Ask HN: Stay at Big Tech or leave? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Stay at Big Tech or leave?

16 pointsstreakofred50 comments

I joined a big tech company as a new grad recently and I'm unhappy.

Although hired as a software engineer, I'm more of an analyst honestly. I rarely write actual code. Most of the day is spent changing few lines in some config file, running some training job and then looking at excessive amounts of data to get a clue of what's going on.

At uni I was a pretty decent coder, but now I feel like my skills are degrading. I really love software engineering. I'm the kind of person who spent hours in their free time coding up their pet projects.

I'm afraid that not only I'm boring myself to death, but also specializing in a very niche area I don't like and thus further digging myself into this hole.

At the same time: compensation is amazing. Really, right now, that's the only thing keeping me here.

I'm afraid that if I leave, I will regret it. Should I just suck it up and appreciate the opportunity?

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> compensation is amazing

STAY where you are. Money is freedom, accumulate until you reach escape velocity.

You can sharpen your programming sword on your own time. It's nice when job and personal interests align, but if your workplace is non-toxic and paying well, consider very carefully before letting it go.

You may be able to find ways to learn and grow on company time as well. Make your own tooling to help analyze that data, whatever.

> STAY where you are. Money is freedom, accumulate until you reach escape velocity.

This is the current plan. I'm just wondering when to stop?

> It's nice when job and personal interests align, but if your workplace is non-toxic and paying well, consider very carefully before letting it go

Very true. I'm just afraid it's trending towards a toxic situation for me, because with my current mindset it will be hard to actually reach goals, setting me up for failure.

It's never going to be like it was in college. People don't pay you lots of money for that.

I can't tell you whether to stay or leave, but you have to understand that any job you land will be a job, and someone else is going to be in charge of the what and the how.

Also, please don't spend all of your free time coding. By all means do a bunch of coding in your free time. But do lots of other stuff too.

This is a hard pill to swallow. I'm hoping though that there might be positions where I at least like the day-to-day work even if I can't get behind the what and how.

> Also, please don't spend all of your free time coding.

Sadly, I'm pretty drained after work these days so I usually do everything else.

Ok, one last piece of advice from someone who knows almost nothing about your day-to-day, just what you initially wrote.

Your value isn’t from the skills you have, it comes from your ability to apply them to problems to produce a useful outcome.

What parts of your job can benefit from applying your software engineering skills? It could make things a lot more bearable, perhaps even enjoyable.

> What parts of your job can benefit from applying your software engineering skills? It could make things a lot more bearable, perhaps even enjoyable.

Thank you, this sounds like a good first step to getting some more passion into my day to day.

That said they are definitely jobs where you spend 80% time coding and there are new features to code if not greenfield work. Finding them is a challenge to itself though, but asking in the interview is a good idea.

Consider switching teams. At every big tech company there are different teams that spend more time on different tasks. Keep your compensation, change your work. Implement new features in a kernel, or new optimization passes in a compiler. Build a UI for an new feature.

But if that doesn't work, you should leave. It's is a tremendous opportunity cost to spend your early career not learning new things.

Jonathan Blow has strong opinions[1] on this.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nL8GWU9M8LY

Thanks for the video, watched it all. He has a point. Where you start will shape your career and now it's much easier to take risks than at a later stage in life.

> Consider switching teams.

I'm applying, but in these times internal job openings are pretty sparse.

External job openings are pretty sparse these days, too.

Things will turn around eventually, and when they do, it's normally easier to transfer onto an exciting project than it would be to get hired on to do it. Plus your stock keeps vesting.

In the meantime, you can try to make yourself a more attractive internal candidate by working towards a promotion or taking on some extra curricular activities. Talk to your manager about your long term goals and see if there's anything else you can do in your current role to make it more interesting.

OP may also want to look at discussions like these to get a feel of the general market: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38847978

These are anecdotal, so you might want to supplement with something more data-analytical, but I guess my point is, for a fresh out of college engineer, it might be worth clinging onto your job for a short while until the recession (or recession worries) clears.

Oops, yeah, maybe time to test the waters myself. Experiencing how it is out there might just give me a reason to stick it out.

How difficult is it to switch teams? I’ve been considering trying but I don’t get the logistics of all of it. Do I ask my manager to initiate the switch or do I cold message managers of other teams? Do you typically have to re interview?

