A Staff engineer :: AMA
Why AMA?- New to GV. I see potential here; trying to gauge audience and perhaps I can talk about a thing or two; can definitely learn from ya’al otherwise. Primer Qs (from some successful AMAs outside of GV)- What tech has better future? Is Ai going to kill our jobs? How to increase Tc 5x, 10x, 20x+? Startups vs big corps? Background, Tc stuff- Decade+ yoe Started with <10Lpa. Crossed >10Lpm. Life is fun and no amount of money is enough. I’ve seen it firsthand that the investments and luxuries grow at far bigger rate than your comp, Can’t complain though.
Disagree with your last 2 lines...
Minimalism is the key to happiness, Period.
Qs - As a LinkedIn employee, don't you feel bad that LinkedIn doesn't have monetary benifit plan for creators like meta n Google?
Hard disagree. Maximalism can also very well be the key to success.
You cannot (and should not) hold the view that if you like minimalism, it naturally becomes the only winning strategy.
I am not entirely sure if I understand the complexity of your Q. Lin is basically a job board and extremely successful at being that. All the Feed, shorts etc are just a part of session extensions to incentivise folks to stay on the app + ads pays bills!
I am neutral to the sentiment that content creators aren’t incentivised in monetary terms but I reckon most folks use Lin as an extension to their brand creation and crux stays on YT.
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Answering some common Qs.
How to increase comp by 5x, 10x+
(Here’s what worked for me. Its not guaranteed to work for everyone. If you are clear on responsibilities and are willing to put the hard work, I’hd wager that 💰 will just follow you)
- Use first 3y to generate passion, learn the trade, learn how to learn! (Twister yea!), find gaps by looking at your local seniors, gaps dont mean you lack in something; it may very well be the case that your seniors are becoming/have become ‘toxic’ and in that case, learn what NOT to do so that you don’t become like them.
Learn rhythm of the business.
If possible, don’t chase 💰 at all.
Next 3y, amplify the learnings. You are a Sde2 now.
Check for opportunities to grow fresh grads/interns as successful sde1s. Its a very nurturing experience.
Learn office dynamics.
Next 3y you are now a Senior engg/ sde3.
Exec communication is a thing now. Stakeholder management is a thing now. You’ll be responsible for delivering a sufficiently big project. Think about its operability, manageability, performance etc.
Decade+
You are a Staff engg / sde4 now.
Your main goal is to grow your team, make important bets with your Director, fine tune OKRs, foresee potential misalignments, this is your opportunity to demonstrate leadership. You are DRI for a chunky project and you are doing tech reviews for your fellow Staffs, Seniors and Juniors.
I'll add a few more things.
- Have role models to look up to early in your career. Work with them to draft a growth plan for yourself. Keep yourself and your manager accountable. You should drive career your growth discussions
- As you grow through levels, your bandwidth becomes a blocker for your company/org. Learn to delegate effectively and learn to say no
- ALWAYS be prepared for interviews. Make a switch as soon as you feel there's no growth for you. This is by far the fastest way to double/triple your comp
- Be a keen observer. See what others around you do well and assimilate whatever makes sense to you
- Focus on developing skills, compensation should be side effect of your talent
Beyond all this luck matters a lot. Things won't be in your favor all the time. Your effort and attitude is the only thing you control
Prestige is man made.
We created a problem and then we started suffering from it.
My college was not top ‘tier’
I used to date a girl in your Bellandur office, she ghosted me saying mom won't allow 🙄. What is this behaviour?
Dam. Bellandoor gals are in a class of their own 😬
#been there!
But don’t worry. Give it ample time & you’ll find the one.
SolidBout
Stealth
6 months ago
Bro is asking the real questions 😁
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Anecdote
Student
6 months ago
What kind of changes you had to make with regards to tech stack or core competency to go from 10 LPA to 10 LPM? What someone who is currently in your shoes of <10LPA should do to reach at 10LPM? Some tips which could be generalized and really helped you.
Iv tried to answer this in a separate thread 🧵
Overall, the more you aggressively chase big comp, more it becomes unlikely to get there. Unless you are doing the hard work in filling the skills gap.
No shortcuts that I know of.
1. Do you still code?
2. How do you learn the latest technology, not just the basics(can learn that from documentation), but the nitty gritties which are encountered when solving problems at scale.
Are long running side projects the answer? ( I have 2 YOE)
3. How do you design solutions given a problem statement, do you proceed step by step with RFCs, or wing it via POCs, or something else?
1. Yes. LoveIt!
2. I look upto my Seniors (Senior Staffs+ ie) as they are more likely to have experienced certain pain points at scaling systems. Similarly my juniors look upto me. There’s a constant upskill in this sector. Keep reading engg blogs.
Iv never been in a side project. My goal has been to stay focussed on the job (that is not to say that side projects are useless. They are not.)
3. Its a culture thing. Most/All big corps will have a culture of writing RFCs/docs/pagers while startups will almost always go with PoCing stuff. Both cultures have +es and -es, as expected.
Elon_Bezos
Student
6 months ago
Tips to grow quickly for a fresher?
i am a fresher too (2023 grad) who works at a startup. to me growing in the industry currently feels like becoming a dsa geek which am currently not. but i think i would need to start doing it. also further down the line as my yoe piles up, i would need also need to do lld. would be great to see how others look at this.
Grub96
Student
6 months ago
@BigCats I see a lot of people say that DSA is not required anymore. Is that true?
