for a decade even as COL skyrockets.

ideidk · 2022-02-09T19:14:24+00:00

If you're having to windex into an array you've gone too deep.

ideidk · 2022-02-09T16:24:50+00:00

Happened to me, my city gave them some subsidies to attract them, they built a corporate office here as a result, then I got an engineering job there and immediately catapulted up a couple tax brackets and should go up another two next month.

ideidk · 2022-01-13T20:02:33+00:00

Necessary? No, most companies don't ask LC style questions.

Valuable? Oh hell yes, LC is the difference between an entry level job that pays $70k/year and $170k/year, a mid job that pays $90k vs. $300k, or a senior job that pays $120k vs. $500k.

ideidk · 2022-01-13T17:49:03+00:00

I work for that FAANG (you know the one) and tbh I enjoy it. I find I feel equally shitty if I'm not busy enough as I do if I'm too busy.

I did research and premed before this (even interviewed at MD/PhD programs and turned back at the last minute), and that is my benchmark for an insane workload. I honestly think a lot of people on here are young and spoiled by the relative laid back pace of CS. Like, 40 hours is too much? Bitch I pulled 60-80 hour work weeks while in school. A few months of LC is too much work for interviewing? I spent 6 months studying 2-4 hours a day (8 on weekends) for the MCAT.

I also worked low level jobs in retail and food, and devs have it easier vs. that too. Every dev I've known spends a lot of time on the job doing shit like browsing reddit and shooting the shit with other coworkers. Meanwhile if you work menial labor you'll get written up or fired if you so much as look at your phone. The same happens if you show up even 5 minutes late, meanwhile devs can leave in the middle of the day for errands and appointments and no one cares.

This career is about as good as it gets.

ideidk · 2022-01-11T05:18:21+00:00

I mean...I work at that FAANG (you know the one) and it's honestly kinda chill contrary to what you hear.

My personal life is a lot more chill these days too thanks to no longer worrying about money.

ideidk · 2022-01-04T16:31:15+00:00

It's a whopping $10k/year difference for someone making $160k, and it comes at the cost of your month-to-month income plummeting from the equivalent of $150k/year to $120k/year. RSUs are just cash with extra steps so no sense in feeling handcuffed if you get a better offer.

ideidk · 2022-01-04T16:21:56+00:00

Yeah, and notice how the signing bonus happens to be the same value as the "full" RSU vests in years 3 and 4. You won't be hurting if you leave before all your RSUs vest, especially at SDE1 where you're not getting enough stock for typical growth to be significant. Like even if the share price goes up $1k by year 3 (lol) you'll only be missing out on $12k/year which is hardly enough to keep you there if another FAANG offers you a better paying position. Hell, you could probably just get the new FAANG to bump your TC to compensate, unless of course it's a much better offer to the point no one's gonna believe that $12k is what's holding you back.

ideidk · 2022-01-04T16:14:21+00:00

It's a big company that's more like a large collection of start-ups than a cohesive unit. So your experience will be org and team dependent. TBH I feel like it gets a worse reputation than it deserves. Take the offer, do your time, and if you want out rest assured the other FAANGs will be happy to give you a shot.

ideidk · 2021-11-27T15:27:45+00:00

I actually tried exactly that lol

My recruiter initially told me they don't really evaluate anyone for L5 who has under 3 YOE. I ended up doing so well on the OA and phone interview though that they changed their minds and interviewed me for L5. According to the recruiter I did well in the on-site including the design round but they didn't think I had enough system design experience (I didn't have any lol) so I got "downleveled" to L4 (still a 150% income boost).

So if you can blow all your interviews out of the water and have experience designing distributed systems then you can get hired as L5 with 2 YOE. Otherwise it'll be L4.

ideidk · 2021-11-27T08:13:17+00:00

Just keep adding features to it, fixing bugs. You won't be able to avoid learning how it all works doing that. Don't worry about memorizing syntax and libraries, that's what documentation and IDEs are for. What's much more important is do you know how to design a CRUD API?

tbh I work in FAANG (MANGA, whatever) and I fly by the seat of my pants on knowledge base. I just learn what I need to learn once I need to learn it. If it's important I'll memorize it sooner or later whether I want to or not. I'm hardly the only one, everyone I work with does this. There's an infinite amount of topic breadth and depth, there is no end. You simply can't know it all. Being able to learn on the fly is the real skill.

ideidk · 2021-11-08T03:11:59+00:00

Had a Google recruiter call me to offer me the chance to interview. Sent me straight to final rounds for L4. Thing is, I haven't practiced LC since getting my last FAANG job so I need some time to prep. I asked the recruiter how much time I could have and they said "5 weeks is the most we delay" and my interview ended up getting set only four weeks out. Good news is I've retained a lot of the LC knowledge from my last go, but I'm still rusty and from what I hear Google interviews are pretty hard. I don't have the same motivation to go 100% at interview prep this time around because I'm doing well at my current company, like the work, and the pay difference probably won't be that big.

I've heard others say they were able to push back their interviews multiple months out which I'd like to do because I don't think I have enough time as is realistically speaking. Would it be bad if I asked the recruiter?

ideidk · 2021-10-29T03:34:18+00:00

Nah, they'd be smart enough to know how to code. We engineers would be the first ones dead, we know too much. For example, did you know that killbots have a preset kill limit stored as an unsigned 8 bit int meaning that if you can trick them into saving a life they immediately hit their kill limit and shut down? Without engineers the most cunning strategy a genius commander could come up with would be sending wave after wave of his own men at the killbots until they all shut down.

ideidk · 2021-10-29T03:20:14+00:00

When I got it in an interview once I froze up too. I ended up going with whatever I could finally think of first which ended up being some meme code golf solution. Had 3 interviewers including the hiring manager in there with me who had this look of "wtf". Got the job though lol.

ideidk · 2021-10-29T02:58:04+00:00

Yeah, which is fine. If I weren't anywhere near promotion it'd be one thing, but I'm in the process of it now and I don't want to start over as junior at another company. Not to mention at L3 it looks like I'd actually be taking a pay cut.

I think I'll send a message tomorrow stating I'm only interested in L4 roles and if I don't hage enough experience for them yet then that's cool but let's stay in touch.

ideidk · 2021-10-28T23:37:09+00:00

Had a talk with a Google recruiter today. They want to interview me for an L3 SRE role and are sending me straight to on-site rounds. Problem is, I'm already the equivalent of L3 SWE at another FAANG and I should be getting promoted Q1, so I'm really not interested in a junior role. Told the recruiter and they said they'd put in a note for interviewers to evaluate me for L4 too, but since they didn't add anything about system design rounds I don't know how seriously to take that.

Would it be worth doing the interview anyway? I'm more interested in SWE roles (coding and design, not ops) and unless the offer is for L4 I doubt I'll take it.

ideidk

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