I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but neither do you. Students at universities ranked similarly to Michigan absolutely do spend a significant amount of time studying on the weekends, especially if they’re not business majors. And MIT has parties and pranks, too.
I’ve heard Foundry is not only insanely expensive, but to actually accomplish something comparable to the demos in your domain requires a huge amount of integration work to build it out in a way that locks you in.
This got me thinking. In any country or ethnic group, it’s so important to differentiate between the average person trying to get by and the aggressors who claim to be their leaders. When we look at the world through the lens of political and military leaders, we miss so much of the humanity of everyday people.
In technically deep domains like Bellard works in, Staff+ roles bias more towards technical expertise, and managers also tend to be more technical and able to more completely address technical coordination tasks. Sometimes we like to assume that if someone is good at one thing, they’ll be bad at something more mundane (to make ourselves feel better), but I sincerely doubt he would have any trouble in such a role.
70% Advancing the state of the art in my areas of expertise
+
30% Enabling experts in other areas I care about to advance the state of the art by making all the problems related to my expertise just go away
As I mentioned, this is a privileged position, but I see work as an opportunity to do something I and others find meaningful and useful. I’m paid so that I can afford to focus my time on that work without worrying about money. I seek out employers and co-workers with whom my goals are aligned, and we go our separate ways if that ever ceases to be the case.
Yeah, it is shockingly bad. I’m assuming you’re using “talent” euphemistically here.
For a recent job opening I was looking to fill, HR sent us all of the applications rather than doing their own filtering (they did first round calls with people engineering highlighted).
The level of resume spam is absolutely staggering. So many applicants to jobs that have no obvious connection to their stated skills & experience, with job application questions filled out by LLMs. I’m not saying they’re all bad people, but all of these people who don’t know what they’re looking for other than an income is really disheartening.
Admittedly privileged counterpoint: I want to work with the best co-workers in the world. Most candidates I’ve interviewed both in the US and in other countries aren’t anywhere near that level. If just anybody will do for a job, I’ll probably get bored and frustrated by it.
High pay has been a mixed blessing for the tech field. For every aspiring top mathematician or physicist who’s been tempted by the pay and relevant new problems, I often feel like we’ve gotten 10x as many people who would otherwise have been uninspired doctors and lawyers or top business majors.
It’s different for different people, but IMO, knowing something significant about everything is easier than knowing everything about something significant.
And if you understand the organizational dynamics, being in a position to fix (or recommend the cancellation of) projects that aren’t working gives you more control over your destiny than being just another person trapped in a dysfunctional org.
So I’m not saying higher level roles are easier for everyone, but I am saying lower level roles can actually be harder for someone who has mastered higher level roles.
Authoring and reviewing PRs when no one person owns them individually sure sounds like influencing the direction of the team without any authority to make a unilateral decision to me.
You’re right about politics, but I think the part where people may vary is the definition of authority. Does being consistently influential make someone an authority? It depends on what that means. They will be believed more often (they have soft power) but they don’t have hard power to command someone to do something. What makes it a gray area is they almost surely have influence with someone else who does have hard power.
Technically yes, but it’s not much different for line managers and often second level managers, though. Maybe you can approve expenses up to $500 at a time and get headcount for a couple more people approved from time to time. Not that different from an IC with a strong relationship with directors and VPs getting the same sort of allocations approved for a team/project they work with/are spinning up.
I agree. Of the two major US political parties today, one is primarily radical right with a small conservative branch that is struggling to stay in their party. The other is conservative to moderate with a small liberal branch that is fighting to make their party stand for something.
I’m sure the stress level varies by the individual.
The upside to a more collaborative role like this is you don’t have the stress of having to know everything. Individual developer roles can be more stressful because if you say you’ll solve a problem in a certain amount of time, and then you’re off on your own coding, and things aren’t working out… you’re personally on the hook for the whole thing. Whereas if you’re leading an effort and company priorities shift so people can’t contribute as much, you communicate that to all your stakeholders, and look good for letting higher priority efforts have more resources.
That’s why a lot of companies only promote after demonstrating a track record of performing at the next level.
It can also be an argument for secret levels. Although I’m not sure how useful that really is in practice.
For someone who does well at influence, it’s not a mandate, it’s permission to spend some time on the nontechnical factors that are necessary to make your work turn out better. And that also means helping others who have good ideas but aren’t comfortable with the influence part themselves.