
Square’s Growth Framework for Engineers and Engineering Managers - girlwhocodes
https://developer.squareup.com/blog/squares-growth-framework-for-engineers-and-engineering-managers/
======
coffeemug
_> Two Tracks / Becoming a manager is not a promotion_

To any young engineers who may be reading this, this is social fiction. If
someone can fire you but you can't fire them, you better believe you're not on
parallel tracks.

EDIT: it's not just firing. Managers know your compensation, but you don't
know theirs. They'll all work to split their team into multiple teams so they
can say they ran a group; the good ones will soon become managers of managers,
and then managers of managers of managers. They'll sit in on senior meetings,
work on strategic decisions, and you'll watch them rise further and futher in
the company hierarchy while you're enjoying your "parallel track".

~~~
CoolGuySteve
I think a lot of responses to you are missing the point. Managers have more
_autonomy_ and more _control_.

You may get paid the same while working as an individual contributor, at least
for a while, but over time your power in the org suffers a slow decay.

For example, you may not be able to direct your work towards that which
generates the most revenue, people you passed on in the interview process
suddenly appear next to you and you're required to mentor them, projects that
seem dumb get assigned to you from on high without your input, compute
resources appear or disappear from under your control, etc.

It's like death by a thousand cuts. And in my experience, the only way to
actually get paid on this track over the long term is to create something so
valuable that you are the single point of failure.

At least for programming, the only real 'Individual Contributor' career track
that makes any sense to consider is one where you're a lead developer, that is
you still code, but you manage a team of other people as well.

~~~
aeternus
An IC can definitely have and maintain more control than managers, they just
need to produce visible value to the company.

I've seen multiple ICs with more power than their direct manager. They are
basically immune to being fired because higher-level leaders understand their
value and respect their track record.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
Were those higher-level leaders managers? I mean I agree with your _exact_
statement, but in my direct experience, the higher-level leaders tend to be
less and less _engineers_.

Unless there is some power of the purse-strings, the two-tracks thing is
always going to be biased in favor of the managers.

~~~
filoleg
That's the beauty of working in a tech company compared to a non-tech company.
Every single manager in my org is a former engineer. Every single manager
above them is a former engineer. Heavy majority of directors in the org are
former engineers.

~~~
sq_
I feel like that's really gonna depend on what part of the tech sector you're
working in.

In the world of early and middle stage startups, you're probably right.
However, in massive tech companies or more legacy-type tech companies, it
seems like you're a lot more likely to find managers who are trained as
managers and not engineers (MBAs, etc.)

~~~
filoleg
I agree with you in general. However, my specific experience with this comes
from working at one of those massive tech companies. And there are definitely
orgs within the company that fall under the "MBA-types-running-the-show"
umbrella, but, I think, I just got very lucky with my org.

~~~
sq_
Yeah, the experience probably varies a ton across the industry and even within
orgs. I'm sure most people around here who've been in tech for a while can
tell stories about both types of company.

------
nojvek
In my 10 years of engineering, I’ve seen a whole bunch of such guides.
Promotions are hard to make them fair. Promotions are also biased because it’s
fuzzy and there are humans involved in it.

The only true way to get to know your worth is to test the market. It’s a
supply and demand game. Most raises I’ve got is by switching companies. Most
companies usually overpay their newer hires and underpay their older hires.
Why should they pay more if they’re not asking for it ?

Managers will always get paid more as you move up. They make bigger decisions
and have bigger impact. Their impact is their management tree’s summation.

As an IC you plateau out. You either start your own thing or work in more
lucrative industries.

Promotions never land on your feet, you gotta fight for them.

~~~
zuhayeer
This is so true, and often overlooked by a lot of people. There's no new
incentive for companies to reward older employees (you're at the company
already). But to get new employees to sign their offer, they're prepared to
stretch their resources. Additionally the market has likely advanced and
salary bands are probably higher. By staying at a company over a long period
of time, you lose out on being compensated at the periphery / edges of the
market. And you probably lose out on your read of the market too.

~~~
AmericanChopper
> There's no new incentive for companies to reward older employees

Is this just plainly not true. But the reason you may be led to believe that
is simply a matter of inefficiencies. If a company loses a senior team member,
they’ll need to replace them with one of equivalent competency. Putting aside
the fact that recruiting and on boarding costs quite a lot of money, there’s a
few basic economic reasons why they may have lost that team member to begin
with.

