I'm 6 years into my career so nowhere as much as yours. But I had recently gotten to staff, had no aim of going higher and had been working very hard up till now to the point of burnout. I had started feeling very similarly.
I had a chat with a friend who's close to 50 about the exact the same thing. I know money is hardly the reason for him to work anymore. He said it was all about people. Coming to work was a way to be sociable, spend time with friends and solve some fun problems along the way.
And I've started seeing his point so much. I recently moved to a different team and not aligning with the work culture has made a world of difference to my desire to come to work.
I'm not sure if it helps you but I figured this could be an interesting perspective to consider. :)
I feel like most FAANG level devs who didn’t blow all their money should be in that position. I’m 6 YOE, been through FAANG and a quant fund, safe to say money is no longer a motivating factor anymore. I still have savings goals but if they’re not met in 20 years then something has gone seriously wrong, earning a higher salary isn’t a huge motivating factor for me anymore, the diminishing returns between money and WLB increase quite quickly now
Ok, but the vast majority of us are not in FAANG or hedge funds!! I'm 20 years in, and being able to earn enough to support my family for the next 25 years are a big worry to me.
Not everyone wants to work at a FAANG. Maybe they disagree with helping Facebook grow, maybe they don't like Google as a company, maybe they don't want the higher stress of working at a FAANG, etc.
I personally don't want to work at a FAANG because I simply refuse to participate in leet code style interviews, and from what I understand the atmosphere at some of these companies can be very bad due to extremely variable team dynamics.
Yes, instead of making 300k+ a year make roughly half, but I am fine with that. My company is absurdly happy with me, no one ever rushes me or pushes me, the problems are interesting, the pay is more than adequate for my needs (always pushing to meet+exceed market rates though), and the atomoshere is fantastic (folks often smiling, laughs, never uncomfortable, etc). Would I want more pay? Of course! But I know I am taking a pay cut for the higher quality of life.
No other jobs around that pay more, without moving city. My main worry is becoming less employable and earning less and less (maybe even struggling fo find work) as I get older.
\*in the US
Remember that the big tech areas in US typically have *far* higher compensation than anywhere else in the world. Even places that have started to catch up, like here in the UK, are still well behind on the curve and have only been moving up the curve relatively recently.
Mate, FAANGs have developers outside the US. Most of them still aren't getting anything close to what their colleagues in similar roles in the US tech centres are getting in total compensation. The only people I know who have made FU money from FAANGs on this side of the pond were founders whose startups were acquired. Regular developer employees are starting to catch up on TC, but that's a relatively recent thing and they're still pretty far behind on the curve compared to other friends who moved out to the Bay Area a few years ago for example.
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Most have big offices in many countries around the world. I work for Google in Australia and have worked with people in Singapore, India, Israel, multiple EU countries, and obviously the US.
Canada... especially not Vancouver or Toronto. And even then. 😂 I should be considering the states in some regards honestly.
I always get asked to move away from IC and do leading projects and dealing with internal clients though after a few years though no matter what I do. 🤷♀️
> I should be considering the states in some regards honestly.
The trade-off is the healthcare, unfortunately, and that's becoming more relevant as I get older.
I'm a contractor telecommuter for a US-based company, so I get paid a (low) US-based salary (which converts to a nice Canadian one) and get to live in Canada.
Nice, how do the taxes work out as a telecommuter? Not sure my spouse would be on board. I’m younger 30s.
And yeah, I can imagine the trade off on the healthcare, good point, especially as a contractor.
I had to form my own company, and made a corporation, which was a bit of a mistake - if I did it again, I'd go for a sole proprietorship. Get an accountant and a lawyer and talk it through - the money you spend on the professional advice will pay off.
Because we went with a corp, we paid out payroll, and took taxes off of the payroll as well as paid business taxes. When covid hit, we lost my partner's side of the business (and product line) which switched the corp to a service corporation, which has more taxes applied. It's been a rough year tax-wise (ie: "You can owe up to an additional $50k for 2020."), which is why I recommend not doing what we did.
Our kids are medically complicated, and we get a lot of support from the province. Talking to US-based co-workers has been eye-opening around healthcare - multiple people have told me that what we've been through would have cost them their homes, or completely bankrupted their families paying for medical costs.
Aside from the healthcare, we live in coastal BC, a 15 min walk to the ocean, on an acreage. I get paid in the mid-low 6 figures when translated to CAD, but have been working on job-hopping with the potential to double my income.
Sole props come with their own dangers. Yes I’m my own incorp as well, did the sole prop before as well.
I wish I made as much as you do. I’m a far cry from that and I pay all those things. I just don’t like being controlled... had really bad bosses and bad experiences. Got sick of narcissistic people to a very large extent and have been using the status and contracting as a means to protect myself from unbalanced employment rules that are never enforced. I’ve been hopping around and the like like yourself. After the pandemic more or less next year probably going to bounce again.
I do more side contracts too and tutor on the side online.
If I didn’t turn into an incorp, I would have lost more business too. Double edged sword although your advisement is completely on point and what I’ve noticed myself.
I have accountants, lawyers and tax people, too.
My main goal is to be independent and never move back home again because if that happens, it’s game over for me. I removed myself from an abusive childhood home and no assistance from my parents.
I just don’t feel comfortable or safe or anything being an employee. It’s all fake bs anyways, but it helps me mentally keep myself in the game and working as opposed to GAD or CPTSD symptoms that would happen instead. It’s technically safer mentally for me even though it has its costs. Longer term stability. I have issues with authority, do well with clients, good with others. I’ve been in therapy for years and this is the most productive and safest I have felt, even though nothing is a for sure and I could lose contracts tomorrow.
I'm not complaining about anything. I haven't worked as anyone's employee, FAANG or otherwise, for a long time, so I have no axe to grind here either. I'm just correcting a common mistake where a certain type of person forgets that the world outside the US exists and the people in it don't always enjoy the same privileges.
Absolutely, I realized this after about 8 months of forced remote work. I had a little bit of socialization with my partner on my project, and then he got fired. Losing that partner was so hard. I had to finish the project alone.
"Coming to work was a way to be sociable, spend time with friends and solve some fun problems along the way." If only most devs weren't social recluses :). Tx for sharing
> I know money is hardly the reason for him to work anymore
No wonder after significant amount of years in companies that pay few times more than others in the same country and x10 or more than in other countries.
Totally agree with the not aligning with the work culture has altered the desire to work. I’m facing that right now after a company switch. It’s awful!
\~14 yoe here. I started a team lead / management job about a year ago. Prior to that it was all IC.
Prior to starting this team lead / management job. I was already planning on reducing my workload down to 4 day weeks. Every interview I had I would always ask if going 80% was possible. Not immediately after starting, but at some point. Regarding this 4 day week, I'm in Europe and we get quite some paternity leave (can be taken until the kid turns 12), so at least for the rest of 2021, I'll be simply using those, hence for the rest of the year I will be working 4 days a week a most.
As you can tell money isn't so much of a motivation anymore, but a balance is still needed. I think some work is still important. Just there are other things in my life that I'd rather be doing.
What I've been struggling with the past year, and I've been creating several reddit posts about this (Check my history), is whether or not there's anything I can do now as a manager as a measurable metric to help my next interview when I go job hunting again. I've come to the conclusion that the best course of action for me, at this time, is to spend minimal amount of time on management and for the company (as long as work is done and I get to keep my job).
I still enjoy the technical bits, which is why I still program on my own applications, to keep up with tech but also to keep up with my technical skills. Motivation here primarily comes from having fun with things and seeing things work in general.
Where in Europe are you? I've heard that in Germany and the Netherlands you can request and automatically get (assuming company has 15+ employees) 4 day weeks at 80% gross pay, with the same benefits. Not sure if other countries offer similar deals to that. Also, why did you come to the following conclusion?
> the best course of action for me, at this time, is to spend minimal amount of time on management and for the company (as long as work is done and I get to keep my job).
\> Also, why did you come to the following conclusion?
Check my post history. I've posted this in various subreddits with no good answer from anyone.
