Do you need evidence that auto complete makes you productive? It's stochastically useful. That also means a certain percentage of it will lead to garbage that could easily negate all the benefits. The lower you go down the stack, the more trickier it gets. We as humans are so obsessed with AI right now it's unbelievable. Lots of attention could be spent at other areas of innovation instead of obsessing on LLMs
Not the OP, but I’ve been thinking about why LLMs feel different and I think it’s closer to the chair analogy than I initially thought. Not able to fully articulate it but here’s my try.
Conventionally programming software needed you to know your tools like language, framework, OS, etc. pretty well. There’s a divergent set of solutions dependent on your needs and the craftsmen (programmers/engineers) you went to. Many variables you needed to know to produce something useful. You need to know your raw materials, like your wood.
With LLMs it’s weirdly convergent. Now there’s so many ways to get the same thing because you just have to ask with language. It’s like mass produced furniture because it’s the most common patterns and solutions it’s been trained on. Like someone took all the wood in the world, ran it through some crazy processing, and now you are just the assembler of IKEA like pieces that mostly look the same.
There’s a lost in necessity in craft. It helps to know the underlying craft, but it’s been industrialized and most people would be happy enough with that convergent solution.
I'll try starting a more niche group just to see what happens. Maybe I'm wrong and I'll find a handful of interesting people. Still, there's a nagging feeling in the back of my mind. If the number of people interested in a topic is small enough, reaching them can be really hard. And only a fraction of them would be willing/able to meet.
As for specific topics, there are many I could pick. My problem isn't a lack of interest in general, just a lack of overlap between my interests and what's available. One I think might have a decent chance of success would be a group based around information searching, both online and in the real world. Despite being an engineer, I've often found a lot of common ground with librarians. I love talking about the subject and could learn a lot about it. It's not going to become irrelevant any time soon either, even with LLMs, due to information siloing.
TV in the past didn't try to gaslight you into guilt or show all kinds of viral content and instant reactions. Except for news channels, most were slightly addictive at best. Even popular TV shows, you would have to wait for a week for the next episode and you couldn't binge. Screen time today is way different than even 20 years ago.
I think I can hear your point through the unnecessary snark. You're implying the field is narrowed to a kind of social engineering, rather than the screen itself.
Why does the study say screen time when the effects are, ostensibly, not about the screen? Again, a conclusion/agenda in search of evidence necessarily makes biased assumptions. THIS study (as with others) mischaracterizes itself. Seems like a questionable study from the outset. This is a poor approach to analysis.
This was a commentary on the sort of person who takes the phrase "screen time" seriously—a much broader cultural and social issue than the study itself could reasonably evaluate.
> 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.
In my 25 years in tech, there were no meritocracies. I came from a simple working class upbringing and experienced upward mobility into the white collar class.
I differentiated myself by always finding ways to solve problems, that others weren’t willing to do. People expected things to be done a certain way, I expected nothing and did everything myself my own way.
I never had mentorship that taught me “how to play the game”. People saw me as a threat, some would copy my work and take credit for it. I don’t have the mentality to fight with people over a game, so I let people win, to my detriment.
I never had hunger for title or compensation, so it was never offered to me unless I voiced my desire to exit.
My friends who played the game are sitting on a fortune, where they have more material possessions, but their kids are struggling and they are struggling, to find peace and happiness, because they are “owned” by the game. They have no substance in their life and compare themselves to others who play the game. A endless cycle of jealously.
I sit here with peace and very high life satisfaction, understanding I have skills that help people, that fulfill a purpose, that comes with healthy integration with my unbreakable values.
Learning to think independently while ignoring superficial reward signals with focus on self concordant goals is the recipe to life satisfaction.
+1. Worth saying this is also not at all a software engineering thing, it’s a large organization thing. I found I could easily discuss career leveling with non-technical government employees. In fact they have much more context than my friends in software engineering that never worked for large companies.
