The real lesson is to join a company poised for rapid growth (bonus points if it turns into a mainstream name like Facebook) and getting lucky as they expand. Try that at a mature company and you'll get nowhere. Do it at the small companies that never blow up and you'll get nowhere. Even if you're in the right company at the right time, there's a good chance someone else will be given the opportunity over you.
There's a little more to it: Make sure your manager, and maybe even your manager's manager, likes you. If your manager doesn't like you, change teams. If your manager's manager doesn't like your manager, you should also change teams.
The unfortunate reality of those high growth orgs is precisely that the growth leads to a lot of new managers, and as we all probably know by now, a new manager is a bad manager. Since they have no idea of what they are doing, having the best relationship with them as possible is the only thing that matters.
I've seen the best ICs, and the most effective managers, end up quitting/getting PIPed due to politics. I've seen low performance being rewarded by teams with good bonuses and no deliverable objectives in 2 years, and promotions before ever shipping anything. My evaluation of my performance, and resulting reviews and raises, have minimal correlation: But they absolutely correlate on how much my manager liked me. The more I've focused on this, the better the rewards, the product be damned.
This is extra-true in those rocket ship companies, precisely because things for the company are likely to go well regardless of short term performance: Only major failures, (like what Raylene describes in the article as avoiding being critical) can get you in trouble for actual company impact. In those cases your best bet is to be the firefighter who is also an arsonist, and find ways to sell your solutions to problems you yourself caused... but that involves far too much work.
Very good wisdom here. Especially the part about your manager’s manager liking your manager. I’ve always been happiest working for managers that were politically savvy and had “juice”.
If your manager is on the precipice of being fired you’re in a bad spot. This is also true of PMs. At mega corps you can and should change teams but in a rocket ship company there probably are no processes for that and even bringing it up is risky.
I don’t really have any advice here other than to be aware of it. My last job I got hired on to work under a guy with a lot of juice but then six months later he got promoted and I ended up with a rookie manager. Maybe I should have made a stink back then
> I’ve always been happiest working for managers that were politically savvy and had “juice”.
Never even considered that until this moment. But now that I am thinking in retrospect about the previous teams I worked on, it rings 100% true. Even when the manager's manager wasn't super into the manager, as long as the manager was savvy and had "juice", it was always enjoyable work, and things (such as actual progress on deliverables, good decisions, etc.) always happened. I just could never pinpoint until now why those specific times felt the best.
Ironically, the only time I had an absolutely incompetent manager and a pretty savvy and great manager's manager, it was awful. The only saving grace was that the manager's manager eventually moved the manager into a different role in a different part of the org after an explosive argument. But that stretch was probably the most standstill and stagnated period of my career.
I'm afraid this describes the majority of busy work in many industries including so-called software engineering. It's the most impressive Rube Goldberg machine of global proportions, where the major time-consuming problems are often self-inflicted, intricately constructed to seem like a solution but is actually a generator of problems, which conveniently sustain the careers of countless managers, hapless subordinates, and the economy involving the industry.
> The more I've focused on this, the better the rewards, the product be damned.
That's something I'm learning, is that it's not enough or even as important to be technically excellent. What matters is how one adapts and fits into the social dynamics and politics within the organization.
> Make sure your manager, and maybe even your manager's manager, likes you.
..and sometimes due to sheer shitty luck, even this doesn't work. Like in my most recent job, where me, my manager, and his manager were all laid off (oh sorry, "made redundant") from a profitable company because "business restructuring".
This would be good advice, if not for the fact that that approach essentially means you become just another politician. Being _aware_ of office politics is important; _focusing_ on it means you're a politician. Just focus on doing the best job you can, and if that's not what's rewarded at your place of work, leave.
The most useless career advice I've received is variations of "do a good job and you'll be rewarded". No one ever told me the outsized role that context and other stuff outside my control can have on your career progress.
So say that in case A you get hired to maintain an old system that is on the path to deprecation, and in case B you get hired to work in a greenfield initiative that ends up exploding and generating tons of revenue. Even if you do the same good job in both cases, you are almost certainly going to be rewarded and promoted faster in the second case.
The key is that this compounds. If you have a higher job level, you tend to get better opportunities that help you grow further, which in turn means more promotions and/or bigger opportunities.
I think it’s not wrong, just incomplete. Doing a good job on an important problem will be rewarded, in time. Once a persons impact and reliability is trusted, opportunities come to them.
In my experience that's not really the reality. Career progression is a game, each big org has their set of rules for it, the people I've seen progress fastest are usually the ones who figured out the game, how to tick the right boxes, how to show to the decision-makers that the boxes were ticked, not necessarily by being absolutely reliable or having a big impact.
Usually they jump into the projects that have more visibility or hype, focus their work on the aspects the org considers most valuable for the "next step in the ladder" and jump ship to a different team/project/department as soon as possible.
I've seen that both on engineering and product sides, most of the people I worked with that progressed quickly in their career weren't actually reliable, at least not reliable to the people they worked closely with: they jumped ship to other teams/parts of the org as soon as possible, leaving just a trail of half-done initiatives that were just good enough to tick the boxes needed for a promotion.
Doing a good job is secondary to this, sometimes doing a good job aligns with the box-ticking, sometimes it doesn't really matter. If you are decent at salesmanship and persuasion, and can get some visibility from the upper echelons the actual delivery will only matter in 1-2 years, by then they're already out and up.