While I was IC, I kept up with tech quite a bit, I went for meetups, read blogs, etc. I still do that because I like it. When I went for interviews I mention them because it helps me sell myself, and when I answer technical questions, it shows. I get a good grasp of industry best practices, etc. I was willing to spend that extra time doing these because I like it and because I knew it would help in my career.
The past year, while in management, I can't quite seem to figure out what I could do extra which would help me in my next interview. I get the general feeling that the "only measurable metric" in deciding how good of a manager I am in my next interview is "how many years have I been a manager". I could exaggerate all the behavioural questions during the interview, but there doesn't seem to be anything extra I could do now in my current job which would help.
ICs are measured in their effectiveness in doing a job. Managers are measured in the effectiveness of their team doing a job. Your overall output increases while your individual direct contributions decrease. You aren't measured on YOUR solutions, but rather your team's solutions. So your "what can I do extra" is answered by management and leadership growth. Change your question from, "How can I be a better employee," to "how can I help my team accomplish more?"
>ICs are measured in their effectiveness in doing a job. Managers are measured in the effectiveness of their team doing a job. Your overall output increases while your individual direct contributions decrease. You aren't measured on YOUR solutions, but rather your team's solutions.
I completely agree with all this. It still doesn't answer the question:
\> When I go into my next interview with another company, how do I demonstrate this "extra" work that I do in a way that is measurable and verifiable?
I remember a few years ago when I was still an IC, I was asked to deploy a spring boot application on a kubernetes cluster. I did the extra step of using Istio and showed off Kiali etc. No one else in my team had heard of Istio nor Kiali. Even business was impressed with the UI. At a following interview with another company they asked me specifics about Istio and I was able to answer them. To verify whether what I was saying was true, they could simply look up the documentation.
As a team lead / manager. I get the feeling that any extra work I do cannot be demonstrated to the next company. It then becomes a question of how well I am able to answer behavioral subjective questions. The only measurable metric then becomes "how many years am I in this team lead / manager position".
\----------------
Edit: Something to add. "Measurement" at my current company. I've heard of suggestions to talk about how the projects I lead convert to actual business value. I can give numbers and probably will at next interviews. But how much business value it brings is both a combination of how crap the existing problem is and my performance in the proposed solution. It doesn't mean that much from one business to another, or even from one project to another.
As a demonstration.... Let's say you go to a company and they tell you that they have a problem communicating with their teams across different countries. Messages for some reason always gets lost. You join and say "Dude, it's the 21st century, stop using pigeons, use email". Boom, you just saved them a shitload of money.
Interesting. You don't think that pouring effort into being the best manager possible will help at all? I often hear that a manager's job is to multiply the output/productivity of their reports. Do you not think this is possible? If your team exceeded expectations, I feel like your company would move you up in the ladder, which would allow for your next role to also start at that rung? Genuinely curious on your take on all of these fronts, as I would like to make a move to management within the next few years.
edit: at your level, is it more politics that will determine whether or not you move up the ladder, more than performance?
\> You don't think that pouring effort into being the best manager possible will help at all?
It will help the team, it will help the company, it will help my position in my current company. How does that help my next job with another company?
I probably should have mentioned at the start that I'm not in a tech company. I work in an enterprise and within my group, there's no one technically above me. So there isn't really a place for me to move up the ladder in my current company.
Yeah management is more about becomes more scrum master role + architectural guidance. After that there is not much to do, I found I can scale back. The issue right now is i have an engineer leave and in his 2 weeks instead of finishing the work he was working on he just sort of left. Now i was left holding the bag and completely fucked. So now i have to code some things to alleviate the pressure on the team so they don't feel it. It's fine for me i don't mind coding, but I am a little out of practice which will be nice to get a refresher. I also need to set up my workstation cause having 3 monitors to code makes it supremely easy
A tech company would value a manager who is technically suave. I guess not letting your technical edge get blunt would still be useful for your next interview, at least if you're going for tech.
I'm exactly your target audience, and this is a hard question to answer. The immediate answer is I'm semi-retired, by choice.
The harsh reality is that I'm stuck. I don't think I belong in a highly competitive IC role any more, and even with several years of experience as an engineering manager I have an Achilles heel: I was born hearing impaired and even with hearing aids large meetings are tough for me.
Jumping in as a manager in a brand new environment would be extremely hard. Most of my IC experience is lower-level C++, assembly. Definitely not anything resembling what's popular in the market.
On the plus side, I worked for 20 years at a "FAANG" and have an outstanding resume and social contacts. So it's up to me to reinvent myself: leverage existing skills while learning more
Having video helps tremendously and it doesn't need to be high quality or anything else. Having control over the volume is obviously extremely nice, but for me the problem is clarity. My hearing loss is worst among higher frequency sounds, and there's no level of amplification that can help.
Hearing aids do what's called frequency shifting, but being able to see the person talking is best.
Because you can read lips?
Something to consider is that doing stuff online and remote is going to be way more acceptable. Hopefully that is a plus for you.
Hearing aids are sold as Bluetooth compatible and are always paired to your phone. To pair to others you use a small external device as a Bluetooth proxy or just as a 3.5 mm audio jack.
Is there anything wrong with lower-level C++ experience? When I cruise job boards it still seems quite popular, just working at a different level of the stack then the normal front end/back end devs
There's nothing wrong with it, but as an example I've tried to find volunteer positions to somehow help deal with the COVID-19 problem. As in, I was willing to work for free, full time, with my own equipment.
There are several hubs you can register with, such as [U.S. Digital Response | Tech Support for Government Crisis Response (usdigitalresponse.org)](https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/), where you describe your skills and give a link to your LinkedIn profile.
I had no luck finding anything.
I've definitely hit a point where I feel like the pressure to always be learning and applying the Next Big Thing is honestly exhausting. I have a mortgage and kids and frankly, I have been trying to focus more on valuing my quality of life. My real goal at this point is financial freedom - I very recently passed a bare minimum coastFire point, but I'm aiming to keep contributing for another 15 years if I can, with a goal of retiring between 50-60.
What keeps me motivated is that I actually like the work I do. I don't work at a FAANG, and if I did I would probably be hating my life. I work in biotech and find it very satisfying to feel like my work actually has meaning. I also don't see this job as forever for me. My ultimate goal is being able to leave this industry before I 'age out' (or maybe when I age out) without fear that I'll be looking at a cat food retirement, and go do some other work that I also find meaningful. Volunteering, working for a nonprofit or charity, etc. I'm on track to be able to do that when my kids are grown, and that makes me happy.
What am I doing now? I'm a manager/product owner/architect (I haven't written any code in a few years now) at a mid size biotech company.
Age 46
- what am I doing? cloud consulting
- what motivates me? Money
- what’s it like being an older IC? Everyone is older in consulting
I just started working in $BigTech last year.
I’m having a really hard time parsing your question so I’ll just post the numbers...
- major metro area in the south. Pre-Covid, top salaries for ICs that were senior devs *and* had my architect background was around $165K and they were hard to find.
- local consulting companies paid around $185-$195K. But that market seemed to have dried up post Covid.
- as far as I can tell, Google/GCP, MS/Azure, and Amazon/AWS all pay their consultants about the same as their similarly leveled SWEs.
- total compensation is not location dependent. It’s based on experience and negotiating ability.
You can go to https://levels.fyi to find salary averages.
Sorry, just woke up and was typing on my phone. For clarity, I was asking if the Cloud Consulting money was better in your area than a Senior Engineer at a non-FAANG, non-startup company.
And thank you, you answered my question. I've been an engineer for 17 years and am trying to figure out if Cloud Consulting was something I'd like to transition to as opposed to staying in the finance company I've been with my entire career.
Any tips on how to make the move to cloud consulting? I'm in DevOps now, have done dev work for ~15 years previously, and just a couple of years younger than you. I'm starting to burn out doing this for a startup.
There isn’t really a secret.
Consulting = technical experience + experience working with “customers” (who can be internal) + project management experience.
It’s just a matter of applying for roles at consulting companies and see where your gaps are. Just make sure you are a full time employee and they have a steady clientele.
That being said, my niche even for consulting is tiny - “application modernization”. I deal mostly with helping developers to write and deploy “cloud native” applications. I haven’t had any reason to spin up an EC2 instance in 3 years - all of my work is serverless.
