martamorena9182

Yes, this is usually how it turns out in practice. You don't need to understand what's going on under the hood, you just string some libraries together and call it a day ;).

/sarcasm off

I mean she resigned. She put conditions on her staying at the company. By accepting her resignation, Google simply stated: "We are not gonna comply with these conditions, therefore we accept your resignation".

Let's focus the discussion around if that was a good or bad decision, to not comply with her conditions. She fired herself, there is no discussion around that.

Maybe because building a bridge is a very standardized process that lives through regulation. Maybe software will end up there some day, hopefully a day by which I am retired.

It may make sense to do this for certain disciplines, like software tailored for other engineering disciplines (think medical grade software, airplane/car control software, etc.).

However for the broad mass of software projects, certification makes no sense and is in fact much worse than what we have now. Do you think certification can't be gamed? It will usually be much easier to game that one since certification by definition is meant to be achievable by a broad mass of people. You don't build a certification program for elites.

Professional leetcode programmer? Sure. So let's count the facts we have at the end of the interview:

* You can code yourself through a number of problems, answer follow-up questions that dig into random specifics of your problem, slightly modify the problem, etc. You can demonstrate structured problem solving, ad-hoc clean code and you make an overall good impression in that performance.

* You are able to demonstrate the necessary experience through targeted behavioural questions that probe deeply into specific aspects of your job history and alignment with the company values

* You are able to design a complex software system and are able to answer unknown follow ups and able to follow drill-downs into random aspects of your design.

Congrats, you are a professional software developer. Can you game the leetcode part? Potentially, however I met several "leetcoders", some of which were even kind enough to put that on their CV... They usually fail quite spectacularly at random follow ups and modification to the problem statement. But even if you are able to somehow "wing it" convincingly, you need to succeed several times and you need to still demonstrate the adequate proficiency in the other two pillars (behaviour and software design).

What we might need is an "interviewer" certification.

Looking at the code, it's a nightmare to parse. There are so many details to deal with that should never bother you under normal circumstances (the core problem of using Rust where it's not necessary). It's admirable that you have such an easy time with it. However, for most people, using Rust for these purposes is absolutely not recommended.

Java/Kotlin paired with reactive streams makes these tasks super easy to read, once you get the hang of reactive streams. Also there are complexities in there, you just simply can't brush all the intricacies of network programming and multi-threading under the rug, but at least you are dealing only with the complexities that are necessary for your problem.

With Rust you are dealing with tons of additional complexity that doesn't matter to 99% of people & problems. I love that Rust exists and it has its uses (browsers, hypervisors, drivers, kernels, etc). I just find it very alienating when people compare this to Python and do everyday tasks with it.

No, you really don't want to deal with borrowing, memory management and life-times, unless it is part of the problem you are trying to solve (and there aren't too many for which that applies).

Being able to read the words doesn't mean the comment makes sense. Reading it over and over again, yeah sure I can understand it, but I don't see any "point" or relation to the original comment.

Some people just seem to feel "smart" by wording things as convoluted as possible, using fancy words and references. The truth is, it is much harder to express thoughts clearly with simple, yet elegant words. Mostly because that makes everyone understand it, and everyone able to see through the facade. Meaning that whatever you say will need to hold up to much more scrutiny and you can't hide behind a facade of "fancyness" that scares off readers.

It's similar to coding. Writing simple code for complex programs is much much harder than writing complex code for complex problems, or even worse complex code for simple problems, which many people like to do.

How is it going within Venezuela these days? Might that have anything to do with its relation to the US? Invasion isn't always the right measure. Invasion is the most expensive and most visible measure and the measure that is most frowned upon. The US has no interest in doing that, I think they learned their lesson. But there are a lot of other ways to retaliate.

See Jeff Bezos' famous comment: "It is better to cannibalize yourself; than let others cannibalize you"

This should answer your question and hint what's to come.

Yeah sure, if you have significant experience before, but then E4 would be a total mis-hire.

Then E5 or E6. But E6 would already mean you were essentially a team lead before you even started. Will they mis-hire you two levels apart? Maybe, rarely, if you really screwed up that interview?

But the OP also says he "became a good engineer" and he "became a team lead". And that is simply not possible. We do not talk about people who "were" a team lead and didn't know it. We are talking about people legitimately hired at E4.

