ya, I mean it seems essentially all any of do is move data around.

Goofy it’s this.

https://us.teamblind.com/invite/GeFLW0CA

That’s my invite link. Also you are settling down? Getting married???

Needing work email seems super sketchy

There's some call for algorithmic wizards in like 0.1% of programming jobs. In at least 95% of jobs, whether you can architect things well and write clear and concise code ("concise" usually meaning you know to use available libraries for things rather than trying to roll your own) is way more important than whether you know what Djikstra's algorithm is or how to write super performant code.

When uber was having all the headline scandals they also wrote marketing pieces about how many uber employees used their site.. shady

recently I was encouraged to "roll my own" rather than use a library (lodash) since there is some overhead with bringing it in and it could change going forward, at least that was the reason given.

we were actually already using it but I guess they want to phase it out.

not really sure, but I think I lean towards your pov and would prefer (non-sketchy) libraries to the diy.

I signed up for this Blind thing but yeah I see no reason to ever post there and think you'll have any privacy. I'll read what others post I guess. Not a lot of traffic for my non-tech fortune 50 dinosaur though.

I think the video was really good. Two comments though:

1. His equity valuation seems a bit off to me. I think he undersells the equity from non-public companies and oversells the equity from the big guys (past performance is no guarantee of future performance).

2. His comment at the end about no retirement in the US made me sad.

Haha yea if anything, getting old and having to pay 1k a month for health insurance sucks ass.

This video is mostly an instance of top tech people being out of touch though - the vast majority of software developers simply cannot get offers at Google or Facebook, even at the entry level and like I said before, titles and levels just don't translate across companies and company types. If you observe people who successfully moved from companies that aren't in this class to one of them, you will generally see that most of them took jobs that were several levels below and those people were considered a cut above their peers in their previous jobs even compared to peers at the same level. The proportion of senior engineers at a company, say, two tiers below Google/Facebook (so excluding top unicorns, some others that pay well), that would get even an entry level offer at Google or Facebook would be very small. And it's smaller now that many of them have made this move.

Now, one may think, 'but I am better at programming than these kids out of CS programs.' And in many ways that's probably true for many. But not all skills are equally valuable - in a world where most high-paying jobs are concentrated in one type of company (large tech giants), what matters most is what they value and they disproportionately value certain types of skills over others. I'm sort of finding this out the hard way and it can be a little jarring to be good at things that really don't pay in the marketplace. But that may also be how non-tech people feel about us too.

This is true generally but if you want to get paid, you need to avoid being lumped with the other 95% of the people. Honestly, I've been super obsessed about efficient systems my entire career and I've only been realizing over the past few years that people that have been architecting overly complicated systems at the expense of their employers are getting ahead because they now have useful skills that their previous employers paid for. Not that I advocate doing this - it's always best when you use cutting edge tools where they are actually needed - but you do have to decide for yourself what matters to you in the long run.

It's not so much about past performance, but more about how hard it is to cash out, even in the rare case the startup equity ends up being worth something. Most startup equity is in the form of options, mostly for tax reasons. And because most software developers (really most anyone) are financially illiterate, the terms are highly unfavorable. The amount granted usally has very low market value and you usually have a 90-day window to exercise when you leave the company. The latter can seriously restrict your mobility when your options have considerable cash value but the strike price is high enough to make exercising risky. It also becomes a threat - as the window generally applies if you get fired or laid off.

Furthermore, it's become quite common for large startups to stay private for a very long time - this combined with relatively high churn makes stock options worth far less than they normally would be as securities, even though most option grants wouldn't be that valuable even if they could be freely traded. Also, it's simply much easier to plan your life when you're dealing with something that has concrete value at concrete points in time, rather than something that may be worth 5MM or 0 in 10 years. It's too easy to overspend or under-spend on something like a house.

I dunno. One of my coworkers went to Google and he was a solid engineer but wasn't a rockstar or anything, or even one of the top engineers at our company. A few guys I worked with at my video game job went to Lab 126 at Amazon and reached out to me when they discovered I was looking at jobs when I came here, but I was already far into the process and decided to take this job. (probably a mistake, they were like "we need a decision" and I took the bait as if they weren't going to hire me if I told them to wait a week or two)

Sure, but my comment about past performance was about how he’s valuing the equity given at the big guys. There’s no guarantee that the equity (however it’s given) holds its value - lots of things can effect that number.