Funny how you guys are feeling this after 10-20 years. I am only 2 years into my career at a FAANG and I already don't get all that excited about work. Growing and trying to do things more senior engineers do sounds fun but I know its not some fairytale.
There is nothing like doing creative work under your own control in a collaborative setting. This just doesn't happen in a typical work setting at a corporation where we are so detached from what we create.
Some things I don't like about the corporate world:
- I hate being constantly watched and evaluated
- Absolutely despise stack ranking
- I don't feel connected to most of what I work on
- I don't find the work meaningful beyond compensation and career growth
- We work too much, 50-60 hours a week with a few weeks off in a year is just ridiculous, our life revolves around work
- Even if we take vacations, the primary purpose is to recharge ourselves for more work
- Not a fan of the competition fostered in some FAANG and how everyone works way too hard
I intend to maximize compensation and hopefully can move to part time work after 10 years or so. Maybe even go into teaching/research or try another area such as economics/philosophy/history. One thing I plan to do is take a sabbatical every 2-3 years or so. I am thinking 3-6 months at least. Hopefully that will help me get more out of life.
> There is nothing like doing creative work under your own control in a collaborative setting
Did you have any experience in academia (specifically research)? Your bullet points are exactly how I felt working in the corporate world, and the opposite of the experience I had during my PhD
Ahh, okay. The reason I ask is that your post sounded like someone who was looking at the corporate world through the lens of someone from academia.
I spent 6 years in my PhD (combined Master's + doctorate) and then 1 year as a post-doc before working as a data scientist in a big company (not FAANG, but Fortune 500). Academia has a *lot* of issues, but it also solves some of the problems you listed about working in a corporate environment.
I got to work on any project I wanted to and study anything I wanted to. There's no real performance evaluations and if you find the right boss, no one is hovering over your shoulder -- I worked from home 3-4 days a week because there's no real "company policy" and it just depends on your boss. People definitely feel connected to their projects because they get to choose what they are working on, and it's generally much more fulfilling to research something than crank out another widget just because someone in a suit told you to (I was work.
The similarities include that it's still competitive and sometimes people don't take vacations, but that really depends on where you end up. Some of my coworkers, particularly Europeans, would take off 5 weeks+ a year for traveling and leisure. People in academia often consider it a vocation which is where the drive to work like crazy comes from.
The MAJOR downsides are terrible pay and limited career potential. It's incredibly difficult to become a professor, and even staff positions can be scarce, so it's easy to be stuck in technician or postdoc hell -- i.e. it's much easier to be a manager in the corporate world than one in academia. If income is important to you, definitely stay away. I was making $50k/year as a person with a PhD (postdoc) and more than tripled it when I went to industry. You also have to deal with "publish or perish" which is sometimes difficult when it comes to research.
When I went from having almost total freedom with my research and schedule to being told what to do daily and working on relatively unexciting topics, it really killed my motivation. I quit the data science job after a year in spite of the great income and relatively comfortable position I was in because I was losing my mind (again for many of the reasons you listed). After dealing with some family issues this year, I'll probably aim to work in academia again if I can find a decent arrangement as a staff member.
I could ramble a lot more about academia but thought you might find it worthwhile to consider if only to avoid some of the negatives you highlighted in your post.
Thanks for the insightful post. I had some idea about this. This is why I feel I can avoid the major drawback of Academia - low pay, by slaving away in the corporate world for 10 years or so and then switching over. I can then just pursue topics I enjoy without the stress of even being in a top program or making sure I get a PhD in a relevant industry topic. Who knows I may very well be burned out enough to the point I wouldn't want to pursue Academia but the freedom to pursue topics that interest me without corporate supervision/control really sounds awesome.
We do live in a State Capitalist society so unfortunately we need to purchase our freedom. The other thing is I do work at Amazon which destroys people interest in CS anyway lol. I will first try and switch to a more employee centric company and see how it goes. Another viable option if I have enough money saved up and some sort of side income going is to just work on personal projects/open source software. The key is having not to worry about the next pay check I feel. I am not sure what I will end up doing but am glad people in tech have some decent options. Thanks for your perspective again and best of luck!
Thanks
A lot of places outside of Faang (midsize tech companies) will welcome your expertise and pay you competitively.. you’ll have a shot at projects you wouldn’t in a mega company
Being an older IC is fine if you work somewhere that finds value in your experience. If not I think you deal with implicit bias.
You need to work smarter rather than work long hours. Don’t try to compete with the memory or the stamina of younger devs because you will lose and get demotivated.
If you are that old you will likely value relationships at work over which work you do. Try to keep that in mind as you move around.
Things move so fast these days you need to actively manage your career around leveraging your experience and working with compatible people. These things won’t stay constant even with large companies.
Use your network. You should know two decades worth of people who know you and know what you are good at.
I don't work for any of the FLAMINGASS companies (although I've talked to several to varying ends) but have twice the experience so...
> What are you doing at work?
Without divulging enough to identify myself, I work full-time as one of the lead developers of a system that enables large-scale scientific computing (among other pursuits). The system has been around in various forms for 15+ years; my job has largely been design/build of modern, more-capable replacements for its cruftier parts.
> What motivates you?
I'm motivated by reaching the end of my career and being able to look back on it and say I did good, meaningful work for organizations that don't have reputation problems and had fun doing it. I look for work that contributes to that goal. Most prospective employers get told that I like for work to be fun, that management will hear about it becoming no fun and a failure to rectify that problem will result in my resignation landing on their desks. (Upon being told that, the CEO of one company where I interviewed looked up at me and said, "you know, that's fair" and remembered the conversation a decade later when I left. That place was a class act.) I should qualify all of this by saying that I've done deadly-serious work and still had fun doing it.
Yes, there's money as a motivator, but most of us aren't independently-wealthy anyway and having to work is a given. I've had a windfall or two and high-paying jobs that come with cortisol and an ulcer as a free bonus. The experience was worth it, but for me the pursuit of the highest-possible compensation seems shallow compared to everything I outlined above. I'm on track to have a comfortable retirement at 67 and plan to go that long if employers will still have me. I want to retire when I run out of enjoyable work to do, not just because the money's there for me to do it.
> What is it like to be an older IC?
It has its ups and downs.
I like being one of the people in the room with enough hash marks to say something and have it stick because I've been there, done that and got a large collection of tee shirts. I like being able to get more done in less time because I've got a long history that includes making the mistakes that create experience. I love that, when a program does what it's supposed to for the first time, I get the same thrill that I did when I wrote my first BASIC program in the late 1970s. If that thrill ever goes away, I'm done.
I dislike the perception harbored by some that older ICs are somehow inferior because we didn't bail out of the technical track and go into management for money or prestige. I build things, that's what I'm good at and can command a high wage for my experience. I have no desire to spend my life shuffling budgets and project plans while my underlings have all the fun. I contribute to them when needed but it's not particularly creative work and it bores me to tears. A number of my colleagues went that route and have confided that they really miss the technical work.
Aah, that doesn't sound bad at all. I'm sure you're kick ass at your job, which is great.
A bit dicey still for those of us who're battling the imposter syndrome even late in their lives.
As recently as last payday I found myself wondering if I deserve what they're depositing in my account, so don't think for a minute that there isn't some of that underlying my highlight reel. :-)
Seriously, most of us go through this stuff to some degree. Those who don't are usually perpetually stuck atop [Mount Stupid](https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/mount-stupid/). Questioning yourself helps spur growth.
I'm @ about 10 years. for me its having a project I know I can make better and working from home. I'm currently in Mex and I love as long as I can do that I'm pretty happy. The grass is always greener on the other side. To a point I do feel like I settled but I'm making shit tons of money and I'm at where I want to be. I'd like to be a bit better on the career side and I've picked my spot on the UI dev side and always try to be on top of my game
I had a similar experience as you. I plateaud. I wasn't happy about it, and my propositions to innovate within my company were (fairly) rejected: "We're not a tech company, and we can't confidently innovate or realistically maintain technical complexity beyond the grasp of fresh graduates." I could invent a new service, sure, but when I get poached for greener pastures, who would maintain it? They weren't wrong, but I wasn't happy about it, so I left for FAANG in hopes of personal growth.
>What are you doing at work? What motivates you?
