hellolemon

I think this it. I need to invest in other areas of my life.

I don’t know. All logic points to just staying to weather the storm and there is really no harm in staying. But my mind is questioning my choice everyday.

Look at his LinkedIn profile and you will quickly see how unqualified he is for the CEO role. He is the slope as he puts it. And no high Y would work for him.

Be honest with them and sell them on your vision.

I agree. It’s important to not be too picky in this economic environment. Sometimes you need to take one step back to go two steps forward.

If you have done 40 interviews, you are clearly qualified for the roles. I think you need to be more selective about what roles you apply to, and spent more time preparing for the interviews. Answer basic questions like why are you applying to that company? What do you gain from that role? People can smell desperation.

I only started job searching seriously in July and I even took 2 weeks off in August. I was also unemployed. I only interviewed for the roles that I clearly felt was what I wanted. I spent weeks preparing for them and only did 2 final interviews. One I got rejected due to hiring freeze, but I got an offer for the second one in mid September.

So my advice is to really ask yourself why do you want to apply for a role. Don’t machine gun it.

It’s risky to hire an engineer to be solutions architect because they deal with large clients. Most engineers don’t have soft skills and could easily offend people without knowing. Try and have an old colleague that is non-technical refer you. I think it’s a great role to do 1-2 years; especially, if you have strong technicals. Lot of C level roles requires interpersonal skills and dealing with external stakeholders. Don’t worry about it being a downlevel unless your goal is to stay technical your entire career. There are plenty of technical people and not many technical people that can communicate well with non-technical. Figure out what your end goal is.

Funny you should ask, I just accepted an offer for SA.

I only got offered to interview for SA when it was clear that I didn’t want to stay in the engineering track. HR was adamant that I interview for SWE. I think this is due to the fact that a) the implicitly think you have little soft skills because so many engineers don’t and b) it’s much easier to place you in SWE.

In the end, I did get a Sr. SA role through referral from an old colleague that is a product manager. The HM was excited someone technical was joining his team. I would try and see if you can get a referral from someone you worked with that isn’t a SWE.

I think this is a great job to do for a year or two to expand your breadth. Client relationships are extremely important at C level roles and being able to transcribe technical to non-technical is valuable. I only got interested in this role after seeing 2 Google VPs go through this non-traditional route.

Don’t underestimate the importance of interpersonal skills in management. I see a lot of EMs get stuck at their level for years. I suspect part of the reason is their breadth is too narrow. They don’t see the big picture because they never interacted with external stakeholders. It is risky to promote them because you don’t know how they will interact with investors and large clients.

With your background, once you do this for a few years, you should be on track for upper management.

Getting products to market cost a lot of money. It’s hard to do organically unless you have your niche well defined.

Well let’s see.

Step 1) Provide a free service that will attract millions of users

Step 2) Track users and sell their attention to ad buyers.

Lots of internet businesses would have a hard time surviving without the ads business model.

It isn’t the definition but it sure seems like a huge integral part of it in reality.

Yes. Most employees at big tech are only thinking about climbing the ladder. No one is interested in product or customers. There is little growth left.