If the market tanks or the company severely ****s up - the value of that equity is going to go down.

I’ve said it before, but I think some people ITT really overestimate the quality of Google vs all other companies. I say this as somebody that went to school with and worked with lots of people that have worked at these companies.

Are you judging him on his overall productivity? Here math, algorithm, whiteboard coding skills and general intelligence would play a much bigger role than productivity based on, say, domain knowledge, work ethic or high levels of engagement. One coworker from a while back went to Google and he was an underperformer in terms of overall productivity but it was mostly because he was bored out of his mind and didn't see eye-to-eye with many people. He was clearly a rockstar in terms of actual capability.

Yeah this does sound like a mistake but the bigger mistake isn't turning down one referral (which has a low probability of leading to an offer) but really not bothering to try in the past or in the future. I have turned down these referrals and recruiters for years and it's also been a big career mistake. What you're saying seems to make think you may have a realistic shot and if you do, I think you owe it yourself to give it a try (or 2 or 3). Keep in mind that hiring standards are not consistent across time and practice makes perfect so persistence pays off - lots of people who do get in have been trying for a long time and spent a lot of time preparing for those. Also getting into one of those would definitely help if you want to move to another. I would include some of the more famous unicorns and other top companies as well (lots of those in SV) so you should have a pretty good chance of getting something that is better than your current situation if you are willing to invest a serious amount of time.

You can sell stocks as soon as they vest, which is typically <= 1 year - so your risk is almost capped here. The value does not have to hold past that point and because you can leave, if the value of your future pay goes down without your market value going down, they will have to make up for it in some way or you can leave. While if the value of your future pay goes up, typically they won't use that against you as not to affect morale. Again the problem here is that because most people are financially illiterate and there's so much more you can do to screw your employees in a private company, the board is incentivized to make decisions that screw over the employees in the long run.

If you work with engineers who could get offers at Google, I think you're also underestimating the degree to which your company is also selective. Also, like I said, it's not so much that people at Google or whatever are best at everything, but more that they reward certain types of skills and attributes disproportionately, which not everyone can suddenly pivot to having. But again, in my experience, lots of people talk about how Google is not special and they had offers at Google vs some other company and chose the other company, but leave out details like, their principal engineer left to become a SWE III at Google, a young product-minded person choosing a Director level role at a startup vs SWE II role and so on, or someone mistakenly thinking they were interviewing for a high-level position at Google (based on their current title and the recruiter saying nothing to contradict this), dropping out of the process in the middle and thinking they were choosing their current job against a high-level position at Google they were never being considered for even if everything aligned perfectly.

I've been interviewing at some startups (and talking to recruiters as well) lately and lots of people have developed these weird talking points that are transparently awful and self-serving. I mean I guess the rhetoric works and you need some true believers to succeed but no, you're not the next Google, no most of your engineers didn't turn down equivalent roles at Google, no your hiring process is not as selective, no your culture is not better, no your equity isn't worth more, no your problems aren't more interesting. I feel like there's a collective ego issue here, where people just can't admit that someone else is better and it's okay to work on non-Google-scale problems at under-Google compensation with talented engineers who nevertheless probably won't get offers at Google.

That could definitely be the case, I don't know if maybe he crushes the whiteboards. Productivity is part of my take on him, but also seeing his code and the quality of his designs - good stuff, but not great or standing out from the crowd. There are 2-3 guys I work with who I think are legit rockstars any company would be lucky to have (one is a long-time contractor who I think used to work at Google as well as other large companies), and this guy was not at their level.

What do you think the proper play is in that area? I joined LinkedIn recently (I know, LOL, huge career leak to only be doing that now) and get like 1-2 contacts out of the blue each week, but from hearing my coworkers talk about it, I get the sense that it's like being an attractive woman on a dating site and just because random people are contacting you doesn't mean it's worth your time. I guess, how do you decide what contacts are worth your attention?

In any case, I had randomly heard of TripleByte awhile ago (forget where, maybe Hacker Newsletter? a few posts about it here but long enough ago that I don't think they stuck with me) and took their test last week, it was very difficult but they said at the end I did well (no idea if I believe them, they don't tell you the right answers and a decent number were domain-specific stuff in areas I had no experience where my answer was just "I don't know", and they are in the business of making you want to stick with their program), and I just booked a technical interview in a couple weeks. It sounds like it plays to my strengths - their interview guide says I'll write a game-like program (sounds easy enough) and then do a debugging section where they'll give you a program with some bugs and ask you to fix it (which I think is one of my strongest areas). No whiteboarding, which I'm probably worse at.