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Arcane78
Stealth
6 months ago
Can you please tell how many switch/increments you've gotten over the years to reach this stage?
japoorv
Stealth
6 months ago
A very general question, didn't you get bored with doing the same thing over and over.
I get not all projects are same, not all technologies are same but the gist remains the same.
Didn't you get bored ?
What keeps you motivated (given you have now earned a decent amount of money to pursue something else if you want) ?
On the contrary, Iv been fortunate to wear a lot of caps 🧢
Been in a stack much closer to metal and interfaced with C++, been full stack so I got AngularJs and Django api surface, been in proprietary language stack like C#,
Been in Python side, as well as Java
From Json + Http world, I moved to Grpc + Protobuffs
Its been fun!
CodeMax
Stealth
6 months ago
For a senior engineer mostly working with JSON + HTTP, how does one move out of that mindset and work on these new protocols?
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Randomization
Stealth
6 months ago
Is LinkedIn hiring currently?
Randomization
Stealth
6 months ago
@NiftyCodon - can I DM?
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Hi! Thanks for taking questions, sessions like these are very helpful for people trying to reach the next level.
1) when you say >10 lpm, does that include stocks? What do you feel contributed most to this boost in pay, finding the right company and switching, or staying and aiming for promos through impact?
2) What would you say is the key differentiator between a senior engg/scientist and a staff engg/scientist?
1. Its in fact significantly more than 10lpm.
Yes it included stock. A big chunk of it.
I was fortunate to have been with Lin as it gets Msft$ stock and that stock went hockey stick in last few years + timing of my promo was just an icing on the cake 🎂 as the stock$ was down + my grant was ludicrously high.
Finding the right company + finding a team matters the most (while first is in your control. Second is not). If you love your craft, promos and 💰 are easier things to worry about.
2) Iv tried to answer that in a separate main post comment.
Tony_Montana
Stealth
6 months ago
Do you have some guidelines/observations, for people that are already working or just starting out, that apply everywhere?
Primer Qs 2, 3
Given your TC, ever thought of buying a sports car? :)
Very likely this is answered in parts; in my main comment in this post.
Yes! I own one and it drives like a dream 🏎️
How hard is it to switch from an early stage startup (team size <=5) to well funded startups and MNCs. PS I joined after graduation because it was the only offer I had
Probably equally hard to go other way around.
Just that quantitatively different evaluation criteria are there.
Big corps would focus on LC + Design + Craft + Background (deep dive into one big project)
While startups would focus on Machine coding, LC, home assignments and overall attitude (to work more hours, generally speaking), dev velocity etc.
In short it's not impossible but also not easy.
Thanks OP will double down to increase my LC and design skills to get the best of the best opportunities I can get for myself.
Top 3 points of advice that you would give someone who is starting out in career as a junior?
1. Put hard work. No pain, no gain
2. Don’t chase money
3. Probably chase money a little but don’t chase girls!
De4dLoudVoid90
Stealth
6 months ago
When and how to switch domains?
Eg. Frontend dev is bored with FE as he has only done FE professionally from the start of his career and now wants to switch to backend+infra or something else in future
tchizka
Stealth
6 months ago
Hello from another INmate!
I'm still relatively much newer here at Li, but when do you decide to switch companies? You would have definitely jumped multiple companies in your tenure, could you describe what made you push?
Hello InMate 👋🏼
Tbh things just happened naturally. A fine weekend, my then gf pushed me out of my place to appear for a hiring drive and I got in 🤦🏽♂️
After that, I ended up in a team with cronyism and that was enough motivation for me to make a jump.
Overall not a lot of jumps. 3
Hey, Do you still code ? Are you an IC?
Also were you at LinkedIn for > 5 years ? What are your views about Job hopping to maximize TC.
Thanks in advance
Yes, yes, nope,
Job hopping is fine but imo, once you have hopped a bit, you should settle down in a role and grow depth.
Just with hopping, its much more likely that you’ll create a growth ceiling for yourself. Perhaps Sde3 is that ceiling because sde4+ onwards your depth and expertise matter, a lot.
How much time do they take to get back after completion of all the interview rounds.
Also, what is a systems infrastructure team ?
How do you find the engineering culture of LinkedIn, are there too many processes which hinder development velocity? How is work life balance ?
Lin takes a lot of time. Probably sits between Msft and Goog if x axes is the time-to-offer metric.
Systems infra, as the name suggests, is all about different infra things (managing compute, managing data, managing data compliance, managing disruption readiness, keeping siteUp, etc etc.. theres like a ton of things..)
Wlb is just awesome! (Note that I consider myself a workoholic so it probably looks awesome to me as I choose to spend few hours post midnight for some chores.. its peaceful!)
Thanks for the response. I have a few more on similar lines. How do you find the engineering culture of LinkedIn, in terms of below :
Tech stack wise, do you find it as widely used in industry or do you see a lot of systems/components using legacy or not so open source pieces.
Does this team have enough roadmap or does it mostly operate in maintenance mode. If you had to name, a few teams which according to you are doing exciting work, what would those be.
For a business team(non platform team), QA, infra provisioning and maintenance, database provisioning and maintenance are considered developer responsibility or do they fall under responsibility of QA, devops, sre , dba etc. I mean how do devs procure the infra when they are building a new service.
Do you find that LinkedIn has a lot of processes which hinder development velocity, or it's a good balance.
How have the appraisals and promotions been in the recent years. In terms of profitability how is LinkedIn doing ?