Sure, sometimes, maybe. Or you get fired before that. Or the work that made you visible will dry up. Or people that could reward you will move elsewhere or are fired.
There are few small companies where this could work, otherwise dont rely on it, you will end up very sad.
This is the best advice. And even within large companies, choose teams that will grow. If your team and org all grow you too have a very high chance of growing. If your Director/VP is not growing/getting a bigger org, your own growth chances are inherently limited for very senior roles.
It becomes a bigger risk/reward scenario for joining companies.
> The real lesson is to join a company poised for rapid growth
The best advice for success is always to get lucky.
The second best advice is to work smart / have good ethic.
The third is to work hard.
Unfortunately, most people think if they just work hard enough, they will succeed. And in many cases, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you're not getting anywhere.
I agree with this directionally but think you're a little over-pessimistic.
First, IME it suffices to join an organization poised for rapid growth. This can still happen in large tech companies.
Second, while luck matters, there's also stuff you can do to increase your chances of being picked for career growth roles. I'm at a growth company. Recently a relatively new engineer was picked to lead a project over some more tenured, well-liked folks who wanted it. The new guy got it because he has done some really incredible work recently and then marketed it internally well enough that management (and engineering) all agreed he'd be the perfect fit. Politics, making sure that resources are allocated the way you want them, is a skill all its own.
Sure, it is entirely possible to get screwed over with no recourse. That said, my lived experience is that most of the time people in high growth orgs think they're being unfairly screwed they're really grappling with their revealed preference to stay in their comfort zone rather than obtain career growth.
> join a company poised for rapid growth ... getting lucky as they expand
Thanks. Exactly like that. In stable companies that do not grow, promotions are only possible if some dies or leaves. Which, in stable companies, can take FOREVER. I'd argue the majority of companies is like that, the majority of IT positions is like that.
It's easy as to spew clever career advice when you entered a company as senior software engineer at number 40 and became a director 3 years later when the company had 400 employees, but it doesn't mean a whole lot to the majority of people.
Yes. This is the thing. Choose a company that is doing well. Join a part of that company that is doing well. Do a role that is recognized as helping it move forward, not holding it back or maintaining things.
Your general accumulated connections and domain wisdom will probably carry you towards relative success. Bonus points if you’re useful.
Trajectory, not current state, is what matters most.
I came here to say this same thing, I’m now frequently reflecting on so much of my previous experience and a lot of advice now is based on high growth companies in a zero interest economic environment. Times have changed, uncertainty is afoot.
I really distaste those articles because it most of the time generalize based on exception cases.
Not all companies have the resources and/or opportunities like Stripe and Facebook. Coming from the SME/laggard industries those posts sound completely out of touch with the reality of a lot of SWEs that are not in this demographic pool.
One of the biggest disappointments with the SWE was the fact that when I started my career I really enjoyed working with a lot of eager-to-learn young folks at the same time had time to be mentored by a lot of seasoned engineers with 25, 30 years of experience and how those folks liked the technical/development part.
Fast forward a couple decades we're most of the time in my demographic in an environment that has a phobia of age, the craft is not a big deal anymore, a lot of young folks fall short due to lack of mentoring, senior folks do not want to mentor anymore due to cynicism provoked by this same work environment; and everything consists in self-marketing, corporate politics, mimic-big-tech cultures.
that matches also my experience. then again I have always been a part of the problem. I'm like an amoebae without a functioning membrane. I find myself in a sick (intentionally avoiding the term "toxic". "sick" like in "sick system".) environment, then I will turn sick and act sick as well. I partake for a while until one morning I look into the mirror and don't like the person I see there anymore and I either just quit or develop a sort of burn out depression first - or favorably both. it would be easy for me to react cynical towards people like the author who manage to play the game but I acknowledge that at the end of the day she's just living her life and probably has a more healthy and happy mind then me - good for her - me otoh, I increasingly just seek healing which I certainly won't find in any kind of fast paced company.
why do I even write this? well, I think articles like this will make everybody compare one's life with that of the fortunate lady who wrote it. for some this is more of a technical exercise collecting ideas and strategies. for people like me it just brings home the realization that I can't do this anymore, if I ever could. don't want to do this anymore, if I ever wanted. but sort of have to keep going. so, a little bit of a depressing realization over all.
> I increasingly just seek healing which I certainly won't find in any kind of fast paced company.
Yes please, find healing. Impossible to find in any company i guess. Therapy, self-reflection and letting go of pain from the past come to mind. Best of luck.
> I'm like an amoebae without a functioning membrane. I find myself in a sick (intentionally avoiding the term "toxic". "sick" like in "sick system".) environment, then I will turn sick and act sick as well. I partake for a while until one morning I look into the mirror and don't like the person I see there anymore and I either just quit or develop a sort of burn out depression first - or favorably both.
This describes really well how I operate today. Changing cultures is just too much effort if the people don't really want to change. I will make suggestions and see how they are received, if the folks are receptive to it, I will do more otherwise withdraw.
I have been mourning / processing the void left by the technical culture I’d fabricated in my mind. It’s like I grew up with a certain notion in my mind and never questioned it: namely that technical excellence was paramount. I also think it is a midlife thing, where you look at all the things you’ve put time into, and ask them, “and for what?”
The way forward for me is bootstrapping so I can buy back that which is most valuable to me: my time and autonomy.