Except for the money - the entire reason most people work everyday…
I’m 51, worked at two F10 at the time companies out of my ten jobs and hated them both - GE and 8 years later Amazon. I purposefully made the choice of pursuing a smaller company and ignoring constant outreach from Google (GCP consulting division). But let’s not dismiss the close to $100K diference I could be making than what I make now.
Also a 25 year old SA that I mentored at AWS three years ago is making the same as I am making. They are an L5 (mid level) and I am a staff consultant. They are pre-sales (no commission) and I am implementations.
I went from, if not scraping by, never really recovered from dot-bomb to a pretty good job at a medium-size public company latterly. It was "mostly" good. But the difference in money set me up in a way that I previously really wasn't (even if not top tech levels).
The worst part about this is that the level is largely made up. Its a social construct.
for example a "senior engineer" at a FAANG has more "value" than lead engineer at a no-name startup.
However the skill gap between a lead engineer of a team of 6 vs a "senior engineer" at FAANG is massive.
a "Senior Engineer" (ie [e|l]5/6 at a faang) makes almost no product decisions. There is a team that makes the GUI, product, marketing, infra, and then a bunch of sub teams that look after the specific part that you are currently dealing with.
Your startup person has to make all those decisions them selves and communicate/delegate it
Being an 6/7 feels like being a teenager with a coddling parent by comparison.
But! the point is this, that name, is all just an illusion. There are plenty of E6s at FAANG that are mediocre, there are plenty of E3s that are leaders.
You must make your own worth. Sure you might be working at a no-name company, but that doesn't mean you can't be _good_. The thing that makes you _good_ at the non-coding skills: People, Architecture, communications.
L5 at FAANG makes almost no decisions on their own but has to schedule a dozen meetings and pester a dozen people from various teams to "get alignment".
We still have to do the work to get the decision made without the fun part of just making the decision ourselves.
That’s exactly what the author did, and it’s why the leveling piece matters so much.
At big tech companies levels very directly control comp, and less directly control the scope of problems you’re trusted with.
You absolutely can tackle large, high-impact problems as a more junior IC, but it usually means pushing a lot harder to hold onto ownership. Otherwise it’s REAL easy for a more senior IC to step in and quietly take it over.
It might be nicer to go work for startups, acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack, then get hired at a high responsibility position.
Though most people into entrepreneurship never go back to big corporations usually.
>acquire experience there as you build everything from scratch across the whole stack
This is not usually how it works. In fact in my experience, the moment a company becomes a scaleup and brings new leadership in to handle growth, those people start getting rid of the hacky jack of all trades profiles.
Larger companies usually value specialized profiles. They don’t benefit from someone half assing 20 roles, they have the budget to get 20 experts to whole ass one role each.
Career paths in large companies usually have some variation of “I’m the go-to expert for a specific area” as a bullet point somewhere.
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.
It doesn't even take new leadership. As companies grow, they (have to) put more process in place, people tend to have narrower and more tightly defined responsibilities, and the person at a smaller company--even if not a startup--who was cowboying what they saw as needing doing can become a liability rather than an asset.
There are times where a big company needs to build something new (albeit within a constrained ecosystem and a very narrow swimming lane).
To do so, one good way is to hire the experts of that domain that have built it before. That can mean acquiring a small specialized company, or simply hiring its top talent.
You could also repurpose your existing staff, but a big company is unlikely to have a lot of "builders", as most of its staff is just iterating and maintaining things others have built a decade ago. You probably still want to have some of those people in the team anyway, for integration purposes.
Big tech companies are also notorious for down-leveling if you’re not coming from another big company, so it might not actually be that good of a move.
He was down-leveled to a first level manager at the company you are at? He accepted this? Why? Do you think he / the new company chose wisely? What ended up happening?
I’m not sure why he accepted it, I never pried too much. It was his first big tech job. It’s very possible he still made more money as a first-level manager, so it might’ve still been a net win for him.
He was a great manager, he’s since moved up the ranks but he’s still at the same big tech co. So from both the company’s and his perspective, I suppose everyone’s happy.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was money. My family member runs a software company, salaries came up recently and found out I make as much as their director.
