Comment by raw_anon_1111
4 days ago
So are you really arguing that tech companies that pay top of the industry don’t require that you demonstrate that you can handle responsibility that requires you to be able to work at a larger scope, impact and dealing with ambiguity and go through a promotion process with a promo doc?
Are you saying that when you interview for one of those tech companies that they don’t level you according to your past experience?
Yes I know the answers to all of these questions from both personal experience of interviewing and hiring at one BigTech company and ignoring outreach from another’s hiring manager who I had worked with in the past.
(At 51, I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever work at a large company again and I am damn sure not going back into an office)
If I'm being honest, I sense some ambivalence about how perfect and rational big companies really are.
What do you suggest? They just promote people based on tenure?
You've put a lot of words in my mouth, and I don't know why.
What do I suggest? I suggest that big organizations have pockets of careful, competent folks. But in general a large company tends to be all fouled up. They do a lot of things pretty much randomly. Some stuff happens the way a new graduate has a right to expect, and the way many HN commenters insist it has to go.
But a lot of other shit just ... happens. People get promoted because they have another offer from another fouled-up company, or because the boss thinks they're awesome (but sometimes the boss is dumb), or because they talk the talk exceptionally well, or because they happen to get the attention of someone 2 or 3 levels up, or whatever.
Is any of that controversial? What am I missing here?
Do people not still read Catch-22? Or has it been proved wrong or something? Or take that mysterious cactus that you mentioned in connection with large companies. What's that about? Because the cactus sounds bad.
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