The unbridled optimism about technology of the early-mid 90s was very real and very addicting. Having been around from then until now and seeing what's happening to the internet and open source software is extremely demoralizing.
I agree with everything here completely and have the same experience.
The costs of making yourself available to mentor others these days are too high. Workplace politics will only make you a target eventually. It even happens (and probably moreso) in volunteer projects. People are rightfully acting more mercenary and more self-interested.
This industry attracts a lot of socially disaffected people who behave like scorpions (Scorpion and the Frog fable...).
I disagree. I have mentored many folks, and actively continue to do so. It’s only been beneficial for both me and my mentors. Not sure where this anti-mentorship culture comes from. I don’t see it at my current company. Even at Amazon I had multiple mentors (I didn’t mentor anybody myself back then).
"So and so said something that made me uncomfortable."
As someone who is white and male, I am not willing to be alone in a room with or 1:1 with anyone except a direct report, in either direction. It's not worth the risk.
I've seen blatantly false allegations completely ruin careers. I've seen people who habitually lie and make repeated false allegations coast on doing no work for years until they get bored and move on -- with full awareness of the company -- because the company doesn't want to risk that kind of lawsuit for firing them. The company would rather that person's whole team be miserable than risk any kind of reputational damage.
This is way more common than you would believe. I have friends who work in HR in other companies who say the same and have the same policy that I do.
It used to be that you could be charitable and by-default assume that everyone's intentions are aligned at work. Same team, etc. However, the people who bring their politics with them to work absolutely do not feel this way and will smoke you if doing so aligns with their cause -- facts don't matter.
And yes I'm aware of the missed opportunities as a result.
The reality of my career and that of those around me is that you usually can pick even- or odd-numbered disruption cycles and do pretty well. If you miss the hype train for one fad, catching up might not be your best bet. You might be better off looking for the next train.
In that regard React is a bit of an anomaly. It's occupied the station for far longer than expected.
Somewhat related- I’ve always been fascinated by the notion that a “senior” software engineer can have as little as 3 or 4 years of experience. I just have “software engineer” on my LinkedIn headline because anything like “senior software engineer” hits me as pretentious, whether that’s a title the person gave themselves or not.
The article does mention this but worth noting that riding two rocket ships back to back is not going to be a typical career experience for majority of people. So this doesn't strike me as a typical career growth story.
One rocketship bias of this article appears to be lack of "focus on the customer" versus "strive to be the most valuable, but least critical." The latter can be good core advice anywhere ("pager duty" stuff at any company causes burnout for ICs and EMs) but customer traction is only really given to you on a plate at a rocketship (e.g. after Series A/B). Most of the piece is about scaling rather than understanding the user / customer and evolving the product ... a more balanced advice essay is going to talk more about gaining, keeping, losing, and re-gaining traction versus just scaling a sprawling org.
I think it's more useful if you read it from the perspective of "how do I hang onto this rocket ship and survive?". Of course, then the advice applies to very few people but it does become more useful.
Not really convinced either way though. Much of this feels like backwards-facing advice, things that only make sense when you already know what you're doing, and very surface level.
The "tying it all together" section really demonstrates this.
The truth is, all the most valuable skills she's picked up are likely to have been implicit from being in an incredible environment in a company growing really fast around other great people. Very hard to distill that into useful information for other people unless you're very introspective and dedicate a lot of time to reflecting on what actually moved the needle.
Though in fairness, I think that >99% of people cannot articulate their growth path or process and strategy and they would not be believable even if they could, so in that regard, she is par for the course.
I kind of agree. Also some rockets explode on the launchpad. Not every explosive growth company is a success story and they don't all mint millionaires.
I've been on two failed rocket ships and I'm pretty mellow about it. Surviving that is also its own skill. You'll go crazy trying to pick winners and getting rich isn't why I got into this field anyway.
While I would quit and work on passion software, you always owe it to yourself to find time for passion work in your free time.
And that not every work environment is the same. The advice that works in a specific work setting cannot be generalized for every work environment that exists.
These are engineering driven companies with strong leadership and growth (and some of the best compensation). Most people only dream of having even one of those things once in their career.
I don't think its about absolute career growth, everyone has limits to what they can achieve (determined by innate ability and luck) and understanding some good philosophical principles can be a good guide in how to approach your personal limit. Theres a lot of good advice in the article.
I feel like you have a choose your own adventure at these companies:
* climb the ladder - try to be 'in the room' with L+1&2. Get assigned high visibility work, define and deliver some intermediate milestone, declare success, groom perception, etc.
* get hired at a competitor at L+1.
* start a side hustle/lifestyle/real estate business. Subscribe to the FIRE subreddit/podcasts.
* have kids, develop increasingly esoteric personal hobbies, get into fitness/longevity.
> have kids, develop increasingly esoteric personal hobbies, get into fitness/longevity
This is the route I've taken and my mental health is much better for it. I still wonder what I'm missing out on had I stayed on the treadmill, even now, but I keep telling myself the life balance far outweighs the work balance.
From what I've seen, amassing riches is either a weird game to people, the means to a lifestyle they truly crave (status, luxury, ...), or an unhealthy obsession with security (both for themselves and their offspring).
I was, maybe still am, in the last bucket. But I'm starting to realise that security is a quite mythical thing - you can always think of more risks and counter measures, at least at the point I got to. Now I'm thinking the thing I truly need, and want to pass on to my children, is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and stay resilient.