I agree. My point is this is probably unrealistic:
> 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
You mostly don’t get hired into high responsibility positions at big tech from startups, unless you’re acquired by them directly.
There are some notable exceptions obviously, but those generally require you to be some sort of leading domain expert.
It depends on how many people he was in charge of. If he’s CTO of 500 people company where only 40 are engineers, you’re not getting past senior manager at faang.
Most of my titles have been pretty made-up (with acquiescence of manager). Never had the formal levels seen at large tech companies. Last job description was written for me and didn't even make a lot of sense if you squinted to hard. Made a couple of iterations for business cards over time.
Couldn't have told you what the HR titles were in general.
It doesn’t work like that. An “architect” at a small startup will get you maybe to a mid level position at BigTech if you pass the coding interview. The scale is completely different.
And those “entrepreneurs” usually make less than a senior enterprise dev working in a 2nd tier city or a new grad at BigTech.
I was raised in a rural city and as a kid I thought it was OK. I studied/worked in big cities and my city felt small. Later I returned and now that I turn 50 my small city feel OK again. Tltr: small cities are nice only when you are kid or old(ish)
I wouldn’t go that far. I moved from South GA in 1996 a week after graduating college. I am now back home visiting my parents for Christmas. Everything I hated about living in rural America is even worse now, the economy is even more hallowed out after the factories left and it’s more culturally backwards as all of the people who could leave - did.
My parents retired in their 50s in the early 2000s - mom a teacher and dad a factory worker and they are doing well.
When you have children, your life is mostly about the kids. It really doesn’t matter if you live in rural America.
As empty nesters, at 51 and 50, there is nothing interesting about rural America. I’m in South GA now visiting my parents with my wife. They spend all of the their time between yard work doing things around the house and church. My cousins who still live here and their lives are just as boring - unless they go out of town.
> They spend all of the their time between yard work
I do find it a tiny bit offensive the idea that kind of thing is boring because it's not your hobby. I live semi rural (not America) and gardening became a hobby, there are garden shows etc.
Everyone has the same amount of time to fill every day. When it comes to "things to do" I don't really see one optional lifestyle as more fulfilling or hollow than another. I could live in a city, which would open more options, more than I could possibly consume, but at the same time it would also constrain my resources so I wouldn't be able to do as much of one thing.. or have a big garden and a studio for painting.
I have two female cousins who are divorced and whose children are grown or nearly so. They are both in their late 40s, early 50s. They still live in my hometown. Guess how much they hate it here (I’m home for the holidays)?
I would be fine here as a married man. But I can’t imagine being single here instead of my two times being a single adult in Atlanta (22-28 and 32 through 35).
I “retired my wife” at 46 halfway so we could travel more (I work remotely) and halfway so she could pursue her hobbies. I would be okay here because most of what I do is on the weekend and there is an airport here that has two flights a day back and forth to the Atlanta Delta hub. She would absolutely hate it.
My resources were far from constrained making even $150K before 2020 living in a 3200 square foot house I had built in the northern burbs of Atlanta for $335K in 2016.
They are a lot less constrained now though making in the low $200s in state tax free Florida living outside of Orlando. That 200K is nothing to brag about in tech. As o said before that’s what a former intern I mentored at AWS is making as a mid level SA
I... didn't really understand most of what you wrote in context of my post. Yes, if I were single I'd probably go for a city. My wife hasn't had a job since we had kids when I was 25, and I think we're in a much better financial state because it meant we had an easier time shifting our lives around the world for my job. I've never earnt big tech salary but I make more than was possible with the jobs I could access in New Zealand.
I (admitedly much younger than you) would think that assuming there's good internet and decent road connectivity, you could spend a lot of time on your interests and hobbies, no? My biggest hobbies (photography, diy audio) don't really need urban environments after the manufactured camera/woofer leaves the warehouse and ships to your home. Even easier perhaps if your interest is purely coding/laptop work (like writing a novel), I would think?
(For what it's worth - I myself am a city guy, but only because that's where I grew up in and have spent all my life. A town of 100k people feels desolate for me on Sunday evening, but I also don't live with family.)
