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tech be like: hiring a staff engineer: one req, six hours of interviews promoting to staff: a ten page promo doc requiring months of effort, feedback from dozens of colleagues, and approval by six layers of management … and then we wonder why the average tenure is so short. 46 comments
    @kevin I think it is unintentionally designed, created a specific way but lacking recognition of the broken system you have created. @april Every company big enough to have titles should have a clear and specific path of what you need to do to ascend the hierarchy. I have often felt that I had no obvious path for growth when working for other people, and even if I stayed at the company, it was really discouraging to think that I'm probably just going to stay at this level forever unless I quit. @april especially gross at mid sized companies where there's like five people involved but they just have to take it seriously so they're hell bent on using some FAANG process they read a blog about once like just promote them and throw a party already, it would be cheaper than all these meetings  @april I'm literally been dealing with my staff promo for years, I finally got it. But between management changes, promo panels, a giant doc that makes me look like the second coming of all that is holy programming, and tons of waiting, it finally happened, just as the economy is shit and I am getting peanuts for a compensation raise. I'm just thankful I have a decent job though Also: Them: “you need to do all this promo package work.” Me: “no problem. Who is guiding me through this so I know what you’re expecting?” Them: “hah! Get bent. If you were staff+, you’d already understand how to get through this.” Me: “…”  @darkuncle @april cool. If it wasn't a felony I'd consider offering a bounty for a copy of that wiki on an M-DISC...  @april , sometimes looks more easier to change the position / place or even the whole area. Sad but true. @april @JenWojcik hiring a senior engineer: one req, six hours of interviews or more with a takehome. And we wonder why there’s a problem with engineer hiring  When I was an executive engineering recruiter / headhunter, sometimes the interviews for my candidates would go on for weeks. I did my best to make my clients compress the time as much as possible, but you get one hiring manager throw a wrench... Maddening. HR at big tech, however, were the absolute worst. I mostly did end runs around them as much as possible. They HATED me. Lol. @karlkatzke @april Outstanding. You would have been my dream client. I courted Rackspace as a client SO HARD back in the day. I wanted to staff for them so bad, but it wasn't to be. But yes, it was so incredibly frustrating when I had a candidate that was absolutely amazing for a position and one old codger 86'd the whole thing, or their process was such a mess the candidates were simply lost to other companies. I was an old school recruiter. I knew my people and my clients went with me. @JenWojcik @april it’s condensed down into a lighting talk, but - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn6XEm915b8 I’m trying to get some of the olds to change their minds. Nice! But yes, I absolutely agree with you. Now, there is the opposite issue with companies who try to replace their more senior engineers with several less experienced folks to "save money," and this also leads to disaster. Architecture goes off the rails, projects bloat, etc. I saw it over and over again in the early 00s. I was right in the middle of all of that in Austin. I had to quit recruiting altogether even though I was amazing at it. Pressure cooker. I burned out. @JenWojcik @april I’m very worried about that happening to me and a lot of my peers. Somehow, I lucked into a community of practice that involves mental health. We don’t talk about it enough and we let people with executive pay packages manipulate us. What’s sad is it doesn’t have to be this way. My wife is a civil engineer and she expects to be productive without mental health problems well past the age that I expect to be too burnt and hollowed out to work. I'm functionally disabled from it and in recovery. I literally worked myself sick. I am so glad you are in a more supportive environment rather than the meat grinders, but the industry as a whole needs to change. It needs to unionize. I said that 25 years ago, and I will keep saying it. The only way this changes is if everyone in the industry stands up. @JenWojcik @april I have about 25ish years in tech now and I’m pretty convinced that people are all of our problems, not tech. I’ve worked so hard that I needed two months of being emotionally unresponsive. I would love to help other people not fall victim to that but the most I can seem to do is to try to shift the narrative a bit. @april also, as someone who went through a bunch of interviews recently, it feels like hiring is trying its best on being just as painful. @april The half-joke that the quickest way to get promoted (especially senior/staff) is to quit and get rehired. @april Don't wanna sound like that guy. But i'm gonna go head an sound like that guy. It's like that for all jobs. To some degree or another business people are always looking for ways to make working suck a bit more. To them it's adding more requirements to weed out more people to make their jobs easier. And it never works that way because they are business people and business people have always made (historically) the dumbest decisions ever. It just took a bit of time to get to tech jobs. @april After literally YEARS of dealing with the internal BS, including having the company change hands/get bought out repeatedly, so then HR had to re-do everything (including moving the goalposts repeatedly), I FINALLY got the promotion I've working at for the last few years. I'll be retiring next April, so there's that, I guess.😆 @april It's when I turn 70, which maxes out my SS and I start required distributions from my 401k's.  |
Gregory's Server
@april
I feel this as a staff security engineer that was never promoted.