I've had a very similar realisation recently. A lot of what I spent the last 5 years doing has largely been to reach a state of security where I feel I 'no longer need to worry'.
Due to a death in the family, an unfounded health scare and a rather paranoid money scare it's been made quite clear that this utopia of 'secure' does not exist no matter what I do.
It has lead to a reduction in stress in some ways since the pressure to maintain everything and keep it safe is less if 100% confidence can never be reached so chasing it is pointless.
I don't know if you've had a similar experience but I'm currently at the stage of re-evaluating what I value since if some things (like wealth and health) are unavoidably temporary then the sacrifices I'm willing to make to maintain them are less than if they were assured or permanant.
I'd be curious to know how this has effected your outlook on life as I'm just starting with this now and it has certainly left me a bit lost. Although I don't think that's a bad thing.
Sorry for the slight ramble, just been very much on my mind at them moment.
I have a positive outlook. I deal with the problems I encounter and enjoy the little things. This year was pretty good, I pulled off some stuff I didn't know I could do. Now I feel more confident that I can deal with lots of things life'll throw at me (not everything of course).
Happy to chat some more outside a public comment thread :D There's an email address in my profile.
Security is not mythical, at least in the near to short term, enough time for your kids to grow up.
Passive income from $10M would secure access for 99% of food, water, heat, shelter, education, transportation, healthcare, retirement, and legal costs.
But what if you are sued due to something completely out of your control and lose your wealth?
Or face a medical problem that requires expensive treatment not covered by your insurance or government healthcare?
Or your investments fail, the USSR fell very quickly risking pensions people relied on, the roman empire fell. US investments could too; I mean they kinda did in the early 1900's, recovery from that took time.
I'm not saying any of these things are likely to happen (they really aren't and I'd be supprised if any did in the next 100 years). But they could so any amount of security money offers is limited and not certain.
I suppose it depends if you would equate security and certainty to the same thing? I certainly did but wouldn't now. I wager you don't since you said 99% not 100%.
> But what if you are sued due to something completely out of your control and lose your wealth?
You will be able to afford lawyers, and the US justice system is not so corrupt that you would lose millions of dollars for no reason. Don’t drive drunk, don’t operate a business, and buy umbrella insurance and you should be fine. Biggest risk would probably be divorce, or accusations of abuse from within the family.
> Or face a medical problem that requires expensive treatment not covered by your insurance or government healthcare?
This also sounds super rare as health insurers are legally required to cover all evidence based healthcare, and there is an appeals process for denied coverage. As long as you can afford the premiums and annual out of pocket maximum, which are legally at most $40k to $50k per year for a family, you should be okay.
Of course, you might have to pony up an additional $10k to $20k to buy concierge care/direct primary care to buy timely access to actual doctors rather than see a Nurse Practitioner or Physician’s Assistant, but your passive income from
$10M should suffice.
> Or your investments fail, the USSR fell very quickly risking pensions people relied on, the roman empire fell. US investments could too; I mean they kinda did in the early 1900's, recovery from that took time.
If $10M in the US invested in broad market low cost index funds backstopped by the federal US government is not secure enough for you to relax, then it might be impossible to help you feel sufficiently secure because this world does not offer many better guarantees.
> I suppose it depends if you would equate security and certainty to the same thing? I certainly did but wouldn't now. I wager you don't since you said 99% not 100%.
I do not know what the purpose of distinguishing security and certainty would be in this context, they seem interchangeable. And since nothing in life is 100%, 99% is a way to convey “all the security that is realistically obtainable”.
I totally agree with pretty much every point you make.
I also invest in US majority index funds so certainly agree they are the best bet. I do however think security and certainty are different in that one is 99% and one is 100%.
I'd say it depends on your personality and risk tolerance but when talking about life destroying events I'd say 1% is quite significant. For example a 1% chance of a car crash per journey would be unacceptably high.
Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed reply by the way, I'm thinking around this topic a lot at the moment so debating the details is very valuable to help reach a view I'm content with.
It's only mythical if you keep moving the goal posts the closer you get - that's what I'm talking about. I've been there (to a degree), I've seen others who've been there. And that's what I'd call an unhealthy obsession.
Nothing worthwhile. I just turned down a L+1 jump to management because I certainly don’t want to stress/deal with any of that business BS when I could do my fairly easy IC job and take the kids to the park or go to the gym at lunch since my calendar is mostly empty
Over time I got more relaxed about promotion and compensation. As software engineers our salaries are already in the top 5-10% of most countries, of course as humans we are always unsatisfied and wanting more but... Is it worth it? To keep on the treadmill, battling out in the ever-increasing political games one needs to play when growing inside a big org career to achieve another 10% increase in salary?
I'm also privileged to live in a society where even with half of my salary it'd be entirely possible to live a comfortable and fulfilling life, where my kids won't need my money to be secure in their education and healthcare. The career game was more interesting when I was in my 20s, now it's just a bunch of bullshit that I can choose to care about or not, and not caring about it is absurdly liberating.
To each their own, of course, personally I came to realise that I don't value the career stuff so much, I'm already pretty comfortable (and many times more than any of my ancestors or close family were). There's so much more to life than playing corporate-bullshit, stressing over how to please a business to etch another salary bump. Corporations that deep down don't care about individuals, values, etc., it's just about shareholder value, I prefer to focus my attention on individuals and things that bring joy, love, and interesting experiences in life.
