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Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

>>I had really really had enough of my bosses

Its curious how these companies claim they are totally different or even unique but just turn out to be the very same.

>>I wasn't promoted when I figured I deserved it

This is again one of those large company political things. Year long promotion packet building, lobbying your work with promotion committees, getting a willing boss, and doing other routine political ground work to set you up for one.

Another big thing in these companies, every one joining has to go through a very arduous interviewing process, preparation for which can last weeks to months. So you have rockstars full in all teams, or at-least they like of themselves that way.

Ultimately regardless whatever people might say about surrounding yourself with smart people, its never generally a great idea to surround yourself with smart competitors in a pyramid hierarchy.

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Big companies are all this way, people don't realize it before they work in one - you are just a cog.

Also, in a big company, culture is not homogeneous. Your direct manager and team will create their culture, with mild influence from the surrounding corporation.

Definitely this. I'm in a large org at a large company and there are drastic differences between groups because of managers. Simply changing groups can completely change your experience from a toxic team to a great one or vice versa.

If a smaller company has a toxic culture or you have a toxic manager you may have no choice but to leave.

Bad managers are everywhere!

Just to add to this, a good manager can insulate a team from problems "outside" that team, but there's a balance. Too much insulation and you'll disappear from everyone else's view (no more funding for you!), not enough and you'll become a dumping ground for people/problems/projects.

> This is again one of those large company political things. Year long promotion packet building, lobbying your work with promotion committees, getting a willing boss, and doing other routine political ground work to set you up for one.

Honestly, I don't care enough about getting promoted to go through that whole rigmarole, nor would I quit a job over having to deal with that in order to get promoted.

Of course, that's also probably why I don't work at a FAANG and never will.

> Honestly, I don't care enough about getting promoted to go through that whole rigmarole, nor would I quit a job over having to deal with that in order to get promoted.

Of course, that's also probably why I don't work at a FAANG and never will.

I don't think you should let that stop you. I work at Google and don't care about promotion. I expect that I will get it sooner or later but really don't care if I do or not. I get paid enough to live a decent life already so I prefer having the freedom to do what I think matters as opposed to what's good for my career since sadly those don't align as much as they should.

Here here, why require a raise if you're earning 250k+ a year? That's more than 99.9% of non-execs in most companies.

that's exactly what i thought -- getting a "promotion packet" is absurd. your promotion packet should be the job you have been doing all year long.

then again, i hate office politics and i cannot see myself getting to close to this kind of big-company.

> that's exactly what i thought -- getting a "promotion packet" is absurd. your promotion packet should be the job you have been doing all year long.

I'm guessing you don't know how the process works? I'd like to give a summary so you have more context. Apologies if that's incorrect.

Your promotion is decided by a promotion committee, who likely do not know you or what you do. This is done in an attempt to make promotions fair and objective across the company.

That being the case, you need a promotion packet to describe what you've done to people who are basically strangers.

Don't get me wrong, the process has many issues but I don't think it's fair to assess them without understanding their purposes and I don't think anyone I've seen who complains about it has been able to come up with something better.

Keep in mind that at many companies the promotion isn't to manager but to the next class of engineering ie engineer I to engineer II. This is how you increase your pay. Also if you don't get promoted within a certain amount of time, some companies will manage you out

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