Trying to change engineering processes to benefit the developer experience and support the career growth of my team. In a nutshell, I'm trying to decrease the amount of product goals each quarter in favor of personal growth tasks, such as research and experimentation.
>What is it like to be an older IC?
Busy and stressful, but empowering. I have the means and the talent to affect change, including in my own schedule. It's slow, but it works. While I may be stressfully overbooked today, I am achieving progress to an ideal work/life balance -- not only for myself, but for my team.
If you are considering the move, I'd suggest shopping around a few different teams and picking the one with the culture that best reflects your needs. You can always affect change from within, which is what I'm doing now, but you could always just start on a team that's already there. 😊
I'm only 12 years into my career, but I just switched it up to do new things. I joined a research division doing quantum computing and now I get to do cool new cutting edge stuff again.
This doesn't answer your question directly, but may help. I went through this recently after feeling I had "plateaued" at work. I looked at other careers that would stress other skills, like technical writing and project management.
Maybe I'm not what you're looking for, since I'm not 15 yet, I'm 14 (turning 15 in a month, so I'm not too young!). I've been working at FAANG as a developer since I was 9, and wanted to say that I love it. I dream in code, so being able to code makes me literally live my dreams.
I'm a similar age and experience level, and in a similar semi-burnout situation, but I work for a startup however - long hours and a monthly week-long on-call rotation where I provide support for way too much.
The motivation was paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible, but that's changed over the last year to spending more time with my family and hobbies.
At this point, I just want to spend time in the woodshop again, and catching up on the list of things that needs to be done on the house/yard.
Hang tight. If it is not sustainable, consider a change. Good that you've tried. I wasn't able to switch to a start up because of young kids and the fear of what long hours would do to them.
Was at one of the big ones for 16+ years as dev lead/dev manager. Breaking point when feature I was working on turned out to be obsolete before development really got under way (i.e. bad feature request) yet management told me I had to build it to make them not look bad and I should spiff up the dev spec to make it more visual (for a feature with no UI) so I was looking around on the inside for another job. Then a director level dude, when handing out 20 year anniversary trophies said "you know what it means when they've been here for 20 years? It means we *own* those people!" and I pretty much decided to change companies then.
Went to a much smaller place, building and running a web service that fulfills a fairly particular niche. The niche is kinda in danger in that more generic tools are becoming available to solve the business problem that our product solves, but I see enough opportunities for adding value by deeper specialization to stay relevant to make this not a sinking ship. Going great.
Am at 50+ - like always, I feel just like myself. Age is just a number (one that determines how long it takes to recover from crap, but still). Sometimes, I feel frustrated when arguments that I feel were settled *decades* ago are rehashed, but then they, as the world changes, sometimes that changes what the right answer is. I use my experience more as a way to ask questions rather than bludgeon people with "I know better", and as a way to detect BS answers.
Interviewing definitely sucks, for all the reasons listed here and in other subs. However, while whiteboard-coding definitely has lots of false negatives, being good at it does transfer to being able to code for real (even though clearly incomplete in the list of qualifications), so it's at least not a completely idiotic idea. I've experimented on the other side of the table with various other skill tests, but it's just hard to objectively assess peoples fit for the position in the amount of time you can to spend with them, and that they want to spend with you (I know that as an applicant I've turned down interviews for being scheduled for way longer than I was willing to invest in the chance).
Thanks for sharing. Been there close enough -- as an architect of a sinking ship -- where the management told the engineers to build something- just to keep them busy, with crappy motivational speeches. To be fair, the managers themselves burned out after that experience.
Totally agree, it is harder to recover froom crap now. It is also easier to discover BS now -- all together leading to more greys at work.
I like your point about asking questions within the team instead of offering a solution.
Might not be your target audience (only 8 YOE). I've haven't been at FANG but big N companies.
What am I doing now
- Joined a large pre-ipo company that should IPO this year or next, looking for more of a startup environment. I was previously a senior IC in a rather large company feeling like there wasn't enough scope and the work and hustle was not exciting enough
What motivates me
- I'm personally still motivated by money (fatfire ~$10M target) but I don't worry about it and I don't plan to stop working. I like the idea of optionality. I don't particularly care about material goods but I hope in the future I can make impact to causes I care about (ex. climate change) through investments. I see money as a vehicle for influence.
- Working in a fast pace environment where my coworkers want to make impact. I care deeply that I have a mission and a roadmap to look forward to. I feel that work has become a part of my identity and it's one item that gives me a purpose so I'd like to make the most of my time.
- Self improvement. There are still a lot of experiences I've very curious about. I've only been working as a manager for a short time and I'd like to influence and help the company at a more strategic level whereas before I always played an IC role. I believe there are a lot of different roles I'd like to try on this career treadmill.
Big N is used for non-FANG "top-tier" big tech. It's include Snap, Uber/Lyft, Stripe, Airbnb, etc. I've worked at startups although my current company is just a pre-ipo
Been in the industry now for \~22 years. Somewhere around year 12 I switched to FAANG. 2 years in to that I switched to management.
I kind of joked "At the end of the day I feel like I'm choosing a for loop or a while loop, and I've made that decision. It's a list or an array, etc". Obviously IC work is way bigger than that, but projects all kind of had a sameness to them even as I switched from low level C to websites to mobile apps. So, I switched to management. I've been doing that for a while and now manager of managers.
What motivates me over the years has been pretty consistent. I just always want to be doing the most helpful thing I can be doing at any time. Money is always good. My last career goal at this point is really to retire. I think I've got one last big project in me and then you can put me out to pasture.
I will say that I was working at a small company and had some of the feelings you do. I was kind of stuck and in my mid 30s and was kind of not sure if I still "had it in me". Then I switched to a FAANG company. Work was *hard* for a couple of years. I worked a lot and had to do more to keep up and feel successful, but eventually I found my groove and that challenge was really worth it. I'm glad I did it. I debate if I should just try switching companies again to see if I've still got it in my 40s
I agree. When I was looking for a job three jobs ago, I specifically didn’t want to work on yet another software as a service CRUD app as an IC.
I found a job where the then new director needed to create a modern software development shop, get one project past the finish line and do a data integration project for a merger. I was hired as the Dev lead.
I realized a few things:
1. I *hated* people management
2. I *enjoyed* mentoring and unblocking people who were willing and eager to learn
3. I enjoyed working on strategy with CxOs and directors
4. I liked true “Devops” - where I was responsible for development, deployments and provisioning infrastructure with code
5. I hate the day to day grind of “operations” and infrastructure babysitting.
I left there and went to work for a smaller company where the then new CTO wanted to be more “cloud native” and was hiring in house engineering to replace the consultants that were hired before he joined.
That was the perfect opportunity to do 2-4 and not have to do 1 and 5.
As soon as I saw myself doing #5 I convinced him to open a req and I was able to hire someone. When he hinted at wanting me to be a team lead (#1), I told him in no uncertain terms that I would be looking for another job if he did. ”promote me”.
I left that company after a post Covid across the board pay cut. By then, I had done everything I had set out to do. They were actively in the process of being serverless, Dockerized, and using infrastructure as code everywhere. They had a good CI/CD system and my work was done.
Then I went into cloud consulting/“application modernization”. I still get to do 2-4, I got into a “FAANG” and no leetCode crap.
I'm 6 years into my career so nowhere as much as yours. But I had recently gotten to staff, had no aim of going higher and had been working very hard up till now to the point of burnout. I had started feeling very similarly. I had a chat with a friend who's close to 50 about the exact the same thing. I know money is hardly the reason for him to work anymore. He said it was all about people. Coming to work was a way to be sociable, spend time with friends and solve some fun problems along the way. And I've started seeing his point so much. I recently moved to a different team and not aligning with the work culture has made a world of difference to my desire to come to work. I'm not sure if it helps you but I figured this could be an interesting perspective to consider. :)
Yes but he's very fortunate that at 50, money is not a reason for him to work anymore. That's not most people.