1\. They hadn’t adequately assessed the competency of that team member, and
that person was able to find a better paying job elsewhere.

2\. The company might not hire people for that position very often. If they
don’t know how much money it takes to secure a candidate of that caliber, then
they might not know they’re not paying them adequately.

Both of those scenarios involve employers not understanding the market
properly, and if that results in them losing skilled staff, then that is very
costly for them. So there’s a very clear incentive for companies to invest in
retaining staff. However the truth is that the world is full of poorly run
companies, this is a problem that’s actually quite hard to get right, and
there’s a very slow feedback loop when it comes to measuring how good you’re
doing at it. For those reasons, that’s why it’s often better for people to
seek new opportunities rather than seeking raises or promotions, because
that’s the best way to make sure you’re getting a fair market rate, and will
allow you to bypass any inefficiencies in the way your current employer may be
doing things.

There’s also another possibility, where the people on the payroll are simply
developing their skills faster than the company can provider more advanced
opportunities for them. In this case the employer doesn’t need to replace you
with somebody of equal competency, they just need to find a replacement for a
role that you outgrew.

------
MAGZine
A lot of what's in here reminds me of what we do at PlanGrid, and as someone
who has been around to see our system evolve (and add my own feedback to it),
I generally agree with the principles that it lays out.

There is one thing that bothers me here though.

> Promotions don’t unlock new responsibilities; the new responsibilities and
> increased scope come first and then we recognize it with a promotion.

To some extent I agree with this. The part where I don't agree with this
principle is that it's essentially saying "do the job of position XYZ, and
after you prove to us that you can do it, we will recognize and pay you for
it."

If people are taking on additional responsibility and having a bigger impact,
pay them for it. Maybe Square does, but normally comp+promotion go together
and so I'd be interested to hear evidence to the contrary. If someone has been
operating at a level for 6 months, then why not retropay them for 6 months at
their new salary? :)

~~~
mindfulgeek
That’s unfortunate. As a small business owner, I can understand the business
side of things — it can be hard to maintain profitability when someone gets
promoted if they aren’t yet able to do all the skills of the job but get paid
for it. I wonder if that was part of the strategy — not all the responsibility
was added at once to transition?

We handle this a different way - when someone is promoted, they are given a
chart of new responsibilities, expectation timeline and a small raise. Once
they completely train into the role, which can be anywhere from 3 weeks to 3
months, we give a larger raise. Again this is because we cannot actually
afford to pay for work not being done. It seems people like the
acknowledgement, clear expectations and reward when they’ve made the cut.

~~~
ellius
What's great about this is you're hedging your bets (prudent) while
acknowledging the worker's needs as well. The problem without some kind of
middle ground like this is that it reeeeeally feels like getting screwed when
you're working above your pay grade for an extended period of time without
explicit acknowledgement. I've had a lot of unhappy friends in roles like that
where they were doing team lead / manager stuff and getting jerked around by
HR and their boss for months or years. Now they're hypersensitive to anything
that smells remotely like that experience. I like how you're making a public
commitment but making sure to manage your risk. It's a great compromise.

~~~
mindfulgeek
I hope your friends have had better outcomes since. A good thing to protect
yourself as a worker is to get a timeline or plan of action or growth as soon
as new responsibilities creep in — if the company had the intention to
promote, they will appreciate a clear path, of not, they will push back.

------
stoops
This exemplifies why I quit my last job.

But primarily,

"We promote engineers and managers when they have demonstrated that they are
consistently performing at the next level. Promotions don’t unlock new
responsibilities; the new responsibilities and increased scope come first and
then we recognize it with a promotion."

Every discussion I had with my manager, my promotion was six months away,
despite IC contributions exceeding the sum total of the rest of my team when
measured per-project via our number one KPI: annualized cost savings (larger
org was seen as a cost center).

Unfortunately these "principles" are becoming harder and harder to avoid.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Another way to say that is it's lame to give a someone a promotion to a role
they are already doing, because it's the easiest way to communicate that
they've been underpaid for way too long.

~~~
joshuamorton
This is only true if the only way to get compensation increases is via a
promotion. Granted at many companies this is true, but it probably isn't true
at Square.