They work with a lot of startups but also some larger companies (Apple probably the most attractive?), so maybe if I blow them away that can help get the ball rolling on some things.

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Except he was taking a typical 4-year equity award and dividing it by 4 and adding it to the annual comp package.

And look, I think he’s way more right than most people (who overvalue non public equity and undervalue public equity) but I think he’s too far the other way.


If we’re comparing Google to the set of all people that call themselves programmers than yeah I suppose I agree they’re way better. But I guess I just mean that there are a lot of other companies being close to as selective as Google and hiring comparable or relatively close to comparable people.




If this is what you’ve been hearing it shows a really bad approach to hiring. Startups (used loosely) shouldn’t try to compete with big companies on most of these points, imo. If someone really cares about those things and is really qualified you’re probably not going to win them over. Feels much better to win on the points where you can - like not being a massive giant company. Although I’m not sure our recruiters would be much better. Recruiters gonna recruiter. I doubt it’s an ego issue as much as a “I’m going to make my company seem awesome to hire you”.

Think more about how you would evaluate CS graduates and less about how you would evaluate someone with 10+ years of experience. Quality at most places has more to do with conscientiousness, engagement and experience with tech stack than raw ability of the sort that is sought at these places.

You have to have some notion of which employers are worth your attention.

TripleByte at most just gets you onsite interviews for any top-tier employer so you will have to get better at whiteboarding. Some places now let you use a computer in lieu of whiteboarding but I don't think it makes a big difference - it's still coding in a very short period time with your mouth open. But there are plenty of sites where you can practice algorithm problems nowadays.

You can still sell the vested portion after a year cliff (and the rest usually vests on shorter intervals). If the equity is backloaded, it's generally made up by signing bonuses so that annual comp is comparable from one year to the next. So dividing the 4-year equity by 4 to figure out annual total comp is approximately the correct thing to do - this is what you actually get and it's a relatively safe bet. I mean if you have 401K and don't do crazy active management, the chance is you invested in Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc, at market value. There's nothing funny going on with liquidation preference, short-exercise window, clawback clauses, etc - these are real shares at market value and it would generally be correct to value them as such.

I think this is true from a point-in-time perspective, but what I have seen is also that some startups start out at that level of selectivity, in part because many of their early employees/founders are from those types of companies but the selectivity drops off over time, quite dramatically. Also, aside from the initial talent issue, except for very few startups that are comparable to those big co, the skills you develop tend to be less valuable. Like I said earlier, it's not so much that engineers at Google are that much better, but that if top paying jobs are all at Google or Google-like companies, whatever experience you have that doesn't translate to this is a lot less valuable in the market.

CB, I literally don’t understand how anything you wrote there about equity is relevant to my point.

Edit: Note your comment about these being real shares at market value. The value of shares can fluctuate A LOT. Treating that share value over a four year period the same as cash money is overstating the worth of that equity.

I don't understand what you're not understanding.

You're not signing a multi-year contract - you can always leave and they can always fire you. The potential volatility of your year 2-4 compensation has no bearing on the cash value of your first year compensation. As I said before, if your market value stays the same, but the value of your stock compensation declines drastically, you can just leave or renegotiate. In fact this works in your favor because if the reverse happens, employers would be very reluctant to say, well your comp is now way over your market value so we will cut your salary. So with a good employer, it's almost a one-sided option in your favor. At worst, this is no different from any other situation - salaries aren't guaranteed from year to year either.

I mean if you prefer, you can just calculate your take-home after year 1 - but it comes to about the same.

He's assuming medicare will be gone, or believing the (R) spin that it sucks so bad rich people wouldn't want to use it.

Actually the more I thought about that video it started to piss me off. Every point was designed to convince you to work for the man forever - just pick the best man to work for. IE:

1) Someone quit to travel the world and was back at work in a year.

2) Even if you don't care about things, you should work your ass off for your great grandkids.

3) The only way to get health insurance apparently is to work for a corporation.

I think I'm forgetting some.

Also everyone only socializes with people they work with. Yeah dude maybe in surreal name-dropping, money obsessed sili-valley.

hey suzzer, get some blogs up so us working stiffs have something to live vicariously thru.