Magmalgebra

8 ms·

1.
by Magmalgebra 7mo ago
The title only so matters to the extent the company is a known entity. The "staff engineer" at some random series B startup 4 years into their career nearly always gets hired in at mid level somewhere like Meta.
2.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
> get a lot of junk applications, but frankly, it is your job to sort through them. But this isn't their job. Their job is to hire someone who passes the hiring bar. If they can do that without ever looking at a random resume eve
3.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
I think the press release is actually clear that they felt this was necessary to retain talent: > Engineers in particular have expressed their desire to focus their time on engineering, without being hampered by slow process flows I&#x
4.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
By "dishonest" I'm saying they become measurements of time, which is what we were trying to avoid. Stepping back - my experience is that points are solving a problem good organizations don't have. The practice I see work
5.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
> The process is quite easy to implement Having implemented it myself, I agree it is easy to implement. My argument is that it is overly difficult to maintain . My experience is that incentives to corrupt the point system are too high f
6.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
> is in points not days I hear this often, but I've never met someone for whom points didn't eventually turn into a measurement of time - even using the exact process you're describing. I think any process that's this
7.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
> But in my experience, your manager is expecting you to do all of your assigned role (e.g. write code), but then also do a bunch of stuff on top -- e.g. leading and taking ownership of new initiatives that is extra work. Aside from AWS,
8.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
> that got along well with leadership in a fast growing company I may be reading too much into your post but I'll say that this sentiment is a common pattern I see in many competent senior folks who think they deserve promotions i
9.
by Magmalgebra 8mo ago
> This has always struck me as a pretty juicy deal going for the corporation. It's a good deal if you deserve the promo . Giving someone the opportunity to take on projects at the next level and having them not deliver can be enorm
10.
by Magmalgebra 9mo ago
> You run into other tools you have to cobble together as part of actual work, but you never have to memorize those particular tools The statement I like to use as an analogy to this one is: "I don't need to know how to add or
11.
by Magmalgebra 9mo ago
> I hate leetcode and that keeps me away from most of the job opportunities Odds are that until you can get past this mindset, you will hit a similar wall in every career, it will just be less obvious to you that you're hitting it.
12.
by Magmalgebra 10mo ago
Yeah. For all the excesses of the current AI craze there's a lot of real meat to it that will obviously survive the hype cycle. User education, for example, can be done in ways that don't even feel like gen AI in ways that can d
13.
by Magmalgebra 11mo ago
Standards come from a mixture of culture and attention. The reason SF pizza is so much worse than NY pizza is that SF does not have culture of high quality pizza (I say this as an SF native). Conversely we have higher standards for Sourdo
14.
by Magmalgebra 11mo ago
Depends on what you're measuring. Quite a few of AWS's more mature customers (including my company) were aware within 15 minutes of the incident that Dynamo was failing and hypothesized that it'd taken other services. Hopeful
15.
by Magmalgebra 11mo ago
Most of your complaints are about things that are not React. Those are optional. I can still standup a vanilla React stack in an afternoon just as easily as I did 5 years ago and immediately start writing the exact same code and have it
16.
by Magmalgebra 11mo ago
While I get what you're saying I don't think this is what most people think of as "solved". The brass tacks are: 1. Estimates for the cost of obesity globally are somewhere around 2 trillion dollars. 2. Telling people to
17.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
> Most standard software engineering jobs don’t require that kind of research activity (although it does require some; product development is a creative process) This seems to describe what good engineers above the senior level do. Cert
18.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
It feels bad as a consumer, but the alternative is usually worse. The "stop spitting in your soup if you pay us extra" is really efficient market segmentation . If you don't do that you need to find actual value props that s
19.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
I imagine most people have the same value prop I do 1) I watch youtube more than any streaming service 2) I really really value not having ads in my life So the price for ad-free youtube really seems phenomenal. None of the other features
20.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
I wish the article talked more about why people use Redis as a rate limiter and why alternatives might be superior. Anecdotally I see the following play out repeatedly: 1) You probably already have Redis running 2) Adding a "good eno
21.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
This is so much better than a decade ago! No underhanded "we're a family" - the company says "you will work 60 hours a week and take a big risk" and employees can say yes or no.
22.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
> others you get an extra 1.5mm to sit at the computer for 2 hours a day and then take a nap A few of the most world class reserachers can do this, all of my other friends and colleagues at OpenAI work 10-14 hours day - often 7 days a we
23.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
I've read a lot of blog posts making this same argument for a year "Cloud makes 80% margins! You're fool for paying them!" and I think they show a lack of curiosity as to why so few companies paying 9 figure cloud contr
24.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
> Managing down isn't actually that hard to get the hang of if you have strong technical skills and reasonable communications skills. But managing down is very similar to being a good teaching professor: absolutely worthless and lar
25.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
I have - it works. I can also assure you that despite the 100s of applicants hiring remains hard even with competitive market compensation. Filling a generalist senior eng headcount with $500k liquid total compensation can take months. Many
26.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
This has never stopped working for me - I interview every year or so as a matter of course. My experience helping others is that in a tightening labor market they are experiencing "small fish in a big pond" syndrome mentioned abov
27.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
> I had to answer within 3 days. If you re-read the transcript, I hope you will come to the understanding that this is a lie. The company is trying to leverage your desperation for a job. > Last time I got a job offer the hiring proce
28.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
This is situational - as a strong engineer I have more leverage than ever to demand ever more eye watering compensation. Weaker engineers and junior engineers are in more the situation you describe. This is tough and I feel for these folks
29.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
> my impression is that they try very hard to have a consistent work culture across the company they do - and they fail! A truism is that your manager is the biggest determiner of your work environment. This is just as true for your mana
30.
by Magmalgebra 1y ago
> E.g. Amazon, Meta etc. have terrible work cultures This is like saying "Switzerland has a terrible work culture". These companies are literally the size of a small country - culture ends up being much more fine grained. Ane

More ›