If you get promoted to Senior level, the assumption is that you're getting
paid what a senior should be. If then, you take on additional responsibility
above and beyond what a Senior is doing, you get merit increases up to some
higher point. That is, a Senior who is getting 5/5 performance ratings
probably makes more than a Senior with a 3/5\. Eventually, that 5/5 person
might get promoted (I say might because an exceptional Senior might not make a
great Staff engineer. Someone really good at implementing things quickly, but
with terrible design sense won't make it to Senior in a lot of orgs, for
example, even though they might be a very strongly performing Engineer) to the
next level, at which point the process starts again.

------
mychael
Looks like it's easier to resign from Square and accept a salary bump and
title bump elsewhere than navigate Square's "Growth Framework".

If we wanted this much structure, we would have worked for the government or
military.

~~~
ngngngng
Exactly. When a company hires me, they understand that they're going to have
to pay me while I get up to speed and master all the responsibilities of the
job. Why should promotions be any different? Are they back-paying these people
after they take on extra responsibilities for 6 months?

These seems like a somewhat immoral way to squeeze extra productivity out of
your workers without paying more. "Just keep piling extra work onto your plate
and in six months we'll talk about the possibility of a promotion! It's gonna
be great!"

~~~
vonmoltke
How is this different from, say, Google, except that Square is open and honest
about it? After I got my offer from Google last year (that I rejected), my
prospective manager told me that in order to get promoted (from L4 to L5 in
this case) I would need to be operating at that next level for some period of
time before my promo packet was even submitted, let alone the promotion come
through.

~~~
tdeck
As someone who worked at Square ~3 years ago and now works at Google, the
rate-limiting and "promotion by apology" (their term, not mine) feel fairly
similar - Google's is a bit more impersonal. However Google pays much, much
better. Square (I felt) offered more opportunities to build a good engineering
reputation and to gain actualization in other ways, and to make a significant
impact.

~~~
vonmoltke
> However Google pays much, much better.

Eh, at least in my case the offer they extended me was shit (speaking from my
privileged and fortunate position). Combined with that promotion process it
was easy to reject (and a month later I got an offer elsewhere for one level
and $75k/year more).

~~~
tdeck
So my data may very well be out of date. Google's salaries are indeed somewhat
low, but their total comp was way higher than what Square targeted at the
time. Since Square is now public and doing so well I'm not surprised to hear
they're paying better than they did.

------
bit_logic
This is basically a page to help with recruiting. A lot of companies do this,
long detailed posts about career ladders. Then sometimes a short bullet point
list about "good work-life balance", "competitive compensation", basically the
things that really matter, but no real details.

As a senior engineer with a good job who has been in this industry for a
while, here's what really matters for me when I look at new jobs:

\- Does your company allow WFH schedules to everyone? There's debate about
full remote vs full onsite, I'm not talking about that. I'm just talking about
working within driving distance, but having a 3-2 or 4-1 weekly schedule of
onsite vs WFH. There's really no excuse to not offer this at this point in
communication technology. Some excuse like "more collaboration" doesn't apply
if everyone is still going to the office regularly. And this has to be allowed
for everyone, not just special exceptions for a few. It must be a culture
where everyone is WFH regularly.

\- Will I have to write code on a whiteboard? If yes, then goodbye. Even a
chromebook with a html page that has nothing but a <textarea> element is
better than a whiteboard for writing code. Will I have to study leetcode for
weeks to pass your interviews? Then also goodbye, I don't have time for that
and it's a stupid way to do interviews. A fizz buzz type question to just see
if someone can write any code, that's ok. Leetcode stuff is not ok. Take-home
test? It better be really short or also goodbye.

\- Compensation, it's actually ok if you're not at FANG level, few companies
can be. The other things like offering regular WFH schedules are very valuable
and this is how non-FANG companies should compete. But it needs to be still a
reasonable amount of compensation. Guidelines are really difficult here due to
so many factors such as cost of living. But I know a bad offer when I see one
so don't try to trick me.

\- Well defined on-call process that doesn't burn out engineers.

\- Minimum of 4 weeks vacation. If it's less to start, you better have a
schedule that increases that quickly (not some 1 week for every 5 years
bullshit). And if you're doing no vacation (AKA "unlimited vacation"), you
better have something really convincing that shows people do take long
vacations in your office. Like an official policy to encourage this.

I don't care about free lunch, video game consoles in the office, all that
silicon valley "perks". Tell me about the stuff that really matters.

