Re:Hitting OKRs vs. Doing Your Job
by rednafi on Monday January 06, 2025 @05:47AM
(#42609475)
If I could give one piece of advice to my early-career self, it’d be this: do more "visible" work rather than "good" work. The former gets you promoted, while the latter leaves you stuck as a senior engineer forever. For me, that ship sailed a while ago, and I’m sorta happy being stuck as a senior engineer. That puts me in a good spot to say OKRs are bullshit.
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With what other role / direction would you be satisfied instead of being SE? Going up in the IC ladder (lead, staff, etc.) or management? What disadvantages do you see settling at SE?
Staff is the natural progression for people who want to take the next step but don’t want direct reports. Each company has its own definition of a staff engineer's responsibilities. I’ve seen people move back to SE after burning out from all the meetings. In some places, staff engineers rarely code and are essentially glorified team leads.
But there are definitely companies where Staff engineers get to do some awesome work and there's a proper delineation between a Staff and a TL. I'm yet to work in a company like that yet.
Re:Hitting OKRs vs. Doing Your Job
by zeroonetwothree on Monday January 06, 2025 @10:08AM
(#42611156)
Really depends on your priorities. For me I'd rather do 'good' work (or 'interesting' work to me) since I don't care about minmaxing my comp.
Also if you are going to job hop in less than 3 years there's much less reason to play the corpo game.