The two times in my adult life that I was single (22-28 and 32-35), I would have been miserable in my hometown - as are almost everyone I talk to who is stuck here and single.
When I was single and younger, my hobbies were teaching fitness classes around the metro area and participating in group charity races with friends. We use to do one every month.
Yes. A lot of properties in a small town well outside a major city limit can feel pretty rural (and may not be super-expensive). You're probably not walking to a grocery store but you can likely drive to one in 15 minutes or so.
I'm about 50 miles outside of Boston/Cambridge and have easy access to all the shopping I care about and even driving into the city for theater etc. isn't an undue burden. Between myself and a couple other neighbors we're on about 75 acres and adjacent to conservation land.
I don't know exactly. Maybe $400K; haven't had appraised recently. One neighbor has a Christmas tree farm. The other has a pasture with horses. I don't personally have a huge amount of land--a bit over 4 acres. Don't do anything personally with my land.
But, basically, while Bay Area CA is complicated (because of the geography) you can generally get away from walking to things in a city and there are a lot cheaper options in other cases. Lot of exurbs even around generally expensive cities--and even when lots of companies are out there as well.
Probably shaped by Bay area narratives, a lot of people assume that you're either living in the city or you're living in some remote rural location.
Very much so. Author here. I wanted to do so much more than the box they allocated me in. Once I knew they were not going to let me grow from my box, then I left. Not the level I was worried about, but it's a language most people can understand
The Box is very frustrating, especially when there's no one handling the other things, yet you're still not allowed to do them because it'd make the wrong people look bad.
Getting a salary that pays rent/mortgage and puts food on the table doesn't always have to be about being in a rat race (which is what the "laddering" bs really means), to the contrary.
Because context is hard, I guess, my point is that "exiting the rat race" is generally something that only people with Mountain View addresses and opinions like "400k TC really isn't THAT much, if you think about it" tend to be able to do.
I am at the stage of life where I appreciate this wisdom and desire the practice of it, but lack the will power to not get caught up “trying to win the game”. Once a while I get anxious about leveling and compensation, overwhelmed by comparison with peers. For people who had the similar struggles but managed to overcome, what worked for you?
- Surround yourself with friends who also aren’t playing the game.
- Get really clear about what your actual financial goals are, not what they’d need to be in order to maintain status among game-players.
- Get compensated in ways other than money. For me, working four days a week instead of five, and working remote from anywhere, is worth a whole lot of money. And working at a smaller company is a hell of a lot more fun if you like being part of product decisions.
- If you can, find ways to do things that your ladder-climbing friends can’t do. Spend a month in Europe without taking any holiday. Spend the whole winter in Thailand. Use that extra mental energy from that day off to do something amazing.
I left FAANG about 10 years ago and took a massive pay cut. I’d do it again.
By telling yourself it is ok to feel this way and going back to things you are good at, things that you love and people you care about and enjoy being with. Also exercise - that works.
There is nothing to overcome. These feelings rise up sporadically. Acknowledge and move on.
Exactly, that’s why I feel pity for the people who destroy their lives to get paid extra 5% and having a pizza party with good boy remarks, and of course making someone else wealthier too. It’s not a flex to sleep in a tent at work, while neglecting your health, family, friends, maybe kids, this “grind” culture is pushed by corporations for obvious reasons.
Biggest jump is 400K and that's at L7, for Principal SE, the top level. Below that each level is about a $100-150K jump. Nothing to complain about, to be clear.
E6 -> E7 at Meta is $1M (which sounds a little bit crazy tbh). Google L6 -> L7 is 300k, but their numbers look smaller than what I'm privy too. A generic Level 6 to 7 (staff to senior staff) promotion can easily be $500k at a tech company.
And yet, how many people are actually happier with that extra $500k? It's one thing if you're not making enough to allow you and whoever else you might need to support to be happy and comfortable and be able to save enough for emergencies and retirement, but I'm dubious that someone only one other away from a half million dollar raise is in that position.