This doesn't sound like a Big Tech problem. This is a problem of mismatch between your current role and your interests.

If your big tech company has an easy transfers policy + culture, you may be able to narrowly address the mismatch without affecting other aspects of your job such as comp. Perhaps your manager would even support you in making this move by helping you to spot your next opportunity and steering your work in that direction.

In any case, with the weak labor market in tech right now and what sounds like a rather short tenure with your current and first real job, I'd recommend you stick it out for another year+. There may be some things you can do to incorporate the design & coding work you love into your current role to keep up your motivation and skills, without having to overcome biases related to a resume gap or short stint when you interview for your next posting.

> This is a problem of mismatch between your current role and your interests.

I think this is pretty accurate.

> Perhaps your manager would even support you in making this move by helping you to spot your next opportunity and steering your work in that direction.

This I tried, but there simply is none of that kind of work in our team.

> I'd recommend you stick it out for another year+

Yeah that makes sense. I'm just afraid that I will fall victim to the "just one more year" disease.

Thank you :)

My 2c

Working at a “large tech” company can be rewarding in several ways. Less stress, more pay, huge tech stacks and access to more resources within the company.

My advice is to prioritise the work for your role, but also look for other problems in the company that you can (and want to) solve… without somebody asking you too.

If you discover that a new script can improve CI builds, or a new internal website can help people find documentation…etc… the rest of the company would be thankful for your effort, and if everyone loves it that could be your new responsibility!

Compare this to a “small tech” company, it’s generally less resources, less pay, more stress, more hours, tighter deadlines etc… which makes it harder to work outside your immediate responsibilities

Basically, it’s easier to go off and find random problems to solve with your programming skills in a large company, as they’re generally in a better position… and have more problems.

Ironically this means an individual can “feel more entrepreneurial” in a large company a lot of the time

> If you discover that a new script can improve CI builds, or a new internal website can help people find documentation…etc… the rest of the company would be thankful for your effort, and if everyone loves it that could be your new responsibility!

> Ironically this means an individual can “feel more entrepreneurial” in a large company a lot of the time

Yeah, why not actually? This could just work. Thanks :)

Sadly, outside of early stage startups, most engineering jobs are a lot of boring work. Now and then, you'll have a super interesting project, but in my experience it's pretty rare. If you like the company, perhaps see if you can transfer to another team / department. I did that once and it bought some more time.

This is true in any field. It's just another manifestation of the 80/20 rule.

In all honesty, even in my hobby projects (which I do because I find them inherently interesting and fun), 80% of what I'm actually doing is still grunt work.

Trying to transfer seems like the right thing to do before jumping ship.

> Sadly, outside of early stage startups, most engineering jobs are a lot of boring work.

Yeah, I hear you. I would like to imagine that I'd be willing to accept some fraction of boring work, if there are some cool tasks to balance it out.

From all your responses below, it sounds like you are pretty much ready to leave. Although at first I agreed with many of the responses below that recommended you "stick it out" even longer, judging from your reaction, it appears that you want to leave and you are financially prepared with savings at the ready. In that case, sometimes, inaction is action so why not put some feelers out for possibilities? Just because you're looking doesn't mean you will quit. Evaluating your options may help you decide that what you have now isn't so bad after all or may lead to a new adventure.

It doesn't seem like it would be irresponsible to just look around for options.

My first job was paying a good amount of money and I also went to graduate school and worked hard to prepare for the job but looking back, I was lethargic and quite bored. Because it was my first job, I thought all jobs just felt that way. People would say "it's called 'work' for a reason - it's not supposed to be fun" so I accepted that because I had no other experience to compare against. Now I have the perspective to know that it was a boring job that happened to pay well but I love what I do now and it doesn't even compare in terms of fulfillment and joy.

> inaction is action so why not put some feelers out for possibilities? > Evaluating your options may help you decide that what you have now isn't so bad after all or may lead to a new adventure.

True, sounds like a sensible thing to do. Maybe the grass is not greener after all.

> Now I have the perspective to know that it was a boring job that happened to pay well but I love what I do now and it doesn't even compare in terms of fulfillment and joy.

Thanks for sharing your experience. This of course is what I'm hoping for. But you are right: maybe proving the field to get an idea of what's out there is a good next step.