Is it that you relaxed over time or you just made enough money in your 20s? Accounting for the global economy and the implied age it would be surprising if you were not—relative to a mid-20s now—so far ahead that compensation should not matter.
Find a midsize company that isn’t a tech company and needs help maintaining a very old but critical system. There’s very little accountability since management doesn’t understand software and it pays well because it’s boring as shit and no one wants to do it
Lottery winner's guide to getting rich: the key is to always pick the winning numbers. E.g. suppose last week's numbers were 43 52 7 64 8 81. In this scenario, the good strategy was playing 43 52 7 64 8 81. Hope this helps!
> The best engineers and managers are great at adding value, getting the most out of the people around them, and helping the team see around corners even when they’re not there.
People keep repeating this dangerous advice. The truth is actual value is created by few people: new tech, new features, new markets. It usually starts off as an experiment, a hackathon etc and grows from there. The rest of the people exist to provide fodder but growth comes from surprisingly few people even in large organizations.
Try and see what the business needs and create step improvement features / tech / markets. You will feel happy. Too many people like the author is focused on just managing, being "thought leaders" and other nonsense. This is my problem with AI till the time we get AGI. Someone has to do the work. Someone had to write Redis before Ofer Bengal swooped in. Someone has to create the transformer model, someone has to write the original articles to train these models on.
The whole cottage industry around work is a festering wound at this point.
This take and the quoted section don’t seem at odds. A great manager is a blocker and enabler for the “people creating the actual value”. The manager adds value, gets the most out of, helps the team, by protecting the builders’ time, maintaining clear prioritization, watching for bumps in the road and mitigating risks as they arise.
If you are hacking on whatever future greatness but are unable to say no to one-off requests (whether due to power within the org or personal communication style) then you’ll never complete your project. Various people will put tasks on your plate, there’s always more to do, someone up the chain will inevitably come up with a new flavor of the week. The manager who tells those people you are fully allocated and working on your top priority is the only reason you’ll complete your groundbreaking work (in most companies).
> The whole cottage industry around work is a festering wound at this point.
and (we?) the internet natives are most prone to this assessment as growing up in a world of free ideas (foss) wrecks any connection between work and reward.
And be innately good at both code and human relations. I couldn’t have handled that massive team size increase mentioned even if I was in that position. I would have probably quit to go back to technical stuff!
Yes. Although making IC tracks is great and all, the power to get big things done involves organizing and leading people, so the natural state will be that a leadership career will go higher than a technical career on average. And balancing that is putting a hand on the scale (takes continuing effort) and indeed is a political or strategic decision, so it is up to the leaders to implement!
That said in 2023 you can go a long way into upper middle class and rich without needing to lead people, or kill them in wars, and still do creative and non-repetitive work. So we are very lucky to live in this era!
Not a dig but it’s always better to be lucky than good. I’ve had an extremely lucky career but nothing like that. Two of the biggest brand blue chips then 3 really well funded startups that have been positive experiences but financially there is zero doubt I would have been better off at the big listed not faang companies.
After ten years of reading these articles and imagining what it would be like to reach that level, I now find myself there and asking "what next?". What is the path for a staff level IC maxed out on the payscale? Seeking principal is a political battle I have no interest in. And management simply isn't in my skillset. Am I stuck just slinging Javascript into retirement? Are there any other lateral moves that could provide more upside?
I’m one level ahead of you (L7) but, like, why does there need to be something “next”? I’ll make a seven-figure TC this year. That’s enough! I spent about $50k last year, and I live in New York.
My manager talks about getting me to L8 all the time and it’s exhausting. I’m done! I’ve won the income game! She is very career oriented and cares about climbing the ladder, I do not.
I’ve never actually cared about “career goals” or done “growth” really, I don’t think I’d actually be unhappy if I was stuck at L5 making a mere $400k forever. That’s a really high income, an integer multiple of what my parents ever made.
So my “what’s next” is keep throwing it into VTI and then retire in a few years.
FWIW there were very little politics involved in my L7 promotion, I just wrote a lot of good code and mentored some people to do the same.
I'm not jealous (we've got a great work/life balance and a good mission), and I've heard of those compensation levels before, but something about the way you said "merely 400k" made me realize that those single salaries are more than my entire team(5 sysadmins and a manager)'s compensation.
I mean that a bit sarcastically to be clear. It’s a ridiculously good income. If you read Blind, there are a lot of L5 that are so upset about not getting L6, I think it lacks perspective.
Yes I realize I’m saying this and I make a lot more, but if I was “stuck” at $400k I don’t think I would be upset.
The median household income in NYC is something around $75k.
Oh I know, and usually I'm pretty jaded (I live in a lcol area so even tho I make less than than 75k I live comfortably). But tonight for some reason it really sunk in how cheap human labor in this area can be.
I'm an old L5 and I'm quite happy to stay at that level indefinitely. I make more than most people and I don't have the skills to handle pressure at L6.
1. We own at a low interest rate, so I don’t consider the principal part of payments to be spent. Barring NYC housing market crash, that money will come back. It’d be like counting money invested in index funds as “spent”.