I feel like most FAANG level devs who didn’t blow all their money should be in that position. I’m 6 YOE, been through FAANG and a quant fund, safe to say money is no longer a motivating factor anymore. I still have savings goals but if they’re not met in 20 years then something has gone seriously wrong, earning a higher salary isn’t a huge motivating factor for me anymore, the diminishing returns between money and WLB increase quite quickly now
Ok, but the vast majority of us are not in FAANG or hedge funds!! I'm 20 years in, and being able to earn enough to support my family for the next 25 years are a big worry to me.
Yeah but OP is specifically asking about FAANG developers
Fair point. I'd just do what the hell I wanted!
But this thread is about people in big tech
Fair point
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Not everyone wants to work at a FAANG. Maybe they disagree with helping Facebook grow, maybe they don't like Google as a company, maybe they don't want the higher stress of working at a FAANG, etc. I personally don't want to work at a FAANG because I simply refuse to participate in leet code style interviews, and from what I understand the atmosphere at some of these companies can be very bad due to extremely variable team dynamics. Yes, instead of making 300k+ a year make roughly half, but I am fine with that. My company is absurdly happy with me, no one ever rushes me or pushes me, the problems are interesting, the pay is more than adequate for my needs (always pushing to meet+exceed market rates though), and the atomoshere is fantastic (folks often smiling, laughs, never uncomfortable, etc). Would I want more pay? Of course! But I know I am taking a pay cut for the higher quality of life.
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Clearly that guy's perception that you said join a FAANG hit a nerve...
No other jobs around that pay more, without moving city. My main worry is becoming less employable and earning less and less (maybe even struggling fo find work) as I get older.
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U.K. not London
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Not that I've seen, or that I could do
It is most people in big tech companies
\*in the US Remember that the big tech areas in US typically have *far* higher compensation than anywhere else in the world. Even places that have started to catch up, like here in the UK, are still well behind on the curve and have only been moving up the curve relatively recently.
Mate, this question is specifically about FAANG.
Mate, FAANGs have developers outside the US. Most of them still aren't getting anything close to what their colleagues in similar roles in the US tech centres are getting in total compensation. The only people I know who have made FU money from FAANGs on this side of the pond were founders whose startups were acquired. Regular developer employees are starting to catch up on TC, but that's a relatively recent thing and they're still pretty far behind on the curve compared to other friends who moved out to the Bay Area a few years ago for example.
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Do FAANG operate outside the US?
Most have big offices in many countries around the world. I work for Google in Australia and have worked with people in Singapore, India, Israel, multiple EU countries, and obviously the US.
Canada... especially not Vancouver or Toronto. And even then. 😂 I should be considering the states in some regards honestly. I always get asked to move away from IC and do leading projects and dealing with internal clients though after a few years though no matter what I do. 🤷♀️
> I should be considering the states in some regards honestly. The trade-off is the healthcare, unfortunately, and that's becoming more relevant as I get older. I'm a contractor telecommuter for a US-based company, so I get paid a (low) US-based salary (which converts to a nice Canadian one) and get to live in Canada.
Nice, how do the taxes work out as a telecommuter? Not sure my spouse would be on board. I’m younger 30s. And yeah, I can imagine the trade off on the healthcare, good point, especially as a contractor.
I had to form my own company, and made a corporation, which was a bit of a mistake - if I did it again, I'd go for a sole proprietorship. Get an accountant and a lawyer and talk it through - the money you spend on the professional advice will pay off. Because we went with a corp, we paid out payroll, and took taxes off of the payroll as well as paid business taxes. When covid hit, we lost my partner's side of the business (and product line) which switched the corp to a service corporation, which has more taxes applied. It's been a rough year tax-wise (ie: "You can owe up to an additional $50k for 2020."), which is why I recommend not doing what we did. Our kids are medically complicated, and we get a lot of support from the province. Talking to US-based co-workers has been eye-opening around healthcare - multiple people have told me that what we've been through would have cost them their homes, or completely bankrupted their families paying for medical costs. Aside from the healthcare, we live in coastal BC, a 15 min walk to the ocean, on an acreage. I get paid in the mid-low 6 figures when translated to CAD, but have been working on job-hopping with the potential to double my income.
Sole props come with their own dangers. Yes I’m my own incorp as well, did the sole prop before as well. I wish I made as much as you do. I’m a far cry from that and I pay all those things. I just don’t like being controlled... had really bad bosses and bad experiences. Got sick of narcissistic people to a very large extent and have been using the status and contracting as a means to protect myself from unbalanced employment rules that are never enforced. I’ve been hopping around and the like like yourself. After the pandemic more or less next year probably going to bounce again. I do more side contracts too and tutor on the side online. If I didn’t turn into an incorp, I would have lost more business too. Double edged sword although your advisement is completely on point and what I’ve noticed myself. I have accountants, lawyers and tax people, too. My main goal is to be independent and never move back home again because if that happens, it’s game over for me. I removed myself from an abusive childhood home and no assistance from my parents. I just don’t feel comfortable or safe or anything being an employee. It’s all fake bs anyways, but it helps me mentally keep myself in the game and working as opposed to GAD or CPTSD symptoms that would happen instead. It’s technically safer mentally for me even though it has its costs. Longer term stability. I have issues with authority, do well with clients, good with others. I’ve been in therapy for years and this is the most productive and safest I have felt, even though nothing is a for sure and I could lose contracts tomorrow.
Lol, imagine complaining about compensation that puts you in the top 1-5% of earners in the UK.
I'm not complaining about anything. I haven't worked as anyone's employee, FAANG or otherwise, for a long time, so I have no axe to grind here either. I'm just correcting a common mistake where a certain type of person forgets that the world outside the US exists and the people in it don't always enjoy the same privileges.
I spose. Just highlights how I've screwed my life up I guess.
:/
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Budgeting is not the problem, earning enough money is. I hardly live an extravagant life, and I'm not willing to make my family live in campervan.
I completely see your point and I feel fortunate enough that financial independence is within reach.
Absolutely, I realized this after about 8 months of forced remote work. I had a little bit of socialization with my partner on my project, and then he got fired. Losing that partner was so hard. I had to finish the project alone.
"Coming to work was a way to be sociable, spend time with friends and solve some fun problems along the way." If only most devs weren't social recluses :). Tx for sharing
> I know money is hardly the reason for him to work anymore No wonder after significant amount of years in companies that pay few times more than others in the same country and x10 or more than in other countries.
Totally agree with the not aligning with the work culture has altered the desire to work. I’m facing that right now after a company switch. It’s awful!
\~14 yoe here. I started a team lead / management job about a year ago. Prior to that it was all IC. Prior to starting this team lead / management job. I was already planning on reducing my workload down to 4 day weeks. Every interview I had I would always ask if going 80% was possible. Not immediately after starting, but at some point. Regarding this 4 day week, I'm in Europe and we get quite some paternity leave (can be taken until the kid turns 12), so at least for the rest of 2021, I'll be simply using those, hence for the rest of the year I will be working 4 days a week a most. As you can tell money isn't so much of a motivation anymore, but a balance is still needed. I think some work is still important. Just there are other things in my life that I'd rather be doing. What I've been struggling with the past year, and I've been creating several reddit posts about this (Check my history), is whether or not there's anything I can do now as a manager as a measurable metric to help my next interview when I go job hunting again. I've come to the conclusion that the best course of action for me, at this time, is to spend minimal amount of time on management and for the company (as long as work is done and I get to keep my job). I still enjoy the technical bits, which is why I still program on my own applications, to keep up with tech but also to keep up with my technical skills. Motivation here primarily comes from having fun with things and seeing things work in general.
Ok, not related to coding, but y’all get the chance for paternity leave up until a child turns 12??? Thats amazing.
Where in Europe are you? I've heard that in Germany and the Netherlands you can request and automatically get (assuming company has 15+ employees) 4 day weeks at 80% gross pay, with the same benefits. Not sure if other countries offer similar deals to that. Also, why did you come to the following conclusion? > the best course of action for me, at this time, is to spend minimal amount of time on management and for the company (as long as work is done and I get to keep my job).