I left bigco to a -much- smaller company, like <50 people. I recognized it as a career speed bump and slight pay cut, but it’s in the tech I like to use and I am actually writing code. Three months in I’m more than happy with my situation.

For most people the comments are correct, stay at bigco unless you’re sure. Far more stable and career-forwards.

What are your goals?

Is it more important to have a job where you encounter technical challenges and/or make a big difference, or is it more important to have a comfy job with a good salary? The latter can sometimes give more freedom in other areas. E.g. if you need that salary for buying a nice home, saving up for the kid’s college funds, funding your hobbies, supporting charities etc etc.

Also, if you haven’t already seen it I can warmly recommend this article by Julia Evans – “Some possible career goals”. It can be very useful when trying to articulate for oneself what one’s goals are.

https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/30/some-possible-career-goals/

HTH!

Yeah, that's something to think about. Thanks.

Only you know what's right for you. If I were in your position, though, I'd absolutely leave. There is a wide world of well-paying, very interesting, dev jobs out there that are also at great places to work.

Suffering in order to maximize income is, for me, a bad deal. You can enjoy life and make very good money even if it's not technically the most money you can possibly make.

> now I feel like my skills are degrading.

For me, speaking purely from a professional point of view, this is completely unacceptable. You need to be increasing your skills over time. If they're degrading, you're setting yourself up for a career disaster later on.

> Suffering in order to maximize income is, for me, a bad deal. You can enjoy life and make very good money even if it's not technically the most money you can possibly make.

You know, if you put it like this, it sounds pretty alarming. Thanks for the perspective.

> you're setting yourself up for a career disaster later on.

Exactly what I'm most afraid of I think.

Normally i say chase engaging work, but lately i try to temper that with "non programming life is even better a lot of times".That said, do you still have time/energy in your nights to work on oet projects DESPITE the boring daily work? I find boring work drains me more than tougher problems do. If you can still work in your off hours then consider that your next position may pay less and consume more mental energy, enough that your pet projects cease or slow. Its a tough choice, for sure and leaning on inaction always feels bad doesnt it?

> I find boring work drains me more than tougher problems do.

Yep, agree on this. Days with work that I like go by super quickly.

> next position may pay less and consume more mental energy

I think I would accept this, if it consumes more mental energy with interesting tasks.

Thanks!

I completely understand where you're coming from but for a better future, try to fight through it for at least a year or two. Such is life, work is work. Not all of it is glamourous.

You are very early into your career and in a pretty great spot. Don't waste it.

Big tech experience will open a lot of opportunities for you and this includes non-career or financial opportunities.

You should still continue with your pet projects. Remember we underestimate what can be achieved in a year.

Wish you all the best!

> You are very early into your career and in a pretty great spot. Don't waste it.

You know, I can't really argue with that.

> Wish you all the best!

Thanks, to you as well.

> I really love software engineering. I'm the kind of person who spent hours in their free time coding up their pet projects.

What you described at your job _is_ software engineering. Software engineering might have a large programming component in it, or it might not.

Yeah that is probably true - maybe it's just not the kind of software engineering I like.

Put a year in for the name brand on your resume, it’ll pay dividends. Then about 2 months before that anniversary start interviewing for something you might like better and be very discerning.

I have passed the one year mark already, but that still feels like a "short stint" somehow.

I wouldn’t worry about it, most people won’t bat at an eye as long as you stayed a year and don’t have a streak of short positions.

I'm overwhelmed by all of the people taking time to help me here. I got a lot of different perspectives out of this and some really helpful next steps.

Thank you everyone! So nice :)

Imagine you could have both money and satisfaction. You can.

Pick some smaller companies whose mission really sings to you. Start applying.

> Pick some smaller companies whose mission really sings to you. Start applying.

Yeah I think it's time to send out some applications and see what's really out there. Thank you.

> looking at excessive amounts of data to get a clue of what's going on.

Can you automate this by writing some code?

I'm automating what I can, but it's usually just one-off code in some notebook. Most of the time doesn't warrant actually building something and checking in code.

If you want something more involved you could also automate the run time and ditch the notebook environment.

Pay off any loans you have, and build up enough savings to get by on for a year. Then reevaluate.

No loans and enough savings already for a year - that's the big perk of working here I guess.

Time to reevaluate then :)

Do you have an email address or a contact method?

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