2. Split completely evenly with partner. This also saves on “per household” things like internet, power, heating.
3. It’s still a big part of the spending, proportionately!
I just don’t spend that much. Don’t drink outside, don’t go out for dinner at fancy places, never order delivery (it doesn’t even taste good! Soggy food sucks!), don’t take Uber ever or even the subway much, ride a fixed gear bike around mostly. Exercise is using said bike rather than paying $300 for a fancy gym. Take vacations, but prefer camping and hiking to resorts or fancy expensive cities. Don’t stay in luxury hotels, have never considers paying for business class. My hobby is playing mostly cheap indie games that I still waited for a Steam sale on, and it’s all stuff like Rimworld that you play for 400 hours. Or watching free YouTube videos.
This is straight out of Mint (obviously rounded) so it’s not a lie!
I can’t really do the career or manager interaction stuff well because I don’t care about it personally and I don’t have any problems myself with my manager being incompetent or changing all the times.
I think that’s correlated with my somewhat unintentional success, but “have a better manager” or “don’t get reorged by directors playing game of thrones” isn’t actionable advice.
What I am good at is technical stuff, so if I have a person that is 1. technically competent and with the right attitude (IYKYK) and 2. good and technical manager then I and they do very well. But that’s very situational and also the technical stuff is very company specific.
That's basically my plan, and to work on hobbies. Try not to get burned out by the next CRUD app startup I work for, learn some language that interests me, and live my life. It's nice, as a contractor, being able to take off a week randomly and not really feel hit by the lost income because I've refocused my life to downsizing expenses and upsizing enjoyment. Keep up with enough stack-mania to keep an income until I can call it quits for good.
Just curious: what are you looking for? I tend to assume that staff-level ICs have a pretty good setup as far as established expertise and freedom to choose what they work on (though that varies a lot). What tangible benefits other than higher pay are you looking for with that next step?
Not saying the financial benefits aren’t worth it by themselves. Asking because I always figured I’d probably top out where you’re at, and I’m wondering what the view is like there.
The answer is always some form of “share your knowledge.” But that’s the point where the well-trodden career path ends and you either hang out at the depot at the end of the road with the other lifers or you set out bushwhacking on your own to figure things out. There’s no pay-scale signposts. You become slightly unrecognizable. And everything becomes new again, which is extra challenging to your old-ass self, because you’re pretty comfortable in your ways. But, if you persist with it, I believe (I’m not there yet), there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing your knowledge sprout into a forest.
You advance in either lifestyle or risk (maybe both). Managers are better equipped to optimize and climb established business structures. ICs are better equipped to create new products or at least jump into a nimble team. Maybe you should take more risk on special projects in your organization, spearhead new technology shifts, or join a startup (giving substantial due diligence to understand the feasibility of a startup business plan from a technical perspective).
If you're maxed out on pay, maybe retire early and do something you enjoy?
I'm stuck as a mid-level making below median dev salary at a not great comapny and I will never be anything more. Eventually you come to terms with it... mostly at least
I’m definitely not going to trash unions, big Billy Bragg fan here, but mentorship and training of less senior people is already basically table stakes expectation for staff+ engineers at any competent tech company.
I actually think it’s overemphasized on the internet, if anything. Staff+ engineers should still edit (I don’t say “write” because “delete” is even better) code. Otherwise what’s all the training for? Getting the senior- engineers up to “mentoring” roles, to train even more senior- engineers, …?
Giving folks a path into IT via apprenticeships would be a lot easier with a union to support/enforce career growth/mentorships. Unions could also help create more developer co-ops that can offer onboarding and retirement.
Somewhat unrelated, I'd love to see some kind of code dividend for folks where you keep earning money from code you wrote (that hasn't been rewritten). I think the IP assignment stuff we all have to sign is ridiculous when it creates so much value. We are signing away our right to future profits.
That's literally what we're being paid so much for, and what those stock options we're showered with are for. The idea is that developers build future value of the company, so instead of being rewarded in commission like sales people, we get stock grants.
Based on all these sorts of articles, it feels like the only way to advance your career in the US is to get into management at some point. In the EU, and Finland where I'm from, there's nothing wrong and there's a path for being a more senior IC long term, working on more and more complex tasks. The culture is different though, there is not always the same kind of hierarchy as in the US either.
I guess in the US a similar path could be a Staff Engineer role where you could stay more technical I guess.
Those who are busy at the principal level and above don’t usually write blog posts about how they got there. You read more about management because of the very nature of management. It’s a people thing. I’ve read equally as important articles from distinguished engineers. No, you do NOT need to go into management to advance your career. In fact, most engineers I’ve met in my 20-odd years engineering and leading, would make lousy managers.
Most companies worth the weight will have IC tracks all the way to Director or even VP.
The thing is the IC role has an implicit ceiling unless your org is deeply technical with a complex technical product. The US has the same path with arguably more options and better compensation at higher IC levels, but the non IC path has both of these even better, and you will have a much better chance of influencing what exact gets done.
Good point. There are definitely more options in the US for all the roles than in EU just because of the scale: There are more bigger tech companies here.
It’s becoming more common. Staff and principal are fairly common roles and they’re well respected in the US. All the fancier roles like “Architect” have been merged into those now
My impression is that Staff and Principal are basically a different make-up on what Architect used to be. A bit less ivory tower dictators but still working in the role of overviewing larger systems, coming up with novel solutions (usually proof of concepts later developed into production by other teams), bridging technical gaps, and dictating broader guidelines on how the larger system should behave.