~~~
aczerepinski
When recruiters mention unlimited vacation, I translate that in my head to ~3
weeks, which is less than what I currently get, so definitely not a selling
point. I think we'll see unlimited disappear over time because everybody knows
it's BS, and we'll see lawsuits from employees who were reprimanded for taking
10 weeks or whatever.

~~~
el_benhameen
I don't know. I agree that everyone thinks, or ought to think, it's BS. But
everyone thinks, or ought to think, that open offices are BS and companies are
all going for those because it saves on costs. "Unlimited" vacation is the
same: in practice, I think people are going to take less vacation because
there are no clear rules about what's appropriate, and "unlimited" vacation
isn't accrued so it's not a payable benefit like set vacation hours. That
second one is a big one. If I get fired or quit or roll over more vacation
hours than my policy allows, CA requires that those hours be paid out. There's
no such cost associated with "unlimited" hours.

~~~
aczerepinski
But isn’t CA eventually going to go after companies who are obviously just
trying to circumvent payouts when it becomes clear that they block employees
from taking off as much time as they want?

There are bound to be employees who want 3 months vacation and will get fired
for taking it.

~~~
el_benhameen
Maybe, but given that there’s no requirement that companies offer any vacation
time, it seems unlikely to me (a non-lawyer) that a case like that would
succeed. “Unlimited” is probably couched in “subject to your team and
manager’s requirements” language in employment contracts.

------
taurath
> We promote engineers and managers when they have demonstrated that they are
> consistently performing at the next level.

This while very common has always seemed... a little off to me, and also seems
to encourage people not sticking around if they feel like they could do well
at the next level, but maybe have some inconsistencies or areas of learning to
work on. This leads to an awkward situation especially as thinking starts to
become more "meta" as you go to a higher level. At what point is it okay to
start touching code less and doing more design and organization-level work,
when your current level is more about individual production and output? It can
make a top performer trying to get to the next level look like their output
has gone down, because the measures to those outputs look differently at
different levels.

Additionally, if someone's making that big impact, you're saying they have to
wait a year. If they can prove that impact, they can go somewhere else and get
that pay bump /now/. Don't make it easier for someone to leave than to stay,
especially if they're on a promotion track.

~~~
djur
Whenever I explain this model to my friends outside the tech industry they
think it sounds insane. The idea that you're not only allowed but expected and
essentially required to do work outside your official duties seems arbitrary,
almost like a trap.

------
hitekker
The audience and purpose of this article is unclear.

Is this meant for engineers who don't work at Square, for the purpose of
recruiting? Or for engineers who already work at Square, for the purpose of
justification, i.e. an internal newsletter?

The headline matches the former, but the content seems bent towards the
latter.

For one, the overly-long preamble reads like a page in a corporate handbook,
laced with insecurity.

> Our levels don’t line up perfectly with those of other companies ... You
> likely can’t accurately compare level numbers or titles directly between
> companies, even with tools that provide mappings between companies.

Similarly, most of the "principles" presented are either common-place:

> Levels build on each other: Each level implicitly includes all criteria and
> responsibilities of prior levels.

Or deceptive:

> Promotions don’t unlock new responsibilities; the new responsibilities and
> increased scope come first and then we recognize it with a promotion.

Or are a lot of nice-sounding words, too incoherent to disagree with.

As someone who's had to suffer through career frameworks championed by
company-lifers straight from college, I don't think this article won’t quite
attract the best and brightest.

~~~
svachalek
The level thing reads like some kind of horrible gaslighting, but to be fair
it's mostly true across all companies. Being a senior engineer in a company
that has QA and/or project managers is a very different role than in one that
doesn't, for example, and this is a dimension orthogonal to "level".

The bit on promotions is fairly commonplace and sound, about the only real
solution I've seen to the Peter Principle.

This doesn't strike me as a particularly exciting document but it doesn't seem
terrible either. I like that there are a variety of ways companies handle this
sort of thing, and that companies are being more open about it. It really
helps potential employees sort out where they want to be.

~~~
hitekker
You're right this document neither terrible nor exciting, but I'd disagree
that this document is "open".