Something that's often overlooked is the time equivalent of money. If the average salary is $50k but you get $500k, you only have to work 1 year in every 10, and that's crazy.
And the feeling of safety that comes with it. I left my previous employer during an acquisition and took a year off and am taking my time to find the right next gig. I cannot imagine the terror of having to find a new job, any job, ASAP because otherwise we starve and lose the house. Substantial savings are honestly much nicer than spending on a lavish lifestyle.
yes thats true if you survive it. Have two friends with a salary over 300k a year. one worked 5 years and retired the other bought more luxury products to reflect his income and is now completly burned out after 3 years but forced to work because of his 300k a year lifestyle
at that price level as a senior engineer there are plenty jobs available, no stress on that point.
i have little savings but my life is great, my kids love me, my health is good, i work from home and i have time for my friends. honestly everyday is great.
> And yet, how many people are actually happier with that extra $500k?
A hella lot people, are you seriously that dense? If there were gladiator fights for 500k, I would be a fucking janitor cleaning up the bloody mess, because of how many people would die for a chance to make 500k extra.
I think you're overestimating how much making $800k versus $300k would actually make most people happier. You're welcome to disagree with me, but there's plenty of research indicating this might be the case (from a quick Google for "happiness self reported by income" this is the first result: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/does-more-money-correlate-g...).
If you think that everyone is the would either agrees with you or is "dense" without doing any sort of cursory investigation on whether the alternate view might actually be common or supported by evidence, I'm honestly not really sure why you're bothering to engage in discussion in the first place.
> The main finding of our reanalysis of MK’s study is that the shape of the distribution of happiness changes—slightly, but systematically—as income rises. The same increases of income have different effects on the happy and on the unhappy regions of the distribution. In the low range of incomes, unhappy people gain more from increased income than happier people do. In other words, the bottom of the happiness distribution rises much faster than the top in that range of incomes. The trend is reversed for higher incomes, where very happy people gain much more from increased income than unhappy people do. The upper part of the happiness distribution rises with log(income) at an accelerated rate in that range, while the lower 20% is almost completely flat.
So it sounds like this study is saying people who are unhappy and have low income or are already happy and have high incomes will become a lot happier with more income. The lower end would be consistent with people are are unhappy because of the lack of income, and I don't think would apply very much to people one promotion away from a $500k raise. For the other end, it seems like it would be consistent that people who have high incomes and are happy might be just as likely to become happier from other things instead of more income; maybe they're just people who are naturally happy whenever something good happens regardless of what it is, and because they have high incomes, they don't need to worry about existential life issues most of the time.
In other words, none of this seems to heavily contradict what I said, other than the caveat that if you are already happy, you might still be happier with more income (but we don't know that you might be just as happy from getting a new hobby or spending more time with your family instead of getting promoted). Even without that caveat, it does not seem like your link is nearly enough to make a reasonable argument that I'm dense for happening to cite an effect from an article that, according to your link, was a valid result according to both of the authors.
The purpose of a system is what it does. If the org truly cared about under-leveled employees, it would get fixed rapidly.
But they don’t.
I’ve seen enough people glossed over repeatedly and then when enough people leave and the org is in a less leveraged position, then the promos are no longer an issue. Such BS.
You have to realize that a company is always optimizing for efficiency and salaries are no different.
Giving out promotions when people are already working at the level they'd be promoted to is simply a waste of money.
This is the author's biggest mistake. If you voluntarily work on tasks above your pay grade you are signaling to the company that you don't need a promotion.
There isn't a single optimization. Define efficiency. Define over what time frame.
The problem the OP faced is that YouTube is optimizing under a short time frame and under the belief that employees are fungible. The latter being a common problem with big orgs, thinking there is no value to institutional knowledge. Yet in reality that is often extremely important
Why are people so determined to just shill for companies? Do you know how many people are unemployed for Christmas today, while you're out here tasting shoe leather for these organizations with more money than God?
They're not going to take pity on you, you know, no matter how much you grovel and beg.
