Career Ladder Nonsense: top posts

Posts

1. Experience

   I had to tell four people they were laid off. Here is what I would do differently.

   Earlier this year our company cut about 12% of engineering. I found out 36 hours before. The list was decided above me. Four of the people on it were mine. I've thought about those four calls almost every week since. Here's what happened, what I'd change, and what I wish every laid-off person knew to ask for. How it went HR gave us a script and 15-minute slots. Access would be cut at the end of each call. I pushed…

   Renee WhitfieldOct 9, 202666likes17comments

2. Article

   Salary negotiation scripts that worked for me and 11 juniors (copy paste allowed)

   Over the last two years I have helped 11 juniors negotiate their offers, plus my own. Results from my spreadsheet: average increase over the first offer was 14% , range 0% to 31%. Two people got nothing extra. Nobody got their offer pulled for asking. That last line is the one I want freshers to read twice. Here are the exact scripts. Change the numbers, keep the shape. Script 1: "What is your current and expected…

   Kunal BhatiaSep 14, 202652likes16comments

3. Article

   Being a woman engineering manager in Dubai: what nobody told me

   السلام عليكم. I studied computer science in Khartoum at a time when US sanctions meant half the developer tools on the internet refused to work for us. I moved to Dubai in 2016 through a recruiter, with one suitcase and a lot of confidence I had not earned yet. Today I manage twelve engineers from nine countries at a logistics company. Here is what I wish someone had told me. 1. Negotiate the basic, not only the…

   Hiba OsmanSep 18, 202643likes9comments

4. Experience

   got the mail at 9.07 am. laptop locked at 9.15. efficient.

   tuesday. 9.07 am. subject line: "an important update about your role". 600 of us got the same email. town hall link at 10. slack deactivated at 9.15. i was in the middle of reviewing a PR. i hope someone merged it. it was a good PR. six years of frontend at a quick commerce unicorn. react, typescript, a design system i built mostly by myself. eight minutes. not our office. ours had more beanbags and fewer windows.…

   Sneha KulkarniAug 23, 202641likes15comments

5. Experience

   5.30 am, before the tiffin boxes: relearning Java after a 7 year break (and what changed since Java 8)

   Good morning everyone. It is 5.30 am in Pune, the children are asleep, the milk has not come yet, and I have about 50 minutes. So I will write fast. Kindly excuse any mistakes. I was a Java developer at a service company until 2018. Then two children, and my father-in-law's illness, and I took a break that was supposed to be one year and became seven. Three months ago I decided to come back. Many people here have…

   Meenal DeshpandeSep 21, 202639likes9comments

6. Experience

   BLUF: 20 years a Chief, 1 week a junior. What my first week as a developer actually taught me

   BLUF: My first week as a junior developer at 42 was humbling, a little embarrassing, and the best career decision I ever made. A year and change later, here's what I wish someone had told me. Long post, grab coffee. Background for the new folks. Born in Olongapo, joined the US Navy at 18, retired as an IT Chief after twenty years. I ran networks on ships, I ran sailors, I ran a division. Then I did a 16-week…

   JoJo RamosSep 10, 202634likes12comments

7. Experience

   Month eight: I turned down the 60% offer, started contracting, and here are the full numbers

   A few people asked what happened with the 60% offer, so here's the update. The offer The company agreed to a 6-month compensation review, verbally. When the written offer came, the role had been "re-scoped" to mid-level, with a lower title and the same pay. I asked about it twice and got two different explanations. I declined. Several of you told me in that thread to take it, and it was good advice for the offer I…

   Kenji TanabeOct 14, 202622likes9comments

8. Article

   Performance review season: how calibration actually works (from the manager side)

   Review season starts at my company in two weeks, and every year I get the same questions from engineers: what actually happens in calibration? Who decides? Can I do anything about it? Here's an honest answer, based on the companies I've worked at. Details vary, but the shape is similar almost everywhere. What calibration is Managers write ratings for their reports. Then a group of managers sits in a room with a…

