You're assuming the rest of the world is different but it isn't. There's a massive amount of companies where working pace is very slow. A large percentage of employees do barely anything and these companies exist forever.
This is something that was unknown to me until a few years ago and I believe it's unknown to many in the tech industry. I make a close to Google-level salary in my position (say, 85% of it) in a tech company and I barely do any work (or better, I do some work for some hours a week). Little accountability, zero stress. And when I say "I barely do any work", I mean that when I hear start-up people ridiculing the typical Google senior-and-up IC who works 30-35 hours a week with weekends off, I say to myself: that's crazy, what would they think of me working (barely) 1/3 of those hours? Would I be the village idiot?
There is always some drops fear trying to find a way up my limbic system whispering to me that one day this will be over. One day, I will have to work for real again and I will have to pass tough interviews and have new, possibly demanding bosses. But this has been going for more than 4 splendid years, very long-termism tend to make one's life pretty dull, and my dream is to open a bicycle shop anyway.
As a famous ad campaign used to suggest: "Think different".
Don't get complacent. I've been where you are, and when the party is over you're going to have a hell of a hangover unless you can ride that job to retirement. Relearning how to compete after a few years of coasting is brutal. I was just past 40 when my gravy train derailed. The slack years were fun but they went by fast. Compensation for a job is about more than money. It's about where you end up as a person when the job is over.
That's a good point and that's the drop of fear climbing making his way up to my brain. But I interview around, I got some offers that I have declined so far and I do some work, just a few hours a week.
You wrote: "Compensation for a job is about more than money. It's about where you end up as a person when the job is over.". It sounds good in theory, but in practice? Should I switch job, maybe/likely accepting less money and more stress in the coal train now because when the luxury train stops I will be in a better place (I am exaggerating for conversation purposes)? I have my doubts. This is specific to my situation and I don't want to explain too much (and that's why I use a throwaway account), but outside of the US that would sound bizarre. Switching from a cushy well-payed job to a demanding, paying-less job because in a few months/years it will be over? Yes, maybe I will get rusty here and there, but I can move to Tulum for 3 months and get ready for interviews, no?
I didn't say you should quit your job. Ride that train as long as you can. I'm saying you should manage yourself. If you only work half the day, spend the other half of the day:
- Look for opportunities to contribute more at your job. Don't wait for a manager to tell you what to do. Rewrite some code. Propose a new feature. Improve the documentation. Write more tests.
- Teach yourself new skills. Don't just skim books on new languages/technologies. Develop a personal project and pretend like you're being paid to work on it.
- Take practice coding tests. Stay up to date with relevent skills.
Enjoy the job you have now, but keep yourself ready for the day when that job goes away. I had a very easy job for about 6 years. I automated most of my job and effectively did not have a boss. I made great money and spent most of my time working on hobbies, hiking, or working on my house. When the job ended I suddenly realized all of my skills were rusty. I regret wasting all of that time, and wish I would have used it to better myself.
All very good points. However, if you do (1) (Look for opportunities at work), you don't have the time and energy for (2) and (3) with the regularity needed for making serious advances. At that point, you have a well-paid, non-stressful, truly full-time job. I would skip (1) and keep mostly (3) (well, that's what I do, more than advice. A pat on my shoulder, if you will). They are not paying you more, the more you do, the more troubles, stress, and annoyances you call in your direction, and when the tide turns, it is not that they are looking at some code review you did or improved documentation you wrote to keep you onboard.
As I like to say: there is no second life, the only one that was build was virtual and "failed".
Yeah I didn't mean to suggest doing all 1, 2 and 3. Pick one. Do something for at least half of your idle time, and do it with purpose.
> when the tide turns, it is not that they are looking at some code review you did or improved documentation you wrote to keep you onboard.
I mostly disagree, but it depends on your employer. As a senior engineer, I very much have the opportunity to differentiate myself and protect my position longer than others. I lost my easy job to lower paid, lower skilled engineer because I chose not to put in the work which would have defined my role as a more difficult one. It was easy to replace me when the time came because I allowed the scope of my role to shrink to menial tasks which did not require much thought.
> I can move to Tulum for 3 months and get ready for interviews, no?
I've worked with plenty of sysadmins who suddenly had no choice but to become software engineers. That learning is brutal for some of them–years long process, maybe never. 3 months may not be enough if you coast for long enough.
Honest question from an eng working the last few decades at a FAANG and finding themselves burnt out to the point of panic attacks some mornings (e.g. "can I keep going at this pressure"; which has me laughing at least a little about the "FAANG is easy" sentiment elsewhere in the thread)
Where? How do I find jobs like this?
I get what the sister comment points out about long-term stagnation, but at the same time, I could desperately use a few years without a resume gap, but without a perpetual dagger hanging over my head.
There are plenty of high-revenue companies looking for people with prestigious backgrounds in a non-explicitly-called-that-way advisory role. It is not difficult to find jobs like those in general, but IMO most FAANG people lack the finesse needed to understand how to position themselves and understand what other people want, which, most of the time, are not the coding skills.
Panic attacks are brutal and getting employees to the point of having panic attacks is part of what is wrong in the tech world. And it happens, in big corps, because some people want to advance at the expense of others.
Very true on the last part. There are some quotes I'd love to share from mentors in the space but that would ID me too tightly.
Would you say that any particular background and skill set or credentials/laurels (publishing? writing? speaking? management? management at a certain level?) sets you up most appropriately for getting this sort of role? Basically, how do I take any actionable steps to find those positions or move in that direction.
Certainly the FAANG-er needs to be in a senior role. To have a less stressful job, you need to look for senior- IC work, not management. Coming from management would be ok, but mostly companies I am talking about are looking for technical guidance or, more likely, reassurance. Publishing is helpful only if in the very specific area they are interested about.
As to how to find those positions, my recommendation would be to look for (1) high-revenue, big companies (they have the money and they have the space), (2) going through some sort of transformation (moving to the cloud, opening a new business area), and (3) need prestige, both internally and externally.
You can find those jobs in job ads, but you need to look at the ad written most of the time by a semi-clueless recruiter through the lens of points (1-3) above.
This is mostly because at (a lot of) these places - there is no reward for doing any work. You don't get promoted if you do a good job. If you get a raise, it's like an extra $1k a year.
in my personnal experience, the only kind of companies that are really comfortable to employees (in terms of perks) and adopt a slow rythm, are benefiting from some kind of monopolistic, regulatory situation.
Either public sector companies, or banks & insurance whose business model can't be disrupted that easily because of regulatory pressures.
Giant IT companies from the valley that successfully built a way to lock down users are the other example.
could also be a niche market product created a decade ago that some other large company depends on. money keeps rolling in with little effort. source: personal experience. the company is no longer in operation but it lasted for a god 30 years.
another example is a company which is highly specialised in making a certain thing. (for instance some kind of widget for a specific kind of industrial machine). usually demand is stable enough to keep the company healthy for a long time, but scale up is not necessary because the demand isn't there.