As others commented on the falsehood inherent to "Two Tracks / Becoming a
manager is not a promotion", a blurred transparency tends to be more deceiving
than an obvious opacity. Or rather, being bull-shitted can be worse than being
told nothing at all.

------
zuhayeer
We built [http://levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi) to help bring some
transparency into hierarchies at companies (though mainly from a transitional
and compensation perspective). It’s really cool to see companies opening up on
their specific roles and responsibilities for candidates to see before they
enter the track

------
rajeshp1986
> Promotions don’t unlock new responsibilities; the new responsibilities and
> increased scope come first and then we recognize it with a promotion.

Most companies follow this model now. You should already be performing at the
level to deserve a promotion which sounds reasonable but not very much in
practice. People will look for a job elsewhere if they get frustrated.

------
chambo622
> You likely can’t accurately compare level numbers or titles directly between
> companies, even with tools that provide mappings between companies.

Companies may claim this but it can't really be true in practice, otherwise it
would be impossible to level incoming candidates

~~~
mtrpcic
You should level incoming candidates based on their performance during
interviews, their prior projects and portfolios, not what level they were
labelled as at a previous company. I don't care if you were a Level 38 at Foo
Inc., I'm going to interview you and compare what I think you're capable of to
the levels at my company and make a recommendation based on that.

~~~
chambo622
Most interview processes I've been a part of had a target level for the
candidate, with the possibility of leveling them up or down based on the
outcome of that interview.

There are other reasons why leveling can be important - the expectations of
the candidate around title and comp, for instance.

This is why sites like levels.fyi exist. They are surely not perfect and I
don't know much about how the data is collected or verified, but it's a
question that people want answered.

------
dannyw
As a self taught engineer, very unhappy to see the role of a 'relevant
Bachelor’s degree' stated in every single level.

If I have performed above expectations in an engineering role for 5 years, do
not have a bachelor’s degree, and I am judged against it, it is not a company
I would be working for.

Most companies acknowledge this and allow the substitution of a 'relevant
Bachelor’s degree' by experience.

~~~
dixon
It should say "or equivalent working experience" which is what the job
descriptions on the careers page say.
[https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Square/743999692210768](https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Square/743999692210768)

I work for Square, we just hired a self-taught engineer on our team. There's
no concrete degree requirement. :)

------
jbmsf
In general, I believe in this kind of system. I've long been a fan of public
engineering ladders (see: Rent the Runway) and create a real career path for
non-managers.

But... I see a lot of companies hiring at the senior end of the management
track (Directors, VPs, etc.) and not so much on the non-management side
(usually tops out a senior engineer).

I think that if companies are serious about non-managerial tracks, they need
to hire for such roles more seriously.

------
jonnyburch
Ooh boy, great to see this discussion. If anyone's interested,
[https://progression.fyi](https://progression.fyi) has a bunch more of these
to compare and contrast (I'm adding Square's to it right now...)

As you'll see, lots of companies reinvent the wheel with this stuff. It feels
fundamentally misaligned to me while these rubrics are solely owned by each
employer – personally, I care about my growth across a career, not just a
single job.

If this was measurable and transferrable in the same way as – say – learning a
language (e.g, I can take my Go experience somewhere else) it would be far
more compelling to me as an employee.

The question is: how many companies are willing to 'share' levels and
expectations to facilitate this?

~~~
mychael
I definitely don't want some kind of career progression standard that is
shared across companies.

Please work for the government if you crave this much structure.

------
alephnan
Seems to coincide with the thread a few days back about engineers valuing
"growth" when considering jobs:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20508465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20508465)

------
truebosko
I've been developing a growth framework at my org for the primary reason to
ensure that we can have consistent conversations across teams and ultimately,
provide a reference point for development teams as they work with their
managers on growth.

I think they make a lot of sense.

One question .. has anyone planned out how Staff Developers work within most
organizations? I feel the Venn diagram for them between an engineering manager
has plenty of overlap, where the people aspect (all things HR, hiring, growth)
are on the engineering/people manager.