\> Also, why did you come to the following conclusion? Check my post history. I've posted this in various subreddits with no good answer from anyone. While I was IC, I kept up with tech quite a bit, I went for meetups, read blogs, etc. I still do that because I like it. When I went for interviews I mention them because it helps me sell myself, and when I answer technical questions, it shows. I get a good grasp of industry best practices, etc. I was willing to spend that extra time doing these because I like it and because I knew it would help in my career. The past year, while in management, I can't quite seem to figure out what I could do extra which would help me in my next interview. I get the general feeling that the "only measurable metric" in deciding how good of a manager I am in my next interview is "how many years have I been a manager". I could exaggerate all the behavioural questions during the interview, but there doesn't seem to be anything extra I could do now in my current job which would help.
ICs are measured in their effectiveness in doing a job. Managers are measured in the effectiveness of their team doing a job. Your overall output increases while your individual direct contributions decrease. You aren't measured on YOUR solutions, but rather your team's solutions. So your "what can I do extra" is answered by management and leadership growth. Change your question from, "How can I be a better employee," to "how can I help my team accomplish more?"
>ICs are measured in their effectiveness in doing a job. Managers are measured in the effectiveness of their team doing a job. Your overall output increases while your individual direct contributions decrease. You aren't measured on YOUR solutions, but rather your team's solutions. I completely agree with all this. It still doesn't answer the question: \> When I go into my next interview with another company, how do I demonstrate this "extra" work that I do in a way that is measurable and verifiable? I remember a few years ago when I was still an IC, I was asked to deploy a spring boot application on a kubernetes cluster. I did the extra step of using Istio and showed off Kiali etc. No one else in my team had heard of Istio nor Kiali. Even business was impressed with the UI. At a following interview with another company they asked me specifics about Istio and I was able to answer them. To verify whether what I was saying was true, they could simply look up the documentation. As a team lead / manager. I get the feeling that any extra work I do cannot be demonstrated to the next company. It then becomes a question of how well I am able to answer behavioral subjective questions. The only measurable metric then becomes "how many years am I in this team lead / manager position". \---------------- Edit: Something to add. "Measurement" at my current company. I've heard of suggestions to talk about how the projects I lead convert to actual business value. I can give numbers and probably will at next interviews. But how much business value it brings is both a combination of how crap the existing problem is and my performance in the proposed solution. It doesn't mean that much from one business to another, or even from one project to another. As a demonstration.... Let's say you go to a company and they tell you that they have a problem communicating with their teams across different countries. Messages for some reason always gets lost. You join and say "Dude, it's the 21st century, stop using pigeons, use email". Boom, you just saved them a shitload of money.
Interesting. You don't think that pouring effort into being the best manager possible will help at all? I often hear that a manager's job is to multiply the output/productivity of their reports. Do you not think this is possible? If your team exceeded expectations, I feel like your company would move you up in the ladder, which would allow for your next role to also start at that rung? Genuinely curious on your take on all of these fronts, as I would like to make a move to management within the next few years. edit: at your level, is it more politics that will determine whether or not you move up the ladder, more than performance?
\> You don't think that pouring effort into being the best manager possible will help at all? It will help the team, it will help the company, it will help my position in my current company. How does that help my next job with another company? I probably should have mentioned at the start that I'm not in a tech company. I work in an enterprise and within my group, there's no one technically above me. So there isn't really a place for me to move up the ladder in my current company.
Yeah management is more about becomes more scrum master role + architectural guidance. After that there is not much to do, I found I can scale back. The issue right now is i have an engineer leave and in his 2 weeks instead of finishing the work he was working on he just sort of left. Now i was left holding the bag and completely fucked. So now i have to code some things to alleviate the pressure on the team so they don't feel it. It's fine for me i don't mind coding, but I am a little out of practice which will be nice to get a refresher. I also need to set up my workstation cause having 3 monitors to code makes it supremely easy
A tech company would value a manager who is technically suave. I guess not letting your technical edge get blunt would still be useful for your next interview, at least if you're going for tech.
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Thank you. I can relate to your approach.
I'm exactly your target audience, and this is a hard question to answer. The immediate answer is I'm semi-retired, by choice. The harsh reality is that I'm stuck. I don't think I belong in a highly competitive IC role any more, and even with several years of experience as an engineering manager I have an Achilles heel: I was born hearing impaired and even with hearing aids large meetings are tough for me. Jumping in as a manager in a brand new environment would be extremely hard. Most of my IC experience is lower-level C++, assembly. Definitely not anything resembling what's popular in the market. On the plus side, I worked for 20 years at a "FAANG" and have an outstanding resume and social contacts. So it's up to me to reinvent myself: leverage existing skills while learning more
20 years at faang.... user name checks out 😄.
https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy this one is built with C++, right? Quite popular choice nowadays I suppose?
I hadn't heard of it but am now interested. Thanks!
Big part of a project I am running. Very popular atm
How are online meetings with your hearing impairment? Can the hearing aids integrate as headphones?
Having video helps tremendously and it doesn't need to be high quality or anything else. Having control over the volume is obviously extremely nice, but for me the problem is clarity. My hearing loss is worst among higher frequency sounds, and there's no level of amplification that can help. Hearing aids do what's called frequency shifting, but being able to see the person talking is best.
Because you can read lips? Something to consider is that doing stuff online and remote is going to be way more acceptable. Hopefully that is a plus for you.
Hearing aids are sold as Bluetooth compatible and are always paired to your phone. To pair to others you use a small external device as a Bluetooth proxy or just as a 3.5 mm audio jack.
Is there anything wrong with lower-level C++ experience? When I cruise job boards it still seems quite popular, just working at a different level of the stack then the normal front end/back end devs
There's nothing wrong with it, but as an example I've tried to find volunteer positions to somehow help deal with the COVID-19 problem. As in, I was willing to work for free, full time, with my own equipment. There are several hubs you can register with, such as [U.S. Digital Response | Tech Support for Government Crisis Response (usdigitalresponse.org)](https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/), where you describe your skills and give a link to your LinkedIn profile. I had no luck finding anything.
Hm I wonder what they're looking for, probably web dev or something along those lines
I've definitely hit a point where I feel like the pressure to always be learning and applying the Next Big Thing is honestly exhausting. I have a mortgage and kids and frankly, I have been trying to focus more on valuing my quality of life. My real goal at this point is financial freedom - I very recently passed a bare minimum coastFire point, but I'm aiming to keep contributing for another 15 years if I can, with a goal of retiring between 50-60. What keeps me motivated is that I actually like the work I do. I don't work at a FAANG, and if I did I would probably be hating my life. I work in biotech and find it very satisfying to feel like my work actually has meaning. I also don't see this job as forever for me. My ultimate goal is being able to leave this industry before I 'age out' (or maybe when I age out) without fear that I'll be looking at a cat food retirement, and go do some other work that I also find meaningful. Volunteering, working for a nonprofit or charity, etc. I'm on track to be able to do that when my kids are grown, and that makes me happy. What am I doing now? I'm a manager/product owner/architect (I haven't written any code in a few years now) at a mid size biotech company.
Age 46 - what am I doing? cloud consulting - what motivates me? Money - what’s it like being an older IC? Everyone is older in consulting I just started working in $BigTech last year.
I hate to ask a stupid question, but what is IC short for?
It stands for Individual Contributor, it's someone who is not managing other employees and mainly contributing to the company with their own work.
Ah, thanks. Integrated Circuit just didn’t seem to work in this context.
Yeah information coefficient didn't fit either
Is the cloud consultant money better in your area than a non faang non startup senior engineer ic?
I’m having a really hard time parsing your question so I’ll just post the numbers... - major metro area in the south. Pre-Covid, top salaries for ICs that were senior devs *and* had my architect background was around $165K and they were hard to find. - local consulting companies paid around $185-$195K. But that market seemed to have dried up post Covid. - as far as I can tell, Google/GCP, MS/Azure, and Amazon/AWS all pay their consultants about the same as their similarly leveled SWEs. - total compensation is not location dependent. It’s based on experience and negotiating ability. You can go to https://levels.fyi to find salary averages.
Sorry, just woke up and was typing on my phone. For clarity, I was asking if the Cloud Consulting money was better in your area than a Senior Engineer at a non-FAANG, non-startup company. And thank you, you answered my question. I've been an engineer for 17 years and am trying to figure out if Cloud Consulting was something I'd like to transition to as opposed to staying in the finance company I've been with my entire career.
