Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

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> At least the pay is alright.

I don't know why but this part of your comment really stuck out to me. I have a whole different take on getting stuff done specifically at big tech companies, mainly that being "stagnant" is not such a bad thing at a place like Google or MS.

Say you're like an L-whatever at one of these big tech companies and you bring home say $300k/yr. You don't live in a HCOL so the pay is astronomical compared to anywhere else and even if you work on the same boring project for 10 years there, you can still say you spent 10 years working at MS or Google and that would get you red carpet treatment just about anywhere. I'm sure this would bug a go-getter and would certainty bug a younger version of me, but if you're that kind of person you're most likely trying to work at a smaller company where you get more say and sway.

And to add a bit more to this it's not like I don't care, it's just what I care about has changed over the years. When I was younger I was concerned with climbing the ladder and getting prompted. Now that I'm older I care way more about my family and friends than I do my company. If I was at one of these big tech companies and someone told me I was stagnant and would never get prompted I would just tell them so what. I bring home $300k for my family and I have a good work life balance (most likely). And do I really give a damn about the initiatives of some corporate behemoth, no and to be totally blunt the only thing I like about them is the paycheck and what it does for the rest of my life (all the free shit at the office is just a bonus).

>you bring home say $300k/yr. You don't live in a HCOL

Oh, I didn't know we were fantasizing about 2022.

> you can still say you spent 10 years working at MS or Google and that would get you red carpet treatment just about anywhere.

well, not in 2025. Market is rough and it's all topsy tuvrvy out there, with lots of companies pretending to hire but not.

>If I was at one of these big tech companies and someone told me I was stagnant and would never get prompted I would just tell them so what. I bring home $300k for my family and I have a good work life balance

Even tech isn't immune to "move up or move out". Google's had plenty of layoffs these past few years and that's an easy way for the gravy train to end. Hope you got plenty of savings.

I don't think this world exists anymore. A lot of people I know are stressed out of their minds for the last few years by being way overworked and under constant threat of a layoff. I'm not talking about startups, I'm talking about Big Tech Corp. But I guess the mythical coasting engineer making a big tech salary that everyone talks about will never go out of style.

It definitely exists, but it's in the $120,000-$170,000 range

That sounds great if you can ride that into retirement but if you get laid off and you start having to justify your existence again in the job market I dont think "I took home $300k for doing nothing and then got laid off" is a great sell.

But that's kinda the beauty of it. If you get laid off from one of these places the next place doesn't know that you took 300k home to do jack, all they know is you worked for a super prestigious company for 10 years and you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there.

> you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there.

I would never do this, and if you would do this I wouldn't want to work with you. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I sleep alright.

What about actually accomplishing some things over 10 years while maintaining good work life balance?

That's the dream, but it requires either luck (to fall into a great company) or burning of political capital (plus luck).

It's not like the parent would have accomplished nothing in the 10 years. I think they are just talking about framing it in language palatable to the interviewer across the table.

Even in the most dysfunctional organizations you can't spend 10 years doing nothing.

GP was achieving what their bosses asked of them. It's just that it didn't align with their own professional goals of improving the product they work on.

Sorry, 20 years experience of actually doing things here. I've spent 10 of those years now doing consulting with everyone from 3-person pre-series-A startups all the way up to the Fortune 50.

Let me unequivocal: you can spend 30-40 years at a company doing absolutely nothing while getting paid for it.

Do not let anyone try to convince you otherwise. I've seen such much unethical bloodsucking in my career that at this point I wouldn't mind seeing a few companies collapse under the weight of their own karma.

> Let me unequivocal: you can spend 30-40 years at a company doing absolutely nothing while getting paid for it.

Maybe this was true for 40 years from the 70s to the 2000s, or maybe even the 80s-10s, but I don't think this is true anymore

Certainly not in software engineering, in a world run by JIRA

To clarify: the tickets can close but they don't push the product forward at all.

oh man, respectfully but this cannot be further from the truth. SWEs have successfully convinced everyone that profession “is not about just coding” (you see a sea of these statements here on HN in 100x daily posts “will LLMs replace us”) and hence tools like Jira only amplify ability to do (mostly) nothing

“Absolutely nothing” is still doing what is asked of you by a boss. Unless you’re talking CEOs fooling the board, of course.

Not contributing meaningful things is an arbitrary metric that is often only used to put people down. One can build the whole product and there will still be some asshole claiming they did the easy part or “you didn’t work enough in it to know what’s like”.

The incompetence here lies 100% with person keeping the employee.

You haven't been on LinkedIn in the last few years, then.

unfortunately I have. It is indeed a hellscape of, as the kids say, "aura farming". Microsoft really seem to want to turn it into Instagram for some reason.

I still use it as a job board, personally.

Is there any other meaningful job board (outside of "whose hiring" on hn)?

I haven't had to apply for a job for a while, so genuinely curious what people would use these days if there wasn't anything coming via word of mouth.

https://hiring.cafe

(no affiliation)

It's quite the opposite. Instagram is turning into LinkedIn.

Chances are high anyone to corroborate was laid off and does the same thing anyway lol

Chances are high anyone to corroborate was laid off or has moved on, and does the same thing anyway lol

There is a very high probability that someone you work for did just this.

Everybody does this to some degree. Even you.

If you're going to lie about experience anyways, you don't have to work for the FAANG company in the first place.

It's not lying about your experience. Just not hustling to "get things done" or caring so much about personal satisfaction in the work.

Better to do some carpentry or pottery outside of work and put your pride in that.

> you can plausibly make up the rest about what you actually did there

saying you did things, which you did not do, is lying about your experience

This becomes quickly apparent in a smaller company or if you have a manager that knows what they are doing.

You'll get hired, if you pass the technical interviews, but if you cannot contribute at the level they hired you, you'll be exited and that will be suspicious for your next application.

>but if you cannot contribute at the level they hired you, you'll be exited

But this is the case for anyone anywhere, it doesn't effect the OPs position one way or another.

it'd be quicker if they feel you either lied or do not live up to your name. Easier to fire you and find someone on your level but much cheaper.

> This becomes quickly apparent in a smaller company or if you have a manager that knows what they are doing

Sounds like an unlikely problem and by then you can pull a reverse end run around your manager to their manager who doesn't know what they are doing and will believe anything the guy who worked at google says.

Most people here actually work for that guy.

If you took home 300k for 10 years then you don’t have to worry about getting a job.

For many people expenses expand to fill income. Some people think that the real brilliant investors of the bay area are the real estate investors who captured all the value.

That’s only $3M total gross. You paid over $1M in taxes across fed, state, and FICA. You probably spent over $500K if you lived quite frugally. That leaves maybe $1.25M plus some growth on that. Call it $1.5M. That will give you $60K/yr in income with high likelihood to last 30+ years. Pay taxes on that and you’re living in less than the $50K/yr you were living on before plus you have to buy health insurance.

That’s not very appealing to most.

The last sentence is completely wrong - that's almost the US median income.

MORE THAN HALF make less, and they are actually working during that timeframe.

You spent 50k a year if you lived quite frugally?

I don't think the point was literally doing nothing, but rather doing solid technical work with relatively low business value.

This person could move on to do solid technical work with higher business value at a place that used their skills more effectively.

The former isn't great, but it is a reality at many big companies.

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