PHD? Perhaps you can do it in two years, but a PHD very likely has a lot of the skills you need already, so it's not a fair basis to start from and they studied up to 6 years longer than a normal Master.

What bothers me more is the E6 -> E7 -> E8 promotion with the associated salary. That is just legitimately NOT possible at Amazon. This would mean you went from junior engineer to Senior Principal Engineer in 8 years. Well good luck with that. Maybe if you were the next Steve Wozniak, you could pull that off. I know A LOT of very smart people, people from M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon, etc. and they are challenged by just being a Senior Engineer at Amazon. Principal and Senior Principal just requires a skillset most people will never develop and according to the OP, that is not required by Facebook. In which case I consider it possible to get promoted to E8 within 8 years. This just means Facebook levels mean literally "I was successful", not "I am a competent leader". Which is fine and I will keep that in mind for the leveling discussion should I ever be on the lookout for a job there...

If you are smart (and I think the OP is very smart, don't get me wrong), and you have a good portion of luck to be in the right place at the right time, I imagine the OP's path to be possible if levels are handed out by "success". But this isn't meaningful to anyone else. The OP may have had a very different experience without a good portion of luck. Or at a different company, like Amazon.

To prove my point, I would encourage E8's at Facebook to try to apply as (Senior) Principal Engineer at Amazon and see how it goes.

> Year 1 was learn to become a good engineer, > Year 2 was learn become a good Tech Lead

This made me laugh... One year to become a good engineer and another to become a tech lead. Seriously? Facebook seems like an interesting place to be. Maybe I should also apply there.

But on a more serious note. There is no way, no matter how smart you are, to become a Tech Lead (at least not at a reputable company) within two years. It's just mentally not possible to learn all the things you need to learn in that time. And that is not even considering the fact that most of the time you don't have such ideal conditions that you would be exposed to the necessary scenarios and learning opportunities to pull that off even if it was humanly possible. Perhaps Facebook's levels are more based on "business achievements" than actual competence, which is fine I guess. If I make the company 10 million dollars, why should I not get a good chunk of it, regardless of how experienced I am? (I am serious)

But the fact that E8 is still about "team of 4" tells me a lot. Principal Engineers at Amazon are responsible for potentially hundreds of engineers and that level is said to be about E7. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

And the author shows that:

"E6->E7 and E7->E8 promotions were mainly about making something successful. My execution could have been perfect but if the product didn’t work, I would not have been promoted."

Yup, pure business success based promotions, which makes any level based comparison between Facebook and Amazon kinda moot.

I would be interested to know if this is just one data point, or if this is how Facebook generally operates.

That doesn't work, because either you need to randomize which way you ask (and then all a bot needs to do is try a couple of times to get the question where it needs to answer correctly), or you always need to ask one way or the other, which also doesn't work, because then the bot will answer incorrectly on purpose.

It would be different if the captcha would look at the incorrectness. I.e. the bot would now have to make the same mistakes that humans would make, which might be a workable path for captchas, however its unclear what benefit this would bring compared to answering correctly.

Doing what you think is right, is not necessarily the right thing to do. This is why there is also "Disagree and Commit". There are many facets to this and I am 100% sure that you did not get fired for >correctly< telling customers... You could potentially get fired for incorrectly telling them though, if the issue was severe enough.

AWS is big. Amazon is even bigger. Disgruntled people are the ones who often cry the loudest. Just because there may be teams who act like this, doesn't mean that is the case in general.

You don't hear a lot of people praising AWS, the same way you don't hear a lot of people saying how great it is to have an iPhone. If I am happy, I have little incentive to post about it, since that should be the default state.

But the matter of fact is simple. If you end up in a team like this, switch and raise complaints afterwards. Nothing stops you from it. There is no "toxic engineering culture" at AWS. The problem is that AWS makes you into an owner and that includes owning your career. That means if you feel something is wrong, YOU are expected to act. No one will do it for you. And there are plenty of mechanism for you to act.

This is the greatest benefit of working at Amazon but its also the downfall of people who are not able to own things.

> Sure, YouTube itself proably built insane stuff in their engine you could never replicate with classic methods

Probably. But pretty much anything they recommend is junk, so... That's where the author may have a point. If you don't understand your AI algorithm anymore, it's hard to improve it or even realize how wrong it is. AI is generally good at steering the masses into a couple of "averaged" directions. At the individual level though, it's often crap, unless you are the perfect stereotype that the algorithms assumes you to be.