Just an iteration on the Architect role to be a bit more hands-on.
I wonder, in big American companies, you can have a really high salary as SWE. I was under the impression that it wasn't the case in European company.
Regarding the article, it's very biased, plenty of people don't want this kind of career progression. It's more a matter of personality than culture I'd say.
Why the assumption that everybody should grow? Some people are perfectly fine as SWE and don't want to become manager, tech lead or org leader. In some companies, you can have a very high salary as a SWE and still learn new things every day.
You have to be concerned about age discrimination or assumptions based on your career trajectory at some point if you stay in a lower level IC position. If you’re in your mid forties, still “just” a software engineer, and interviewing for new positions, this will catch up with you. How do you explain having 15-20 years experience as a software developer with no career progression?
First, moving from an engineering role to a management role is not "career progression", it's a lateral career switch.
Secondly, you don't have to explain anything. Smart hiring managers will understand that you focused your career mastering a craft and that you're still working on that craft you mastered. As for the dumb hiring managers, it's best if you can avoid working for them. One thing you'll learn as you get older is that you can't please everyone all the time and if someone is foolish enough to hold stupid things against you, good riddance to bad rubbish. If you look around a bit, you'll find there's far, far more opportunities for intelligent old coders than unintelligent old managers.
> First, moving from an engineering role to a management role is not "career progression", it's a lateral career switch.
That's a cool sentiment, but it's not what hiring managers and many many other managers think. They'll just flag you as "something wrong with that guy if hes not managing by now" and you're still out of job.
I'm an EM, and going from an IC to a TL or EM isn't a career progression. It's a career change.
I've known some amazing ICs with terrible managerial skills, they are adept at what they do, but they lack the skills needed to handle people, or to constantly context shift all day, every day.
Now what happens when you suddenly get that IC into a managerial role, and force them to context shift, or manage people's needs, and balance the team dynamics?
They quit, or others under then quit. Perhaps both.
I very much dislike this article for two reasons;
1. She outlines EM as part of a career progression that ICs go on.
2. She was part of two absolute rocketships and didn't realise the reasons she got where she was is at least partially because of that.
Any EM should be aware that not everyone can do their job.. and any EM should be part of a hiring process and keenly know that when you see a FAANG on someone's resume, people tend to have a bias either for or against it. Usually for.
You don’t think not even progressing to a senior engineering role or lead engineer role after two decades in the profession would be a red flag? These are still IC roles, just more senior. I would sure have a lot of questions at least.
That's your personal bias showing, I'd never be questioning anyone who decided they found a good role where they feel competent and secure about their job and craft, much the contrary as Peter's Principle usually apply very quickly to the careerists.
Senior engineer is usually where a lot of competent folks stop, the role of Staff/Principal starts to become quite different, some people just want to be good at helping the business to build things. A good senior will be the necessary glue between team and the larger org (including the Staff/Principal layer), facilitating a lot of stuff that isn't immediately visible but is definitely felt when you miss it.
On top of that, there's not even close to enough positions to promote every single senior engineer to a higher level in most companies. Not everyone wants to play the career game.
Sr Engineer is a terminal role for most people. If you can build quality software and are a somewhat pleasant human being then I don’t see anything wrong with it. If everyone’s a director then who’s getting the work done? There aren’t that many leadership roles compared to IC roles.
not a red flag at all..as long as they are competent at dev work. Many devs just want to dev and have no interest in taking on lead responsibilities, architecture, negotiating with product owners, attending lots of unproductive meetings, etc.
If you're in America, you're fucked. One mistake and your marked for life. Be that legal issues, work history, etc. We'll hold that shit against you until you die.
Barring a criminal record, America is the land of second chances. People come from all over the world to start a fresh life here. If it can't be done here, it can't be done anywhere (except maybe Somalia but that's absolute anarchy).
Look at job applications. Some ask if you've ever been arrested or charged with a crime - not convicted even. Guess what, you answer yes for some stupid summary offense like having a dog off a leash and your application is in the garbage.
I see tons of bias in hiring too. What about people that take a break from working due to childcare, medical issues, etc? They struggle. There's a never ending amount of those stories that show up on HN. Maybe some get a second chance, but it might take years if they ever get one.
It seems like many places in Europe have better options for second chances from the legal perspective. Perhaps better from a financial standpoint with the support programs too.
To clarify, I have a degree, worked at a faang and have a squeaky clean criminal record. However, I hopped around early in my career working for a number of startups tried to found a few as well. I walked away with great experiences, but after attempting to transition to a TPM role I seem to have black balled myself in the process. Yes, I understand the market isn't great but at 5 YOE I feel hopelessly lost and only manage to get a handful of interview offers...
Currently doing a startup but I'm starting to feel like this isn't what I was built to do.
> It seems like many places in Europe have better options for second chances from the legal perspective. Perhaps better from a financial standpoint with the support programs too.
One reason Europe doesn't have startups is that it's so shameful for your company to fail that nobody would ever consider risking it.
I don't know, but that question implies that going bankrupt is common for startups to the point it is a blocking issue. And that in Europe doing so is more problematic than in the US. Is that the case?
Yes. It's very common for startups to go bankrupt, that's sort of the point actually, and it needs to not affect the founder's life too much when they do.