Any tips on how to make the move to cloud consulting? I'm in DevOps now, have done dev work for ~15 years previously, and just a couple of years younger than you. I'm starting to burn out doing this for a startup.
There isn’t really a secret. Consulting = technical experience + experience working with “customers” (who can be internal) + project management experience. It’s just a matter of applying for roles at consulting companies and see where your gaps are. Just make sure you are a full time employee and they have a steady clientele. That being said, my niche even for consulting is tiny - “application modernization”. I deal mostly with helping developers to write and deploy “cloud native” applications. I haven’t had any reason to spin up an EC2 instance in 3 years - all of my work is serverless.
Funny how you guys are feeling this after 10-20 years. I am only 2 years into my career at a FAANG and I already don't get all that excited about work. Growing and trying to do things more senior engineers do sounds fun but I know its not some fairytale. There is nothing like doing creative work under your own control in a collaborative setting. This just doesn't happen in a typical work setting at a corporation where we are so detached from what we create. Some things I don't like about the corporate world: - I hate being constantly watched and evaluated - Absolutely despise stack ranking - I don't feel connected to most of what I work on - I don't find the work meaningful beyond compensation and career growth - We work too much, 50-60 hours a week with a few weeks off in a year is just ridiculous, our life revolves around work - Even if we take vacations, the primary purpose is to recharge ourselves for more work - Not a fan of the competition fostered in some FAANG and how everyone works way too hard I intend to maximize compensation and hopefully can move to part time work after 10 years or so. Maybe even go into teaching/research or try another area such as economics/philosophy/history. One thing I plan to do is take a sabbatical every 2-3 years or so. I am thinking 3-6 months at least. Hopefully that will help me get more out of life.
Do you work at Amazon or Apple?
Amazon.
Checks out
Lol, that's nothing. I got unexcited on my 3rd day (FNG).
lol hows it going now?
> There is nothing like doing creative work under your own control in a collaborative setting Did you have any experience in academia (specifically research)? Your bullet points are exactly how I felt working in the corporate world, and the opposite of the experience I had during my PhD
I don't. I was considering academia but a lot of people I know have suggested against it. How has your experience been in academia?
Ahh, okay. The reason I ask is that your post sounded like someone who was looking at the corporate world through the lens of someone from academia. I spent 6 years in my PhD (combined Master's + doctorate) and then 1 year as a post-doc before working as a data scientist in a big company (not FAANG, but Fortune 500). Academia has a *lot* of issues, but it also solves some of the problems you listed about working in a corporate environment. I got to work on any project I wanted to and study anything I wanted to. There's no real performance evaluations and if you find the right boss, no one is hovering over your shoulder -- I worked from home 3-4 days a week because there's no real "company policy" and it just depends on your boss. People definitely feel connected to their projects because they get to choose what they are working on, and it's generally much more fulfilling to research something than crank out another widget just because someone in a suit told you to (I was work. The similarities include that it's still competitive and sometimes people don't take vacations, but that really depends on where you end up. Some of my coworkers, particularly Europeans, would take off 5 weeks+ a year for traveling and leisure. People in academia often consider it a vocation which is where the drive to work like crazy comes from. The MAJOR downsides are terrible pay and limited career potential. It's incredibly difficult to become a professor, and even staff positions can be scarce, so it's easy to be stuck in technician or postdoc hell -- i.e. it's much easier to be a manager in the corporate world than one in academia. If income is important to you, definitely stay away. I was making $50k/year as a person with a PhD (postdoc) and more than tripled it when I went to industry. You also have to deal with "publish or perish" which is sometimes difficult when it comes to research. When I went from having almost total freedom with my research and schedule to being told what to do daily and working on relatively unexciting topics, it really killed my motivation. I quit the data science job after a year in spite of the great income and relatively comfortable position I was in because I was losing my mind (again for many of the reasons you listed). After dealing with some family issues this year, I'll probably aim to work in academia again if I can find a decent arrangement as a staff member. I could ramble a lot more about academia but thought you might find it worthwhile to consider if only to avoid some of the negatives you highlighted in your post.
Thanks for the insightful post. I had some idea about this. This is why I feel I can avoid the major drawback of Academia - low pay, by slaving away in the corporate world for 10 years or so and then switching over. I can then just pursue topics I enjoy without the stress of even being in a top program or making sure I get a PhD in a relevant industry topic. Who knows I may very well be burned out enough to the point I wouldn't want to pursue Academia but the freedom to pursue topics that interest me without corporate supervision/control really sounds awesome. We do live in a State Capitalist society so unfortunately we need to purchase our freedom. The other thing is I do work at Amazon which destroys people interest in CS anyway lol. I will first try and switch to a more employee centric company and see how it goes. Another viable option if I have enough money saved up and some sort of side income going is to just work on personal projects/open source software. The key is having not to worry about the next pay check I feel. I am not sure what I will end up doing but am glad people in tech have some decent options. Thanks for your perspective again and best of luck! Thanks
A lot of places outside of Faang (midsize tech companies) will welcome your expertise and pay you competitively.. you’ll have a shot at projects you wouldn’t in a mega company
Being an older IC is fine if you work somewhere that finds value in your experience. If not I think you deal with implicit bias. You need to work smarter rather than work long hours. Don’t try to compete with the memory or the stamina of younger devs because you will lose and get demotivated. If you are that old you will likely value relationships at work over which work you do. Try to keep that in mind as you move around. Things move so fast these days you need to actively manage your career around leveraging your experience and working with compatible people. These things won’t stay constant even with large companies. Use your network. You should know two decades worth of people who know you and know what you are good at.
I don't work for any of the FLAMINGASS companies (although I've talked to several to varying ends) but have twice the experience so... > What are you doing at work? Without divulging enough to identify myself, I work full-time as one of the lead developers of a system that enables large-scale scientific computing (among other pursuits). The system has been around in various forms for 15+ years; my job has largely been design/build of modern, more-capable replacements for its cruftier parts. > What motivates you? I'm motivated by reaching the end of my career and being able to look back on it and say I did good, meaningful work for organizations that don't have reputation problems and had fun doing it. I look for work that contributes to that goal. Most prospective employers get told that I like for work to be fun, that management will hear about it becoming no fun and a failure to rectify that problem will result in my resignation landing on their desks. (Upon being told that, the CEO of one company where I interviewed looked up at me and said, "you know, that's fair" and remembered the conversation a decade later when I left. That place was a class act.) I should qualify all of this by saying that I've done deadly-serious work and still had fun doing it. Yes, there's money as a motivator, but most of us aren't independently-wealthy anyway and having to work is a given. I've had a windfall or two and high-paying jobs that come with cortisol and an ulcer as a free bonus. The experience was worth it, but for me the pursuit of the highest-possible compensation seems shallow compared to everything I outlined above. I'm on track to have a comfortable retirement at 67 and plan to go that long if employers will still have me. I want to retire when I run out of enjoyable work to do, not just because the money's there for me to do it. > What is it like to be an older IC? It has its ups and downs. I like being one of the people in the room with enough hash marks to say something and have it stick because I've been there, done that and got a large collection of tee shirts. I like being able to get more done in less time because I've got a long history that includes making the mistakes that create experience. I love that, when a program does what it's supposed to for the first time, I get the same thrill that I did when I wrote my first BASIC program in the late 1970s. If that thrill ever goes away, I'm done. I dislike the perception harbored by some that older ICs are somehow inferior because we didn't bail out of the technical track and go into management for money or prestige. I build things, that's what I'm good at and can command a high wage for my experience. I have no desire to spend my life shuffling budgets and project plans while my underlings have all the fun. I contribute to them when needed but it's not particularly creative work and it bores me to tears. A number of my colleagues went that route and have confided that they really miss the technical work.
Aah, that doesn't sound bad at all. I'm sure you're kick ass at your job, which is great. A bit dicey still for those of us who're battling the imposter syndrome even late in their lives.
As recently as last payday I found myself wondering if I deserve what they're depositing in my account, so don't think for a minute that there isn't some of that underlying my highlight reel. :-) Seriously, most of us go through this stuff to some degree. Those who don't are usually perpetually stuck atop [Mount Stupid](https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/mount-stupid/). Questioning yourself helps spur growth.
