What to know to get promoted quickly in Big Tech | Hacker News Reader

What to know to get promoted quickly in Big Tech

philippcannons.com

41 pointspcannons20 comments

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> Error establishing a database connection

Know database connections to get promoted quickly in Big Tech!

Yes, clearly being able to keep your blog running when it's on the HN homepage is NOT one of necessaries.

Touché

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:21xq0j...

It's a classic WP mistake to not turn on one of the WP cache plugins (WP Super Cache, for instance). It's less about knowing scalability and more about just ever thinking whether your blog can have more than your 6 friends visiting it.

Thanks! Installed. 6 friends?? You must be an extrovert.

Haha you’re welcome. Every Wordpress user does this at least once.

Not as silly as you think

The original title was "What you should know about how corporations work" and that made a lot more sense. There is very little about promotions in the article.

Personally I cannot assign importance to something until I understand the structure it operates within. Hence the preamble to the simple point about promotions in the article.

I wish someone had told me when I was a starry eyed college kid entering the workforce that by focusing on this one strategic decision, I could have gotten so much more out of the many 100 hour work weeks of execution. e.g.: Someone working long shifts at a restaurant is just as hard working as Elon Musk, the scale of Elon’s impact is just much bigger.

More practically, the original title got one upvote because it didn’t focus on the value of the article.

> If you work in the part of the company chasing one of the top 6 initiatives of the CEO, you’ll usually get promoted fast if you do well. You’ll also get paid a lot.

Sure, but those initiatives can suddenly change when the CEO changes or when the CEO changes strategy. Whole divisions can get shut down overnight.

How often does the CEO change though? What would the alternative strategy be? If you feel that the CEO is likely to get replaced or that the CEO is likely to change strategy isn't that a good signal that you should be looking to work at other companies?

>How often does the CEO change though?

For S&P 500 companies, average CEO tenure is about 7 years - pretty reasonable thing to happen a few times across your career.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2018/02/12/ceo-tenure-rates/

I recently was laid off while working on one of the initiatives the director had going. They hired a CEO who brought all his initiatives and mine happened to fall outside of the new initiatives. They let myself, another developer, and the director go all at the same time.

That’s very typical, the new ceo will usually try to put their stamp on a company by firing a bunch of the close allies of the previous ceo, cancelling a bunch of their favorite projects, and generally just marking their territory. Same as kings used to do on ascending the throne, it’s all about personal brand.

Great point about increased uncertainty! That’s obviously a trade off of high growth bets whereas old business is not going anywhere.

You’d likely be in high demand at other initiatives if you’re a top performer though. I’ve also seen friends incentivized to get them to stay specifically because the mission they came for became kaput.

I can totally imagine your situation play out though. Depends on the needs of the company at that stage + your perceived value.

I like the bit about the CEO. He's the one you should be dealing with _directly_ should the shit hit the fan. Not the HR department, not your line manager. They're just peons. Also keep in mind the CEO might be concealing all sorts of stuff from the board. Wish I had known this years ago. Excellent article.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:21xq0j...

The better you are at quality and support the more money you’ll be paid to stick around and protect.

If only that were true?

I should have probably phrased that better. At one end your skills might get commoditized and outsourced to somewhere for 1/10th of the cost.

But at the other end, think the person in charge of when Google search goes down in Europe. Or when Azure crashes for Disney. Or when AWS goes down for Netflix. How much do you think the people who are experts there get paid? I know two people who make 7 figures doing jobs like that. They are linchpins.

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