>Career is a made up game. There are no true levels or ladders in life that you have to chase.
not sure what you are getting at. Football is a made up game. People who play it well earn fame and fortune. yeah, don't beat yourself up for not being able to play it well, but don't pretend there is nothing there.
I mean, there really isn’t for the majority. Fame and fortune are fleeting; fame has a short half life (hence the phrase “15 minutes” of it) and fortunes can be lost as quickly as they’re made (80% of NFL players face financial distress after retirement). Not to mention that for every pro athlete there’s at least 100 that don’t make the cut.
The same is true in every field to varying degrees. For the average individual who can provide for themselves and their families, more money and fame only sounds good on paper. In reality, it invites more stress than anything else.
At first I though it was a metaphorical hippy way of writing about this industry, which would have been par for the course, but it looks like the author really did mean it, he really does think in the ladder and "levelling" bs. All the best to him when it comes to climbing that ladder.
And yet we know techies love games and structured process. It is a clever way to make them do what you want to. Techies could have so much more power in the job market and yet they give it all up sadly.
right. also the whole job is bs to begin with. i don't know why this article is remotely interesting. it's a google job. that just tells me "i have skills but i don't know how to use them to make money"
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?
> If they had liked the guy and he was truly talented, he would have gazzelled right up the org chart.
Logic is weird here. You're operating under the assumption that these orgs work perfectly.
Even if you believe they are operating at a very high level of efficiency it is a naïve assumption to make. False positives and false negatives are things that exist in every non-perfect evaluation system.
Having led the process from the other side, the more often your name comes up in a positive light, the better your chances. Odds are that OPs work simply wasn't mentioned much by his peers. The person you are replying to was absolutely on the money.
Promotions aren't a popularity contest, but they definitely are a popularity contest.
Yet what you are saying is a bit different from the person I replied to (which I do agree with your final line). We also only have the information that the OP states. These are asymmetric information games so it is a bit naive to claim this for any response. Especially simple explanations.
> With one key difference - it's not a gravity. It's just currently popular and dominating style in IT corporate culture. Mainly because it worked once for few successful companies and others cargo-culted it without much thought.
Sadly this is majority of tech industry. Cargo-cult whatever the big players are doing. But all is not lost. Lots of interesting smaller companies with highly technical people advocate for a tech culture that rewards real Engineering over Salesman/Politician.
For instance, a FAANG resume with business impact bullet points will be pretty useless for a small team building a database. Someone with PR commits to open source Databases would hardly need to prove themselves.
Out of 10 companies I’ve worked for over 30 years, I’ve only worked for two large companies - General Electric when it was still an F10 company and later Amazon (AWS) - I hated my time at each of them. In fact, I turned down an opportunity by a former coworker at AWS who was a director at another well known non tech company who was going to create a position for me to lead their migration to AWS and then their “modernization”. I turned it down even though I could have made about $50K more in cash than I was making in cash and RSUs at Amazon because I didn’t want to work at another large company after leaving Amazon.
It’s fine if you want to work at smaller “interesting” companies, I’m doing the same. But let’s not pretend there are no tradeoffs.
The intern I mentored their intern summer and the year after they got back, got a return offer at 22 in 2022 that was the same I was making at 46 in 2020 as a senior enterprise dev in Atlanta.
On the opposite side, now they are an L5 (mid level) Solution Architect at 25 working at AWS doing a similar line of work to what I do[1] and make the same total comp as I make as as a staff consultant working at mid size firm at 51.
If you want to make the eye popping big tech salaries - you have to play the game.
[1] I’m mostly post sales leading implementations and doing some management style consulting reports. My former mentor is pre-sales.
Linkedin is less of a job portal and more of a Social Network for the workplace. For the job portal, its more popular in tech but not the first stop for other industries. Which one are you trying to dethrone?
Thin Desires, Shallow work, Chasing Glitter, Mindless optimization on result, Non virtuous, Dopamine chasing. All are but the same. Burnout is our body's response to it. Philosophers have said this for thousands of years that they all lead to anything but happiness.
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