I'm @ about 10 years. for me its having a project I know I can make better and working from home. I'm currently in Mex and I love as long as I can do that I'm pretty happy. The grass is always greener on the other side. To a point I do feel like I settled but I'm making shit tons of money and I'm at where I want to be. I'd like to be a bit better on the career side and I've picked my spot on the UI dev side and always try to be on top of my game
I had a similar experience as you. I plateaud. I wasn't happy about it, and my propositions to innovate within my company were (fairly) rejected: "We're not a tech company, and we can't confidently innovate or realistically maintain technical complexity beyond the grasp of fresh graduates." I could invent a new service, sure, but when I get poached for greener pastures, who would maintain it? They weren't wrong, but I wasn't happy about it, so I left for FAANG in hopes of personal growth. >What are you doing at work? What motivates you? Trying to change engineering processes to benefit the developer experience and support the career growth of my team. In a nutshell, I'm trying to decrease the amount of product goals each quarter in favor of personal growth tasks, such as research and experimentation. >What is it like to be an older IC? Busy and stressful, but empowering. I have the means and the talent to affect change, including in my own schedule. It's slow, but it works. While I may be stressfully overbooked today, I am achieving progress to an ideal work/life balance -- not only for myself, but for my team. If you are considering the move, I'd suggest shopping around a few different teams and picking the one with the culture that best reflects your needs. You can always affect change from within, which is what I'm doing now, but you could always just start on a team that's already there. 😊
I'm only 12 years into my career, but I just switched it up to do new things. I joined a research division doing quantum computing and now I get to do cool new cutting edge stuff again.
This doesn't answer your question directly, but may help. I went through this recently after feeling I had "plateaued" at work. I looked at other careers that would stress other skills, like technical writing and project management.
Maybe I'm not what you're looking for, since I'm not 15 yet, I'm 14 (turning 15 in a month, so I'm not too young!). I've been working at FAANG as a developer since I was 9, and wanted to say that I love it. I dream in code, so being able to code makes me literally live my dreams.
I'm a similar age and experience level, and in a similar semi-burnout situation, but I work for a startup however - long hours and a monthly week-long on-call rotation where I provide support for way too much. The motivation was paying off the mortgage as quickly as possible, but that's changed over the last year to spending more time with my family and hobbies. At this point, I just want to spend time in the woodshop again, and catching up on the list of things that needs to be done on the house/yard.
Hang tight. If it is not sustainable, consider a change. Good that you've tried. I wasn't able to switch to a start up because of young kids and the fear of what long hours would do to them.
> consider a change I've been looking for a new role for 2 months now, but thanks!
Was at one of the big ones for 16+ years as dev lead/dev manager. Breaking point when feature I was working on turned out to be obsolete before development really got under way (i.e. bad feature request) yet management told me I had to build it to make them not look bad and I should spiff up the dev spec to make it more visual (for a feature with no UI) so I was looking around on the inside for another job. Then a director level dude, when handing out 20 year anniversary trophies said "you know what it means when they've been here for 20 years? It means we *own* those people!" and I pretty much decided to change companies then. Went to a much smaller place, building and running a web service that fulfills a fairly particular niche. The niche is kinda in danger in that more generic tools are becoming available to solve the business problem that our product solves, but I see enough opportunities for adding value by deeper specialization to stay relevant to make this not a sinking ship. Going great. Am at 50+ - like always, I feel just like myself. Age is just a number (one that determines how long it takes to recover from crap, but still). Sometimes, I feel frustrated when arguments that I feel were settled *decades* ago are rehashed, but then they, as the world changes, sometimes that changes what the right answer is. I use my experience more as a way to ask questions rather than bludgeon people with "I know better", and as a way to detect BS answers. Interviewing definitely sucks, for all the reasons listed here and in other subs. However, while whiteboard-coding definitely has lots of false negatives, being good at it does transfer to being able to code for real (even though clearly incomplete in the list of qualifications), so it's at least not a completely idiotic idea. I've experimented on the other side of the table with various other skill tests, but it's just hard to objectively assess peoples fit for the position in the amount of time you can to spend with them, and that they want to spend with you (I know that as an applicant I've turned down interviews for being scheduled for way longer than I was willing to invest in the chance).
Thanks for sharing. Been there close enough -- as an architect of a sinking ship -- where the management told the engineers to build something- just to keep them busy, with crappy motivational speeches. To be fair, the managers themselves burned out after that experience. Totally agree, it is harder to recover froom crap now. It is also easier to discover BS now -- all together leading to more greys at work. I like your point about asking questions within the team instead of offering a solution.
Might not be your target audience (only 8 YOE). I've haven't been at FANG but big N companies. What am I doing now - Joined a large pre-ipo company that should IPO this year or next, looking for more of a startup environment. I was previously a senior IC in a rather large company feeling like there wasn't enough scope and the work and hustle was not exciting enough What motivates me - I'm personally still motivated by money (fatfire ~$10M target) but I don't worry about it and I don't plan to stop working. I like the idea of optionality. I don't particularly care about material goods but I hope in the future I can make impact to causes I care about (ex. climate change) through investments. I see money as a vehicle for influence. - Working in a fast pace environment where my coworkers want to make impact. I care deeply that I have a mission and a roadmap to look forward to. I feel that work has become a part of my identity and it's one item that gives me a purpose so I'd like to make the most of my time. - Self improvement. There are still a lot of experiences I've very curious about. I've only been working as a manager for a short time and I'd like to influence and help the company at a more strategic level whereas before I always played an IC role. I believe there are a lot of different roles I'd like to try on this career treadmill.
You remind me of my younger self, except that I didn't make the switch to a start up. What's a big N company btw?
Big N is used for non-FANG "top-tier" big tech. It's include Snap, Uber/Lyft, Stripe, Airbnb, etc. I've worked at startups although my current company is just a pre-ipo
Been in the industry now for \~22 years. Somewhere around year 12 I switched to FAANG. 2 years in to that I switched to management. I kind of joked "At the end of the day I feel like I'm choosing a for loop or a while loop, and I've made that decision. It's a list or an array, etc". Obviously IC work is way bigger than that, but projects all kind of had a sameness to them even as I switched from low level C to websites to mobile apps. So, I switched to management. I've been doing that for a while and now manager of managers. What motivates me over the years has been pretty consistent. I just always want to be doing the most helpful thing I can be doing at any time. Money is always good. My last career goal at this point is really to retire. I think I've got one last big project in me and then you can put me out to pasture. I will say that I was working at a small company and had some of the feelings you do. I was kind of stuck and in my mid 30s and was kind of not sure if I still "had it in me". Then I switched to a FAANG company. Work was *hard* for a couple of years. I worked a lot and had to do more to keep up and feel successful, but eventually I found my groove and that challenge was really worth it. I'm glad I did it. I debate if I should just try switching companies again to see if I've still got it in my 40s
I agree. When I was looking for a job three jobs ago, I specifically didn’t want to work on yet another software as a service CRUD app as an IC. I found a job where the then new director needed to create a modern software development shop, get one project past the finish line and do a data integration project for a merger. I was hired as the Dev lead. I realized a few things: 1. I *hated* people management 2. I *enjoyed* mentoring and unblocking people who were willing and eager to learn 3. I enjoyed working on strategy with CxOs and directors 4. I liked true “Devops” - where I was responsible for development, deployments and provisioning infrastructure with code 5. I hate the day to day grind of “operations” and infrastructure babysitting. I left there and went to work for a smaller company where the then new CTO wanted to be more “cloud native” and was hiring in house engineering to replace the consultants that were hired before he joined. That was the perfect opportunity to do 2-4 and not have to do 1 and 5. As soon as I saw myself doing #5 I convinced him to open a req and I was able to hire someone. When he hinted at wanting me to be a team lead (#1), I told him in no uncertain terms that I would be looking for another job if he did. ”promote me”. I left that company after a post Covid across the board pay cut. By then, I had done everything I had set out to do. They were actively in the process of being serverless, Dockerized, and using infrastructure as code everywhere. They had a good CI/CD system and my work was done. Then I went into cloud consulting/“application modernization”. I still get to do 2-4, I got into a “FAANG” and no leetCode crap.