   Renee WhitfieldSep 16, 202621likes8comments

9. Article

   our startup tried a 4 day week for 3 months. here are the numbers, not the vibes

   we're a 9 person logistics startup in sapporo (6 engineers). in may our ceo agreed to a 3 month trial of a 4 day week: same pay, fridays off, 32 hours. everyone on mastodon has opinions about this, so i challenged to collect actual numbers. here they are. small team, one trial, not a study. but numbers. the setup mon-thu, 9:00 to 18:00 with an hour lunch. fridays off for everyone, not rotating one person on call on…

   Mio KobayashiAug 30, 202620likes13comments

10. Article

    The school concert was at 3 pm on a Tuesday. Here is the calendar block I now use, and why I stopped apologising for it

    My daughter is seven. Last month her school had its annual day concert at 3 pm on a Tuesday, which, if you are a working parent in India, you will recognise as a time chosen by someone who has never had a 3 pm sprint review. For years, my move in this situation was to sneak out. Leave my status green, keep Slack open on my phone in the auditorium, answer one message during the song my daughter had practised for…

    Divya RamanathanAug 23, 202618likes13comments

11. Question

    Take the offer at 60% of my old salary, or keep looking? Honest input wanted.

    Context for anyone who hasn't seen my earlier posts: senior backend engineer, laid off in February after nine years at a large tech company. The offer: senior engineer at a mid-size company. Base about 60% of my old base. Equity that rounds to nothing. Hybrid, 3 days a week, 50-minute commute each way. Pending: two other final loops, results expected in 2 to 4 weeks. No guarantees. Runway: severance runs out in…

    Kenji TanabeAug 21, 202614likes9comments

12. Question

    4 co-op offers, which one?? (actual numbers, waterloo 3B)

    ok so it's ranking week and i somehow have 4 offers for my winter term and i'm losing my mind. numbers because that's the only way i can think: big bank, toronto. platform team. $34/hr CAD, hybrid 3 days, 4 months. return offer rate is "high" according to literally everyone big tech, seattle. SWE intern. $55/hr USD + housing stipend. J-1 paperwork, which my school handles series A startup, waterloo. $30/hr, full…

    Kelly ZhaoSep 12, 202610likes9comments

13. Question

    0 callbacks from 60 internship applications, roast my resume (described, not attached)

    ok so ive applied to like 60 summer internships and gotten 0 interviews. not even rejections from most of them, just silence. heres what my resume looks like rn: two column template i found online, with a skills bar chart (python 80%, java 70% lol) a "relevant coursework" section with 9 courses "proficient in" python, java, c, c++, rust, javascript, typescript, react, sql, go, haskell, docker, git, linux 3 projects:…

    Olivia MartinOct 2, 20269likes6comments

14. Experience

    출근 전에 울었다. I cried before work, then shipped the launch

    오늘은 그냥 솔직하게 쓰고 싶어요. I want to write honestly today. Sorry for mixed language... Last week was launch week for big redesign at my company. Six weeks of crunch before. Every day office until 10 or 11 pm, Saturday also, sometimes Sunday "only for few hours". 야근, 주말 출근. Everyone does it, so nobody talks about it. On launch day morning, I sat on my bed with my bag and shoes on. And I could not stand up. Not sick. Just...…

    박지우Aug 25, 20269likes8comments

15. Article

    Going from CRUD backend to payments: things I wish someone told me

    4 years back I was writing CRUD APIs for a food delivery startup. Then I joined a lending company, and in the first month I broke a reconciliation job, learned what a UTR is, and realised I did not know what a debit was. Writing this for anyone thinking about moving into fintech backend. Learn basic accounting before anything else. Not the full course. Just double entry, what assets and liabilities are, and why a…

    Arjun MehtaOct 17, 20264likes3comments