Because it's not even remotely true. I've been homeless, divorced twice, kicked out of a school under suspicion of crime, driven nearly insane at one point, desperate enough to embezzle cash from a retail employer 21 years ago, guilty of arson when I was teenager. I still have a perfectly good job that puts me in a higher pay echelon than I ever would have imagined at one time in my life, even a top-secret clearance. I owned my past mistakes, cleaned up, and am entrusted with state secrets. America is the land of second chances. Look at our last two presidents. Perennial fuck ups, and depending on your party, at least one of them is probably a criminal.
> If you're in America, you're fucked. One mistake and your marked for life. Be that legal issues, work history, etc. We'll hold that shit against you until you die.
Puritanical standards like this seem limited to the east/midwest; the west coast is much more forgiving (IME).
Also a heavy case of survivor bias, but my career history was also imperfect around the same time as OP when I applied to Facebook. No college degree, born in the wrong city and economic level, etc.
I had a huge bit of luck working for a startup in early 2000s that was acquired by Yahoo (ha ha shut up). They overworked me and even screwed me out of my promised shares but I had that pip on my CV. Went to work at a couple of other places later, mostly chosen for interesting work. Later later had the dubious luck to be bought by Yahoo again, and parleyed that plus contacts to get an invite to Facebook.
I bombed the first round of interviews. Only by the strength of my contacts and unexpected help from people I didn't know but for some reason wanted me there, I got another chance and joined a couple years before the IPO.
TLDR: this story has almost nothing to teach you or replicate. Except! Not having a mainline pedigree is a handicap but not necessarily a career death sentence.
I feel lost because I get the impression from my resume I look like damaged goods. I've had some recruiters give me solid pointers on my resume and things have improved slightly - but right now I feel like I'm spinning my wheels and wasting time trying to "make a living" doing this like I used to. Making less than my initial FAANG offer after college also hurts.
Listen. I don't know you and you don't know me. But I know and you should know that no one is "goods", damaged or otherwise. You are not a broken toy. You are not and never have been a box of clever tricks arranged wrongly or rightly. You are a person, with talents and dreams and all the other things that you should never forget you have that make you a person.
Labor markets are sometimes shit. Sometimes the skills you have are no longer in fashion. I don't know the answer to your situation. But, from experience, I suggest that if things are tight then the thing to do is find work that pays the bills today but also build skills that will pay off tomorrow. Life is long and it's only an always up elevator for the lucky few.
I don't have specific advice, but I've found that it helps to analyze the business your company is in in the same way you would analyze the code on your screen. What are the inputs and outputs? What makes it all work? Etc. if nothing else, that might help understand why the labor market is shit, and what you personally can do about it.
meta complaint, but after starting to read the article, something like 15 seconds later the page just broke. Sent me back to the top without being able to scroll. I always stop reading if something like this happens.
Threads like this are not good for my mental health. I’m a public sector software engineer for the US government in the DMV. I have eights years in and I’m barely making 6 six figures. I’m considering getting out but it won’t be easy. It’s a weird feeling that at 31 I feel like I already screwed up career and income wise. Is there any chance I could make 200k plus before 40 ?
I have a coworker that believes we are paid well considering our benefits and pto compared to the average software developer. His argument is that outside of FAANG, salaries for the average developer aren’t that much higher than ours. And if they are, the working conditions are worst. He also believes FAANG employees are working more than 80 hours work, or they are super better than “public sector employees” so that’s why they command higher pay. I don’t buy the last one.
I went to a FAANG at a similar point in my career to where you are now. More than tripled my pay. I firmly believe that any dev can get in if they practice enough leetcode problems. We are not special. I say go for it if you want it.
> I firmly believe that any dev can get in if they practice enough leetcode problems.
That’s the east part, but if your entire resume is non tech, then FAANG recruiters don’t reach out. (I’ve only ever had one FAANG recruiter ever reach out to me and that was Amazon when they were participating in the idiotic hiring spree during the pandemic). We know cold apps are worthless, and if you aren’t already in that scene, you probably don’t have close enough connections with someone to get a referral. So how do you even get a chance to do the leetcode interviews.
If this is something that’s really getting to you, you should move to the Bay Area, at least for a few years. Your “luck” will skyrocket. The opportunities in tech just aren’t present in other cities in the way they are in the Bay Area. I say this as someone who moved there from a mid-sized city and now moved back to that mid-sized city, taking my Bay Area job with me. The primary difference I’ve noticed between FANG employees (having been one) and public sector employees is not talent but rather that the former are willing to move across the country or world for better opportunities, whereas the latter are not.
Yup. It's not a fair game. Or at least it benefits young people or people with loose family ties.
I had opportunities there but being from another continent, seeing my family once a year wasn't enough. With kids and a significant other that has even stronger ties to their family, it is impossible.
I think it wouldn't necessarily hurt the kids...but my partner wouldn't find work in the US and it would be a dent in their career.
Long story short like what others above say: If your team is good and your working conditions are good and you make good money in your country...maybe look at the bright side and not be envious of others.
I realized I make good money for here, have no management responsibility. Can work from home and basically as flexibly as I want to. All this ALREADY is a great gift. Don't need to dream of some FANG salary. I'm a big part of my kids' early lives instead of studying leet code questions.
If you join companies like HPE, Dell etc you can probably double your pay and still have good WLB. FAANG are outliers with regards to pay. There are other tech focused companies like the ones I mentioned above which still pay above average and have good WLB.