Can a Staff Developer make decisions? Or are they more of an influencer?

~~~
sjg007
It’s influence all the way down. You want to keep things pretty abstract and
let people come up with the solution on their own. 90% of the time it will be
what you want, 5% they ask you for help and it’s what you expect and 5% maybe
they amaze you..

------
LaserToy
What is the point of sharing it? How is it different from any other company?

I also find Title misleading, Ladder is not a framework - it is a way to
retain talent. And I find it to be quite silly (as an eng who held highest
level position at famous eng company) way. Working in a title-less org now and
it is much better as we can concentrate on the mission and not the the
freaking ladder

------
marcinzm
I'm curious how the numbers work out at the higher levels. As I understand it,
and I may be wrong so please correct me if you know better, at places such as
Google there are separate manager and IC tracks however at top levels there's
more managers then ICs. So it's essentially easier to become a top level
manager than a top level IC.

~~~
humanrebar
It also doesn't help that they don't have definitions of what top ICs _do_.
Managers are in charge of a definite budget and a definite number of
employees.

What does the IC have responsibility and authority over? Do they absolutely
get to make certain technical choices? How? Which ones? What happens when the
right technical decision has impact on how budget and employees are allocated?

------
jacknews
The question should be whether the ladder to help you climb, or just to let
you climb at the company's pace?

Not sure who the quote is from, but something like "instead of climbing the
corporate ladder, why not own the ladder?"

------
User23
The problem with having to perform at the next job level to get a promotion is
that you're still expected to perform at your current job level. So going from
say staff where you're expected to spend 60% of your time coding and 40% on
making a broader impact to principal where you're expected to spend 40% of
your time coding and 60% of your time making a broader impact in essence means
you're going to have to work 120%. That's great if you don't have a life
outside work, otherwise, you're better off hiring into the level you want.

------
JoeyPardella
This is funny coming from Square, L5 and above is all politics there.

------
throwarway
this seems directly copied from the model used at Amazon (even down to numbers
assigned to levels)

------
tanin
I don't get how L5 EM and L5 IC are seen as the same level. Based on the
number of responsibility items, L5 EM has like 16 items. L5 IC has 8 items.

L6 IC and L5 EM seem more comparable.

------
ndm000
This is similiar to a framework my company utilizes for promotions. The key
difference is that everyone at the same level makes the pay. This is great for
transparency - everyone knows how someone should be performing and how they
are being compensated (all the way up throughout the company).

For those interested, the company is Pariveda Solutions.

------
sytse
Cool to see this published. At GitLab we have a page that serves a similar
purpose on [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/career-
develop...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/career-development/)

------
meristem
The devil is in the details--so much depends on how the levels and their
descriptions are operationalized.

Would be interesting to hear more about calibration work, how they are
defining output parity across the engineering disciplines/business
units/products/teams.

------
lwb
I'm surprised there's no guidance for IC9. Are there just not any of those
yet? At my last company (300-500 engineers) level guidance only went up to
IC7, and there was a single IC8 who was sort of "pioneering" new level
direction.

------
prd9a9mLFkgriHr
Does it matter who your manager is? Does this fit to all types of engineering
work? Does the idea of responsibility unlocking promotions after the fact work
for assigning levels to new hires? Do people who don’t self promote get
promoted by their managers? Do managers benefit from promoting their
engineers?

Someone else already asked, but who was this written for other than the people
who wrote it?

------
negamax
You need permission to view the document! what!?

~~~
mcpherrinm
Somebody is working on fixing the permissions. Sorry.

~~~
iaresee
You can do better. :D

------
skywhopper
The actual career ladder document linked from the post is in a private Google
document so we can't read it.

~~~
mcpherrinm
Fixed.

~~~
golover721
Still locked down unfortunately.

~~~
mcpherrinm
We're looking ... Something about Gsuite permissions isn't working as expected
:)

~~~
lwb
Works for me

------
lepah
google sheet is locked.

------
oneepic
This is relatively O/T, but I've always been skeptical of the general concept
of growing yourself in top tech companies. Seems like the overall idea is just
to grow yourself professionally, do more and work harder for your customers,
instead of growing yourself _for yourself_ and your own personal happiness,
being a better person, etc. On top of that, some companies expect you to give
your all in that regard. "Practice your customer obsession" and that sort of
thing so you can be a better worker. I hope in the future we'll still have
very successful tech companies that don't do this -- ie. they have a more
relaxed atmosphere and don't pride themselves on bending over backwards for
every customer. Believe it or not, there is more to life than your career.

